Photographer credits: Mikayla Grosse who did candid and awards/stage photos and Phil Erbacher for the media wall.

SA Winners:

Our congratulations go to our SA members 9and committee members) Maxx Corkindale and Johanis Lyons-Reid who each won an Award of Distinction. Maxx in the under $2m Feature category and Johanis in the Ron Taylor AM ACS & Valerie Taylor AM Nature & Wildlife category. Both their first National awards, very well done!

Ex SA Vice President Mark Evans was honoured with ACS Life Membership for his enormous contribution to our branch over many, many years. Mark only recently resigned as one of our Vice Presidents after 16 years - he only resigned so a younger VP could come into the role. He was our branch President back in 88 and in between times he always contributed greatly on the SA committee.

Mark has been responsible for writing the script, VO record and edit of the SA Compile for the State awards for as long as I can remember as well as doing the same for the National Awards over the years when they were held in Adelaide. He has been a great contributor to our branch and thoroughly deserved Life Membership.

Richard has also been a staunch supporter of the ACS, for over twenty years through his company Anifex with his business partner Michael Cusack, as a SA State Gold Sponsor. They also hosted our committee meetings nearly every month over all those years - our SA HQ so to speak and often provided their studio gratis for trade nights, lighting courses and equipment demo's.

Richard has also been instrumental in developing the careers of numerous SA cinematographers including Milli Award winner Jo Rossiter ACS and JoAnne Bouzianis Sellick, both of whom he trained and mentored.

How good is this! Our SA ACS visit to the set of the 2nd season of Beep & Mort is on and being presented by our own Aaron Gully ACS & crew.

After the success of season one, Beep & Mort is currently in production of 20 more episodes. Created and produced by Windmill Pictures, Beep & Mort is an endearing pre-school television program aired on the ABC and around the world.

Beep & Mort is a unique hybrid of live theatre and television production, with a cast of numerous warm and comical characters. Beep & Mort uses traditional puppetry on the hands of some incredibly talented actors, while some characters have motion-tracked post-animated facial expressions.

There are a huge amount of logistical complexities filming this production, with not only the extremely obvious issue of hiding the many puppeteers, but also having the camera’s ground level at 1.6m high, live lighting scene changes, motion trackers, blue-screen, post-paint- outs, countless monitors for the puppeteers and working with full scale puppets and scenery as well as miniature versions of both.

Many thanks to Windmill Pictures the ACS SA branch have organised a set visit in the very large, magical world of Mollyvale and hear Aaron Gully ACS talk through both the challenges and logistics, and on using the Sony Venice-2. Gaffer Richard Rees-Jones will speak on one of the most sophisticated lighting builds ever installed in Stage 1 at Adelaide Studios. John Smith will discuss gripping and rigging and Chris Daniels will explain his complex role as not only DIT but also managing a vast array of puppetry monitoring. 1st AC Sian Bates and 2nd AC Bec Taylor will be available to answer questions and show the camera kit in further detail.

The Sony Venice-2 & SIgma FF lenses used on Beep & Mort are supplied by VA Digital Hire thanks to Warren Day’s ongoing support of the South Australian film industry. It’s also looking likely that Nigel Gorham from VA will be flying over for the evening to speak on the Sony Venice-2 and answer any technical questions on it.

Don’t miss this unique and informative evening in Mollyvale, hearing all about the secret inner workings of the amazing world of Beep & Mort.