Karen Bryson, Kyra Bartley, Aimée-Lee X. Curran, Stef Smith, Samantha Lang, Gillian Armstrong, Vanessa Gazy, Eugenie Muggleton, Giulietta Amato, Alyssa McClelland.
The Australian Directors’ Guild has announced the eight emerging female directors who will participate in its 2018 Commercial & Content Directing Mentorship program.
The program, funded by Screen Australia’s Gender Matters: Brilliant Careers sees the emerging directors paired with commercial production companies, and is jointly designed and implemented by the ADG with The Communications Council and the Commercial Producers Council (CPC).
The recipients will spend several months with producers and directors from the production company they have been placed with, learning the ins-and-outs of commercial content production, and meeting potential clients and advertising agency representatives.
Last year’s inaugural mentorship program saw two mentorees signed to the rosters of their production companies, and all mentorees received meetings with production companies, advertising agencies and clients to pitch for jobs.
Last year Bree Billington was mentored by Kate Downie from Beautiful Pictures, and shadowed director Renee Webster. “It was wonderful to see her process and the way she treated the commercial from the initial brief with the client to the treatment and then the final edit. I’d never been in the room with another director to be able to see how someone else would approach a project was valuable insight into the commercial directing process. Directors rarely have the opportunity to see another director’s process.”
ADG CEO Kingston Anderson, Australian Directors’ Guild CEO said: “We are extremely excited by the success of this program and the willingness of the commercial producers to mentor talented female directors. We are also pleased to welcome our first Queensland company to the program. We look forward to seeing these directors as major leaders in commercial content in the future.”
The 2018 recipients are:
- Aimée-Lee X. Curran – Photoplay (NSW)
- Emily Avila – Taxi Film Production (QLD)
- Eugenie Muggleton – The Otto Empire (VIC)
- Giulietta Amato – Goodoil Films (NSW)
- Kyra Bartley – FINCH (NSW)
- Roxanne Halley – The Sweetshop Films (VIC)
- Stef Smith – Photoplay (NSW)
- Vanessa Gazy – Scoundrel Films (NSW)