Screen Australia launches YouTube channel and competition
Screen Australia has launched its YouTube channel, as well as the Map My Summer initiative, inviting Australians to share footage of their summer experience for use in a short film that will be developed under the mentorship of George Miller, set to debut at the Sydney Film Festival.
“Acting as a sort of curator and having a lot of people visit this channel because the Map My Summer promotion and through word of mouth, we can become a ‘door’ for the combined output of Australian screen content,” head of marketing Kathleen Drumm told Encore.
“[The YouTube channel] is heading in a new exciting direction, and we hope it will be of great benefit to the industry. And from our point of view, we have a lot of really talented people with particular expertise within the organisation, so it’s been an agency-wide initiative: legal, IT, communications, sales and library, etc. All kinds of people have worked on it.”
According to Drumm, it was six months ago that she first started thinking of new ways the agency could become a portal for Australian screen content, allowing the industry to connect with audiences.
“I thought about who the masters of the online universe were, and they’re Google and YouTube, so I went to see them. They thought there was a great opportunity to work with us, because YouTube is all about video content, but they don’t’ have the time or resources to go and see every distributor or filmmaker. They want to talk to agencies that bring those communities together, and they would really like to access that content and bring it to users online,” explained Drumm.
Inspired by the Kevin McDonald/Ridley Scott project Life in a Day, Screen Australia and YouTube created the Map My Summer campaign, inviting Australians to upload their videos – from a clip recorded on a mobile phone to a short film – to the YouTube portal. The material must be “an expression of summer”, and it must have been shot after 1 December 2010.
The initiative includes three short films, financed by Screen Australia and directed by emerging filmmakers Ariel Kleiman, Luke Doolan and Amy Gebhardt (with Louise Smith as producer). These directors were chosen by Screen Australia and YouTube from a list of filmmakers “who were really good in the short film medium”. Their work has been launched on youtube.com/mapmysummer, and George Miller will select and mentor one of them to create one final short film, using the footage uploaded by users. The film will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival next June.
The YouTube channel will include sections such as The Vault (archival footage), Behind the Scenes and Red Carpet (following Australian filmmakers around the world), as well as trailers for Australian projects.
“We’ve created a lot of new material that will go online. Screen Australia’s marketing department will be updating it regularly,” said Drumm.
Most of the material, such as the behind the scenes footage and trailers, will be provided by distributors: “We told them we were setting up a new channel and they’ve given us access to this material.”
Sections such as Red Carpet will be produced by independent journalists working in North America and Europe: “They will be on the ground, talking to Australians on our behalf and also on behalf of distributors, to get stories we can upload to the channel. These are small projects, so we won’t be spending a substantial amount of money.”
The partnership with YouTube will give Screen Australia’s content a strong promotional push, in addition to access to valuable viewer information.
“We’ll be looking at who’s viewing the content, and we can share that with distributors. We would like to share the kind of information as much as possible, perhaps in an industry forum,” she said.
According to Drumm, the YouTube channel will not be monetised – at least not yet: “We wouldn’t want anything on there that we felt uncomfortable with. We’re still working on it.”
