Want to make a movie?

Ever wanted to make your own short film but weren’t sure how? Here’s your chance! The Dungog Film Festival and Oovie have teamed up for the Oovie Student Film Project to find talented young Australian directors, screenwriters, and actors. You don’t need to have experience, just ideas! The winners will get to have their film shown on the big screen at the 2011 Dungog Film Festival in May, and it will also be available on DVD through Oovie! If you love the sound of this and want to take part, head to www.dungogfilmfestival.org/students for more details. Hurry because entries for ideas close next Monday 13th December!

Lincoln Lewis, who starred in Tomorrow When the War Began and Home and Away, is part of the project and we had a chat to him to find out more and what he’s been up to!

Hey Lincoln! What made you want to get involved with the project?
Anything to help get a leg up in our industry. A lot of kids have come up to me and said ‘Where do we go? What do we do? Who do we ask?’ So getting a bit of a push in the right direction is a great thing!

Do you need to have experience with directing to enter?
Absolutely not! You don’t need experience with anything. That’s the beauty of it! Kids and 12-18 year olds just have the most creative minds and I think that’s all you really need.

Out of all the entries that are sent in, three schools will be given the chance to develop their own five minute short film. It’ll premiere on the big screen at the 2011 Dungog Film Festival, as well as be distributed through the Oovie network.

They’ll be treated like a rock star at school!
Yeah totally! People will be bringing them their short films and they’ll be signing it and stuff when they go to class!

Who are some of your favourite filmmakers?
James Cameron and Steven Spielberg. This may be ridiculously biased but I really admire Stuart Beattie too. For Tomorrow When the War Began, he wrote the script for the film and directed it. We’ve had the most amazing response from a film by a guy who had never directed before. Plus, he’s an Australian who went over and made it in America, and then brought the industry back here to Australia, which is something that I’m very passionate about. So I really admire everything he’s done and on top of that he’s just a really nice guy.

What’s your favourite Australian film?
I can’t be biased on this one and pick Tomorrow When the War Began can I? Crocodile Dundee.

Besides the Oovie Student Film Project, what else are you up to?
I’m filming a movie called Bait on the Gold Coast, which also stars Xavier Samuels from Twilight, Julian McMahon, Sharni Vinson who just did Step Up 3, and a few other well known Aussie actors. And I’m about to start filming a show called Slide.

Can you tell us what they’re about?
Bait is being filmed all in 3D. A coastal town is hit by a massive tsunami around the same time as the shark migration. So it washes a few sharks into a shopping centre and the underground carpark as well. It pretty much floods a lot of the town, so we’re trying not to get eaten!

And Slide is about teens dealing with the problems that they face and all that kind of stuff.

Cool. It sounds all very exciting! We’re also excited to see what all the kids come up with for the Oovie Student Film Project.
So am I! That’s the great thing about this, they’ll have some radical ideas as well!

***
For more info about the Oovie Student Film Project, head to: www.dungogfilmfestival.org/students