By Andrew McMurtry
Winning the 2010 Getty Images Mishmash competition for the Asia-Pacific region was something of a surprise for Brent Quincy Buchanan.
“I’ve just recently started dating a new girl and she sent me an email saying ‘my friends and I just Googled you and congrats on winning the comp’,” says Buchanan. “I hadn’t even realised I’d won it.”
“When you’re making things, you generally don’t get a lot of feedback, you don’t know if what you are doing is good, so sometimes it is good to get a little cheeky nod from someone saying ‘you’re on the right path; I like what you’re doing’.”
Buchanan, a Sydney-based filmmaker who has only seriously been focused on producing screen content for approximately two years, won the International award ahead of a strong field.
The competition asks entrants to use Getty Images' extensive library of pictures and film as well as original footage to create a short movie.
Buchanan’s winning entry, titled That Moment, looks at an elderly woman named Lorraine Byrnes, who talks about photos and what they mean to her.
When Buchanan first heard about the competition, he said he found the idea of the meaning behind photos really appealed to him.
“I’m really drawn to the idea of people,” Buchanan explains.
“I’m drawn to stories [as a documentary filmmaker] and immediately when I saw it was a Getty thing about images I really got drawn to this idea that we consume photos and things like this differently these days – it’s all on computer and we don’t have albums and things like that any more – but people still have the same connection to photos.”
“So I just wanted to show that even though we are living in 2010 and everything, if you go back a few generations, there is still the same connection to photos that we have these days.”
The hard working 32 year old filmmaker has a strong interest in the music industry, after working at Warner Music for several years.
In the past few years Buchanan has established a company called The Grindhouse, working for some of the biggest acts in music at the moment, including Mumford and Sons, Florence + the Machine, Guy Sebastian and Jebediah.
“Film was always a hobby but when things started to change at Warner’s and people weren’t buying CD’s any more, we had to be more creative about how we were promoting artists,” Buchanan explains.
"What I really became interested with was working with bands and filmmakers to try and make things that are a little bit smarter and more structured around consuming content online.
“There came a time when I hit 30 that I just went out and started to put together a team to do this and that’s what I’ve done.
“I’ve spent the last couple of years working my arse off to build up a business where I’m working with bands to make cool stuff that showcases what they do.”
For more information and to watch some more of Brent Quincy Buchanan videos, visit his website at www.qnc.me or for more information on The Grindhouse visit thegrindhouse.com.
Brent Quincy Buchanan