Q&A with Amanda Duthie – CEO and festival director of the Adelaide Film festival
Amanda Duthie, CEO and festival director of the Adelaide Film Festival in a Q&A that first appeared in Encore.
Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
Person: Stephen Conroy
Company: Apple
Distribution: NBN
What one medium could you not live without?
Who can live without the internet? It’s akin to when plumbing ran water right up to the home. I can’t imagine going down to the well anymore.
Your one guilty media pleasure?
I have little guilt about what I watch — probably how much I watch would be the pressure point. I do enjoy random selector sites that offer up surprises and items I least expect. For example, Tumblr’s ‘women laughing alone while eating salad’. And I love shopping for books at midnight.
The next big industry trend is:
Audiences funding what they want to watch directly with the content maker. This -is giving the consumer an opportunity to enable work. I would hope that it will lead to a broader philanthropic attitude for Australians but also for audiences to realise how hard it is and how much it costs to produce quality work. The possibilities of handmade web content are endless as the barriers to making work and distributing it yourself break down. A key example is Wastelander Panda. It rocks.
Another trend that’s about to take off is fellow South Australian Country Women’s Association member and baker extraordinaire Monique Bowley on The Great Australian Bake Off.
If you weren’t doing this for a living what would you be doing?
I can’t imagine what that would be – this is too much fun and the industry keeps shape shifting so it is constantly refreshing.
Your best piece of career advice?
Listen.
If you could poach any one person, who would it be?
My daughter, aged 7, pitched Matt Preston a kid version of MasterChef, pre-Junior MasterChef. Later she saw the promos on TV and asked: “Mum, who owns ideas?”
Would you recommend working in this industry to your kids?
See above. I am encouraging her to get a trade.
What is your favourite Aussie ad?
Schweppes bubble ads. Coopers ads. The banned hard bar Scorched Peanut Bar which went to air briefly in 1983 (I think) before being taken off air. Road safety ads – Australia has produced such powerful work in this area for years.
Amanda Duthie is the CEO and festival director of the Adelaide Film Festival, which moves to the month of October for the first time this year.
This story first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.
