Endemol Shine Australia and Screen Australia have unveiled the four inaugural participants of the Early Career Writers Program, aimed at fostering the next generation of screenwriting talent.
Slade Camilleri, Sally Alrich-Smythe, Becki Bouchier, and Luke Agius will be based at Endemol Shine Australia’s Sydney headquarters over the next eight weeks, during which they will be immersed in all facets of script development and rotate through all the roles that make up a successful script department.
It comes after a nationwide callout for the initiative, which the Australian Writers’ Guild also supports. Screen Australia and ESA have previously collaborated on the NCIS: Sydney S1 Script Department Program, which offered early-mid career screenwriters a 10-week full-time paid opportunity in the script department for script department for NCIS: Sydney.
ESA head of scripted Sara Richardson said it was a privilege to again partner with the screen agency.
“The applications received were outstanding, and these four writers exemplary,” she said.
“Endemol Shine Australia is excited to guide and mentor them, as well as encourage their learning and professional development. They are this industry’s future.”
Screen Australia Head of Development Bobby Romia described the program as the “perfect platform” for the successful applicants to refine their craft and open doors to new opportunities.
“These four recipients bring with them a strong appetite to learn and a passion to create a new slate of stories for the next generation, and I can’t wait to see what they achieve,” he said.
Find more about the recipients below:
Luke Agius
Agius began his filmmaking career at age 12 and made a plethora of films, eventually culminating his skills towards eventually studying Media Arts Production at the University of Technology Sydney. He has since made several award-winning short films, music videos, corporate content for large brands such as Google, and, before turning 23, directed his first feature film The Ferryman, which is now available on Amazon Prime. Luke was also a writer and director behind the Screen Australia short-form webseries Go Figure, which has accumulated over 100k views across socials. His second feature The Undesirables is currently in post-production.
Sally Alrich-Smythe
After studying Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney, Alrich-Smythe trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 2016 for Musical Theatre, and later returned there to do her Master of Fine Arts: Writing for Performance in 2018. She is currently a regular script writer on Home and Away, where she previously worked as a Senior Storyliner. In 2023, her play Wavelength won the Australian Theatre Festival NYC New Play Award, and was read to a sold out audience at Theatre Row in October of the same year. Her TV pilot script Dirty Road was both a finalist and highly commended for the Australian Writer’s Guild’s Monte Miller Award 2021 and is currently under development as an eight-part television series with CJZ Productions. Most recently, Alrich-Smythe completed a six-week professional script development placement with ScriptedInk and Studio Canal/StudioPlus as a Development and Acquisitions Intern.
Becki Bouchier
A Singaporean-Australian screenwriter and director whose work explores the challenges faced by women, with a focus on mental health and gender roles, Bouchier was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Award and an Australian Directors’ Guild Award for her short film Snapshot, which had its world premiere at Austin Film Festival. In 2022, she was a recipient of the SBS Emerging Writers’ Incubator and spent 12 months working as staff writer at production company Sweetshop and Green. Her dark comedy/drama pilot script Jelly was longlisted for the AWG’s Emerging Writers’ Award and two other television pilot screenplays Blackout and Bad Timing have been invited to the AWG’s prestigious Pathways showcase. Bouchier’s romantic-comedy feature screenplay Modern Day Romance was longlisted for both the Monte Miller and John Hinde Awards.
Slade Camilleri
Slade Camilleri is a screenwriter and script editor from Melbourne, Australia. Having obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Screenwriting) in 2017 from the Victorian College of the Arts, Slade has gone on to work as a production assistant on a number of films, such as Darklands and The Speedway Murders. In early 2023, Slade was brought on to the relaunch of Neighbours, where he spent a year as the senior script coordinator, before stepping into his current role of trainee script editor/storyliner, and writer of six episodes