The brainchild of former Powderfinger drummer and now screenwriter, Jon Coghill and friends, the Sunny Coast Showdown is offering our local creative wannabes the chance to win $5000 in funding and be mentored by film and television heavyweights during the development and production of their projects.
The first of what its organisers hope will become an annual competition fostering film-making skills on the Coast, the Showdown is looking for “an awesome idea for a short film, animation project, reality show or music video”.
Well, Peregian Beach’s Di Seels has got plenty of them!
Only a year out of a highly successful but high pressure career in the medical sciences, she credits not her academic background but growing up on a farm in NSW for the creative inspiration behind her favourite entry, a children’s animation called Rise And Shine, which introduces the resilient and colourful bird Happy Humming Heartly.
Says Di: “I’m not an animator but I’m a good ideas person, not so much because of my background in medical science but because I’ve come from a very grounded background, growing up on a farm. The ideology behind Rise And Shine comes from that. My dad brought me up to be quite resilient and be grateful for what we had. These days I don’t see a lot of kids who have that resilience, and in this world of instant gratification they don’t show a lot of patience. Heartly aims to teach them that while entertaining them.”
The projected six-episode series deals with themes such as resilience, happiness, adaptability and gratitude. The script was a collaboration with friends and the voice of Heartly comes from Jasmine Stokes, daughter of the late ABC presenter John Stokes, and a family friend. Along the way, Di has been mentored by film and design academics Wayne Taylor and Uwe Terton – both of whom advised her to trust her instincts rather than study their courses. It was Uwe who put her in touch with animator Stephen Hamacek, and Di is at pains to point out that the actual animation is all Stephen, not her.
She says: “The way I approach animation is that I do the rough sketches and come up with the ideology behind it, where I want it to go. I doodle while I’m doing Sudoku and I came up with this bird sketch, and I started thinking about it as a theme for a children’s animation.
Di’s second venture into the world of animation is aimed at adults, but again it has a social conscience at its core. Di explains: “Kookaburra Grove is a collaboration with a guy called Richard Foster. It’s about five families that live in a cul de sac, and it’s all about their multicultural differences. There’s an Indigenous couple, a Muslim couple, an Asian family and a Greek family, whose son Con is gay and coming out. It’s about the fact that it’s OK to be different and it should be respected. So, I’ll be competing against myself in the animation section!”
Di’s third entry is a lifestyle documentary series with the working title Great Australian Beach Shacks and, not surprisingly, she chose a friend’s getaway at Teewah to demonstrate the ethos of the series in her “sizzle reel”. And again, Di puts her strong views about how it should be made ahead of commercial considerations.
She says: “Foxtel wanted to put it on their History Channel but I thought that was wrong for it. My friends couldn’t believe I did that, and it was probably bad judgement on my side. But I just have a vision for it that I don’t think would have been delivered in that environment.”
It’s a courageous approach, but that’s how Di Seels rolls, and she will soon know if she rolls into the money in the Showdown. Entries close on 3 September and the shortlist will be announced on 17 September, with winners announced in October and presented at a gala night in January. For more information go to sunnycoastshowdown.com.au
Says Di Seels: “I don’t care if I win or not, I just want to get these projects over the line. Nothing would please me more than to hear kids running around saying, I want to be resilient like Happy Humming Heartly!”
