All day, Monday 11 July 2011 – Federation Square
For ages 16–20

To view or download the program for the Screen Futures Youth Fest, please click the link below.
SCREEN FUTURES YOUTH FEST PROGRAM

Are you a student who wants to write/direct/produce movies or are you one who already does?
Do you like Facebook or want to create your own social networking space?
Love games? Want to play better and maybe make some?
Could you be a DJ or digital music producer?
Want a future in media or want to find out more about it?
Do you think Twitter, blogs and citizen journalism will change the world?
Do you want to change the world?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the Screen Futures Youth Fest is for you. What kind of job will you have in your media future? Come and hear animators, music video directors, e-publishers and bloggers talk about what they do and how you can do it too. Q&A panel sessions at BMW Edge with representatives from the media industry and from tertiary courses.

Workshops and events in the Square and on the stage and screen include:

• Make and edit a doco about Fed Square in just two hours
• Digital sound and music interactive at Soundhouse
• Workshop with Matt Blackwood – to add digital stories to buildings in Fed Square
• More to come!

If you answered no, then you need to come on down and learn what’s going on in the world – on and off the screens.

Tickets: Tickets are valid for the full day – $30 each or $100 for 5.
For bookings, click here. Bookings may only be paid for with MasterCard or Visa.

Stop Motion Pro will give away two student versions of its product (worth $250) at the Youth Fest for the best contributions from participants to discussions with the panels.

Like us on Facebook for updates, information and competitions as they arise.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Screen-Futures-Youth-Fest/146470228751734

You can now also follow Youth Day on Twitter@scrnfutrsyouth

triple j presenter, writer and narrator Paul Verhoeven is a creative, fresh and versatile talent and recently performing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with his show Lords of Luxury.

As a skilled writer specialising in all things pop cultural, Paul has been a film critic for FilmInk Magazine, music reviewer and regular columnist for J-Mag, feature article writer and critic for Yen Magazine, and more recently a writer for The Vine where Paul is a film critic, comedic writer, and writer/illustrator of the webcomic Lessons for Children. Paul holds a bachelor in Film Studies from the University of New South Wales.

Writing for the Digital World

Adele Walsh joined the State Library of Victoria’s Reader Development team this year as the Program Coordinator for the Centre for Youth Literature. Adele brings with her extensive experience as an avid young adult literature reader and a passionate youth literature advocate. She has a professional background as a teacher and is a well known YA blogger (aka Persnickety Snark). Part of her role is managing the teen reading website insideadog.com.au, professional blog Read Alert, and social networking.

Jake Cleland has been writing about music professionally for the last two years with pieces ranging from gig and album reviews to illuminating articles, most recently “The Internet Kills Pop Stars” for Big Issue. He fills time between click-clacking on his MacBook about bands by studying advertising at RMIT and hosting 1700, a music television programme produced by SYN on Channel 31

Andrew McDonald is the Online Manager for independent Melbourne booksellers Readings. He oversees the content, social networking, online marketing and retail business of www.readings.com.au<http://www.readings.com.au> . More recently he’s been involved in the ebook platform Booki.sh (http://booki.sh), which Readings has partnered up with to offer a range of ebooks. Andrew is also an author in his own right: his children’s novel The Greatest Blogger in the World was released in 2009 and he is currently writing his second book. Andrew has a bachelor in Media Studies from La Trobe University and a diploma in Professional Writing and Editing from RMIT. He flipped pancakes for money during the many years of studying and internships that define a young media wannabe’s lifestyle.

Amber Jamieson works at independent news website Crikey. While her business card says ‘journalist’, writing news stories is just one of her roles. Others includes managing the Crikey travel blog Back in a Bit, and the environmental blog Rooted moderating comments, playing in Photoshop, using social media and running a new project examining quality journalism.

Simon Goodrich is co-founder and Managing Director of Portable, a digital studio with offices in Melbourne, Sydney and New York. He is currently National President of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association, representing over 700 companies in the online media, advertising and interactive space; Simon sits on the board of Design Victoria, the Victorian Government initiative. He is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the crew behind the Webby Awards, the premiere international recognition for pioneering online initiative and also the Australian Ambassador for the Awards.

Making Content for Youth

Panel Chair – Bernadette O’Mahony

Head of Development and Production Australian Children’s Television Foundation, Bernadette O’Mahony oversees the ACTF’s development, production and international distribution activities. She has worked in the film and television industry since the 1980’s on productions such as The Henderson Kids, The Flying Doctors, Blood Oath, Spotswood, The Man From Snowy River and Crackers.  Bernadette co-produced the ACTF series Crash Zone and Legacy of the Silver Shadow and Executive Produced and Produced the multi award winning children’s series Mortified. Most recently Bernadette has Executive Produced the series Lockie Leonard, and is currently the Executive Producer on the ABC series Dance Academy and My Place.

Doug MacLeod is a writer for stage and TV and has worked on projects throughout Australia, as well as in London, Toronto and Los Angeles. He co-devised and co-wrote the animated series Dogstar, series two of which has just finished production in Melbourne. He received two Australian Writers’ Guild awards for his scripts for series one, as well as the inaugural John Hinde award for science fiction. In 2008 the AWG awarded him the Fred Parsons award for contribution to Australian comedy.  He also writes novels for young adults. His most recent is The Life of a Teenage Body-snatcher, which is on the shortlist for the 2011 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards. One of his earlier novels, The Clockwork Forest, was presented as a play by The Sydney Theatre Company. www.dougmacleod.com.au

Holly Tosi is a 21 year old who started writing for children’s television because it allowed her to watch Round The Twist and call it research. She enrolled in RMIT’s screenwriting course in 2008 and completed work experience on H2O (Just Add Water). This lead to a full time position at Jonathan M. Shiff Productions, Script Co-Ordinating for The Elephant Princess (Series 2), development workshops on various other series and watching Hannah Montanna and calling it research.

Fiona Wood has been writing television scripts for ten years on shows ranging from ’ MDA’ and ‘The Secret Life of Us’ to ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Home and Away’. Her first novel ‘Six Impossible Things’ was published by Pan Macmillan in 2010. It has recently been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers. www.fionawood.com

Gaming, Game on

A vibrant panel discussion about the state of modern gaming. In 2009, the US video game market generated a lucrative $19.66 billion and it is estimated that 79 per cent of Australian households have video games. Gaming is big business…but it’s also attracted big controversy. Many are concerned that violent video games make people more violent and aggressive. Others are concerned that many games, particularly MMORPGs, are addictive. Industry experts and passionate gamers Stephan Schutze, Vincent Trundle, Brett Lamb and Candice Goodison examine the myths, misconceptions and possibilities offered by modern games.

Chair – Brett Lamb

Brett Lamb has been teaching media for the best part of a decade. He is the coauthor of Heinemann Media and maintains the media education website www.lessonbucket.com. Brett has presented workshops and exam revision seminars for the Australian Teachers of Media on topics as diverse as comic books, film noir, superhero narratives, action films and social networking. He’s also a great big nerd who is likely to end up in fisticuffs with the next person who suggests that violent video games make people more aggressive. His favourite games include Dead Space, Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2.

Stephan Schütze is an award winning video game composer and sound designer based in Melbourne, Australia; he was the first person to produce a fully orchestral game score in Australia, working with Melbourne Symphony. In the last year Stephan released the first Australian produced commercial sound library since the 1950s. The Sound Library project is available online under a Creative Commons license as a resource for students, amateur creatives and special interest groups. The library currently stands at over 18,000 sounds and is constantly growing. Stephan is passionate about audio and teaches regularly at RMIT and AFTRS as well presenting workshops and conference discussions.

Vincent Trundle works in Screen Education at ACMI. He is dedicated to building screen literacy of young media practitioners to advancing their opportunities as media makers. Vincent has an extensive background in media production and education including audio Visual production at the Australian War Memorial Canberra, Freelance Video Production and as a Lecturer in Film and Video Production at RMIT. In his role as AV curriculum Designer Vincent is dedicated to encouraging the exploration and understanding of film, television and video games running numerous education programs at ACMI. With his focus on games and education some of the programs vincent has created and run are:

- Schools Summit for the Australian Game Developers Conference

- Game Girls – a full day game industry career focused day

- Videogame creation workshops and talks

- Video game creation category of the ACMI Screen It competition

- Machinima workshops

Candice Goodison 19, is currently studying Digital Art at RMIT. She applied for the course because she knew it focussed on video game design and practices and wanted to find out more about it. She has played games as long as she can remember, starting with her family’s first computer (what type of computer?). While doing Year 12 her Studio Arts folio explored the impact of gaming on individuals and was the beginning of her interest in creating games. Candy is particularly interested in how games can speak to people, teach them and influence their lives.

Adaptations – Book to Screen

Wendy Orr writes for children, young adults and adults. Her books have been published in 25 countries and languages and have won awards including the CBCA Book of the Year, American Library Association Book for older readers, and the Israeli March of Books. Wendy’s latest book is Raven’s Mountain, an adventure novel for mid to upper primary. In 2003 the film rights to her book Nim’s Island were optioned by Hollywood producer Paula Mazur and sold to Walden Media. Wendy worked on the first drafts of the screenplay and the translation of her book to a feature film starring Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler.

Boxcutters Podcast – The Nature of Modern Television

Hear the dinosaurs come crashing down. The big TV networks will founder as changes in television distribution models are changing the nature of television production.

Josh Kinal has been an entertainment journalist, broadcaster, and writer since 1993. He wrote for Rolling Stone Magazine, Inpress, and Metro Magazine and presented on 3RRR, Triple J, ABC Radio National, and channel 31. He currently produces and cohosts the Boxcutters podcast (http://boxcutters.net), runs the web production company Soupgiant and writes at littlerunningbear.com amongst other places. He’s busy but friendly.

John Richards is the co-creator of the soon-to-be hit ABC TV show, Outland, as well as the short film of the same name. He produced and presented the Outland Institute programme on Joy 94.7 and writes at the website of the same name at http://outlandinstitute.wordpress.com. He cohosts the weekly Boxcutters podcast all about television.

Short-Form Panel – brought to us by Stop Motion Pro

Chair – Darcy Prendergast

Director Darcy Prendergast (b. circa 1985) has always had imagination. After starting his artistic career on the living room walls, his parents supplied his chubby, yet surprisingly dextrous fingers with a wide gamut of art supplies, as well as a steady stream of paper. At the age of 4 he wanted to be a zookeeper and play with Tigers like his dad. At age 5 he wanted to be Indiana Jones, who was a cooler version of Dad. At 6 he wanted to be a paleontologist like Sam Neil in Jurassic Park – who was cooler than Indy because he outsmarted a T-Rex. Then at the ripe ol’ age of 7, he decided that his constantly shifting career paths were undoubtedly due to a poor understanding of the skillsets that he was endowed with. He opted to allow himself some time for his interests to percolate, manifest and remain… before placing all his eggs in the one basket. With a keen sense for the absurd and a taste for the tactile, he moved into the alluring world of film making at age 17, where he still lives to this day… Darcy would still like to outsmart a T-rex. He also founded OH YEAH WOW, ohyeahwow.com.

Jonathan Chong

Melbourne based artist Jonathan Chong works in a variety of media including video, print, photography and installation. Jonathan graduated from his graphic design honours year in 2001 with the digital film ‘interchange’ based on his research into synaesthesia. The film was the winner of Best Video Work at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) Kodak Autumn Salon in 2005 and screened in Berlin and Tokyo.

After this initial success Jonathan Chong created a film about his life in a multi cultural family in Australia.  The work titled, ‘My middle name is Chang- Li’ won the 2005 ABC Video Lives competition for best film and paved the way in 2006 for 20 video diaries on his life commissioned by ABC2 digital. Since then Jonathan has produced documentaries, animations, music videos and live video performances. He has received a number of awards and exhibited throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

Mark Hartley is a multiple ARIA award winning and AFI award winning filmmaker.

In 2008 his debut feature, “Not Quite Hollywood” – featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, and Quentin Tarantino – was selected as opening night film of the Melbourne International Film Festival before having a theatrical release in Australia, The United States and The United Kingdom.

At the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards “Not Quite Hollywood” won Best Documentary and Hartley was awarded the inaugural “AFI Documentary Trailblazer” award. He also received an AFI nomination for Best Editing.

In 2010 Hartley wrote and directed “Machete Maidens Unleashed!” a feature documentary that examined legendary producer Roger Corman’s maverick productions in the Philippines. It was one of six Australian films selected to screen at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.

Prior to embarking on these two feature documentaries, Hartley was Australia’s busiest music video maker, directing over 150 music clips for local and international artists including Powderfinger, The Living End, Sophie Monk, The Cruel Sea and Joe Cocker.

He has received a total of 8 ARIA nominations, winning two statuettes. He has also won a Tui for “Best Music Video” at the New Zealand Music Awards and has been nominated for an International MTV Award.

Ross Garner from Stop Motion Pro

Stop Motion Pro is an economical Australian designed software product for creating stop motion animation. It continues the tradition of learning through self-expression in animation for the digital age. Stop Motion Pro is used to create the famous Wallace and Gromit animation special, plus many other TV series, commercials and feature films.

Animation offers many opportunities for students to explore relationships between Art, Science, English and Technology in a creative way. This creative approach to learning is being practiced in schools the world over in a wide range of curriculum areas.

Ross is the head of development of Stop Motion Pro and has been involved in stop motion animation for over 10 years. He has just returned from a conference in the UK discussing the use of animation with kids at risk, general education and the health industry.

Domenico De Rosa is currently studying third year of a BA of Arts (Animation & Interactive Media). His artistic exploration focuses on character design, concept art, 2D animation, design and typography. He is heavily inspired by Francisco Goya, Egon Schiele, street artist Blu, Marcel Duchamp and Lucio Fontana, as artists, but also as pioneers in the power of the thought and the importance of the individual in the realm of art. With animation he can find out more about myself and how he sees the world by materializing life in a form visible by all. By interacting with the people around him and by closely observing situations in everyday life, he can distort and skew them in order to bring out a raw sense of subjectivity and satire. He seeks for ideals and visual style to constantly evolve in order to always be original and relevant to society. http://www.behance.net/domenicoderosa

Jacqueline Nguyen is a third year student at RMIT University studying BA Arts (Animation & Interactive Media). She is particularly interested in illustration (both traditionally and digitally), concept development, character design and traditional 2D animation in general. Jackie loves animation because it is a medium without boundaries that allows the mind to express emotions and messages without technical or physical limitations. As the technology improves exponentially, this allows animators to explore more and more exciting ways to tell stories. Jackie is inspired by the likes of animators: Glen Keane, Hayao Miyazaki and Michael Dudok De Wit, painters: Manet and Van Gogh, illustrators: Iain McCaig and Jim Lee, bloggers: Louis and Brittney Lee and filmmakers: Tim Burton and Roman Polanski. Finally, a long lasting love of reading has also contributed as a fuel and drive for her creativity, enriching and nourishing a way of thinking and seeing the world.

4.30pm Top Screen retrospective at ACMI cinema – youth fest participants welcome until cinema is full.