Students Score Sexy Success

25 July 2013

Students Score Sexy Success

A group of Waikato University students have taken out two categories at the national Rialto Channel 48HOURS filmmaking competition with their short film called The Empath.

Taking home the titles ‘Sexiest looking short’ and ‘Best original score’, the team of five, named Elysium Exit, won themselves a post-production package worth $15,000.

The team was made up of Screen and media master’s students, Jordan Browne, Jake Ngawaka and Daniel Trainor, Bachelor of Music student Jade Browne and Bachelor of Media and Creative Technologies student Moehau Hodges-Tai.

"Winning the post-production package was a huge bonus for our team,” says Jordan.

“Everything we do right now is zero budget, so to have this kind of support is an incredible opportunity that is sure to help push us to not only continue making films, but take what we do to even greater heights.”

The Empath is an abstract, non-dialogue short film, with a converging storyline; the film was different to the other entries as it left the viewers in control over their interpretation of it.

Daniel says that the main character in the film feels the emotions of others in a physical sense. “We wanted to make a film that would leave the cinema with the viewer, a film that wasn’t too obvious about everything.”

Elysium Exit were winners in the regional heats for several categories as well as taking out best film in Hamilton

The budding filmmakers had just one weekend to make a short film including writing, filming and editing; the catch is that they don't know what genre they will be shooting until the start of the competition.

To get to the finals, the team’s film was hand selected alongside 11 of the other best films from across New Zealand to compete in the grand finals.

"We were so proud to be representing Hamilton, and to show that Waikato based film makers have the talent and skills to compete with much more experienced and well-resourced teams,” says Jake.

The team plan to use their prize package toward two new short film entries for the Inaugural Tropfest NZ festival, the next big film-making competition in which will be held in February 2014.

Caption: Proud Elysium Exit team members, Jordan Browne and sister Jade Browne, Jake Ngawaka, Moehau Hodges-Tai and Daniel Trainor outside the Civic Theatre in Auckland, where the finals of the Rialto 48HOURS filmmaking competition was held.

ENDS

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