Congratulations to all the winners from last night's award. We had more entries than ever before making the challenge of judging even tougher than usual!

Our judging panel was made up of Ernie Clark ACS, Brent Crockett ACS, Peter Curtis ACS, Katie Millwright ACS and Susan Stitt ACS and their dedication to the judging process needs to be acknowledged and congratulated.

Thank you to all of our sponsors, both at a national and state level for supporting the ACS. Without them events such as our awards, regardless of what form they take, could not go ahead.

Thank you to everyone who entered and we look forward to having a bigger and better awards celebration in 2022!

The 2021 Winners list is as follows:

Also, a big congratulations to our newly Accredited Victorian Members:

Shelley Farthing-Dawe ACS

Toby Phillips ACS

Aaron Smith ACS

Shelley Farthing-Dawe is a Victorian cinematographer, who works across film, television and commercials, embracing and enjoying the challenges that each new project brings. He has a strong story first approach to his work, having developed a great love and understanding for crafting stories through images. Outside of his dramatic work, Shelley has worked extensively in the commercial industry having shot hundreds of campaigns both locally and for international markets. 

Shelley started his film journey at Swinburne University where he discovered his love of cinematography. After 3 years of film school, Shelley went straight into shooting online doco/commercial projects whilst continuing to shoot short films and music videos on the side. His first feature was a small indi film called Pawno directed by Paul Ireland and written & starring the late Damian Hill. 

Most recently Shelley has shot Matt Nable’s debut feature film, TRANSFUSION, for Deeper Water Productions, starring Sam Worthington & Phoebe Tonkin. The film is being distributed by Madman Entertainment and will premiere on Stan in 2022.

Shelley’s previous feature films include Stephen McCallum’s 2018 debut film 1% (aka OUTLAWS), starring Ryan Corr and Abby Lee,  produced by See Pictures and distributed by A24, Direct TV and Icon Films. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and also screened at the London Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival and Adelaide Film Festival.

In 2020 Shelley shot the dark comedy series, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, which had its world premiere on Netflix and on ABC iView in Australia. The series was directed by Adam Murfet & Jessie Oldfield who have been long time collaborators of Shelley’s within the fashion and commercial world. Together they created a bold visual style for the series which pushes the status quo of how local comedy programming looks

Toby Phillips has directed commercials for Ford, John Deere, Maxfli, Toyota, Hilton Hotels, UPS, Merill Lynch, AT&T, Fosters, Gateway, Disney, GM among many other leading advertisers.

Born in Adelaide, Australia, Toby demonstrated his sense of showmanship at an early age as a child actor. It wasn't long, however, before the creativity that can only be found on the opposite end of the camera captured his attention. And so, the love affair began.

Toby possesses the extraordinary ability to record images of people that are both natural and compelling. Having worked on every continent and under every condition and time restraint, Toby is a director who knows his craft inside out, his camera skills complementing his deft personal touch for subtly enhancing client concepts in ways that captivate audiences. It's this recognized touch that included him in Kodak's tribute to 100 of the world's finest cinematographers.
Also active in films, television and music videos, his credits include Madonna's HBO special Girlie Show, the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge special for Showtime and TLC's Waterfalls video, which won MTV's Video of the Year Award in 1995. His more than two dozen movie credits include Madonna's Truth or Dare, as cinematographer, and Edward Scissorhands, for which he shot the opening title sequence.
Toby's desire has always been to venture into places unknown, to test the boundaries of not only conventional film-making, but also audience response.

Aaron Smith has been a member of the Australian Cinematographers Society since 2003 and a full member since 2014. Aaron began his cinematography career in Queensland after completing a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television Production at the Queensland University of Technology in 2003. Between 2003-06 he worked as a camera assistant on feature films, drama series, commercials, music clips and documentaries. During this period Aaron was fortunate to assist cinematographers including Tony Luu ACS, Henry Pierce ACS, Geoffrey Simpson ACS, John Stokes ACS and Tim McGahan ACS and work alongside camera assistants Melinda Rickman, Margie McClymont, Jason Binnie, Warren Lazarides, Adrien Seffrin and Ricky Schamburg. 

In 2007 Aaron moved to Sydney to study a Masters in Cinematography at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, under the leadership of Jan Kenny ACS, Erika Addis and Roger Boyle. He studied cinematography alongside peers Zoe White ACS, Marden Dean ACS and Tania Lambert ACS, shooting a 

range of drama and documentary productions on 16mm film, 35mm film, HD-cam and Red. 

In 2009 he was selected by Andrew Denton and the ABC to work as a cinematographer/director on Hungry Beast, a primetime factual/entertainment program made by a new team of emerging filmmakers and comedians. Hungry Beast was creatively and technically challenging; it provided a valuable springboard for him to then shoot multiple comedy series for The Chaser and a diverse slate of documentaries for ABC and SBS between 2010 and 2015. During this period Aaron also shot short films, commercials and music videos, and worked as director of photography on the video game LA Noire, collaborating with animators and 3D lighting technicians on the game’s cinematic cut-scenes. In 2014-15 he was the director of photography on two series of the narrative comedy Plonk, shot on location in the wine regions of NSW, ACT and SA. 

Since 2015 Aaron has mostly specialised as a cinematographer on longform documentary series and documentary features. Many of these productions have focussed on vulnerable subjects and sensitive social justice issues including domestic violence, sexual abuse, disability, homelessness, incarceration and addiction. He was the cinematographer on Sarah Ferguson’s AACTA and Walkley winning investigative series Hitting Home and her landmark documentary series on clerical child sexual abuse, Revelation. In a world television first, Revelation saw us take cameras inside the criminal trials of two notorious Catholic priests. The series won the Walkley Documentary Award, a Gold ACS Award (Vic) and an AACTA nomination for cinematography in a documentary. For the ABC he shot the celebrated series Employable Me and Love On The Spectrum, and primetime ABC Arts documentaries including Matilda & Me, Making Muriel and the soon-to-be-released Books That Made Us. Aaron was a cinematographer on the observational documentary series Addicted Australia and Filthy Rich & Homeless for SBS and Blackfella Films. He also cocreated, co-directed and shot the ABC’s ground-breaking series You Can’t Ask That, winner of Rose d’Or, AACTA, Walkley and UN Media Awards and now the ABC’s most successful international format ever. Recently Aaron has started shooting three new feature documentaries for cinema and television, including a biographical film on John Farnham.