LIGHTS debuts!

Nick and I attended the short:seasons festival tonight, which included the world premiere of Lights. ARC cinema is the preeminent film venue in Australia – I had been taken in by a lot of ‘chat’ on the internet regarding the comparative quality of DSLR footage when blown up, but our footage looked amazing. I was also concerned with the quality of our audio – again, I found the cinema more forgiving than I had been led to believe.

Lights was really well received, and it was thrilling to hear a crowd laughing in its lighter moments. I’m still blown away by seeing a film of mine on “the big screen” (as my Mum calls it), in front of a near capacity audience.

There were a couple of discrepancies in the programme which I need to highlight – in particular, the programme stated “Nick Delatovic and Luke McGrath have been on the fringes of the film community for many years”. This is false – I haven’t even been back in Canberra that long, and I didn’t pick up a video camera until June of last year – that’s 11 months at most, not “many years”.

It downplays the achievements we have made – in less than a year, our debut short film has been funded by ScreenACT and screened at the National Film & Sound Archive, I have edited and live-scored a 1920s film that also separately played to a full house at the National Film & Sound Archive, completed a ten part webseries for the You Are Here festival, shot 15 videos (here and overseas) for a cooking show, and filmed 11 bands for 2XX’s Local’N’Live channel. All without any training or guidance – we’re learning quickly, and for it to be stated we’ve spent “many years” on the “fringes of the film community” is straight-up wrong.  They also credited Nick as the director – again, wrong and easily correctable.

Aside from those frustrations, it was a great evening. The other films were by and large fantastic – I’d have to single out The Book Of Memories for its amazing cinematography, and New Friend for its simple but clever storytelling.

Finally, a shout-out to Ben Drysdale’s impressive characterisation – the script called for Vic to do a “too-loud laugh”.  WIth only that to go on, Ben truly made it his own, and provided not only an audience highlight but an anchor for the character.