News location:

Canberra Today 13°/17° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Canberra filmmakers in Tropfest top three

CANBERRA filmmaking duo, John Frohlich and Christian Doran have made the top three for this year’s Tropfest in the Telstra Mobile Masterpieces category with their short film, “Always the Son”.

That means they have a one in three chance of winning a trip to the prestigious American Film Festival, Sundance, with $5000 spending money.

The film was shot entirely on an iPhone 4 with a $2000 L-Series lens locked to the front of it. They say the images are comparable to cameras worth $10,000 or more! The film won out over 100 entries from Australian and around the world.

The story centres around a father and middle-aged son who reconnect while on a fishing weekend on the Murrumbidgee River.

“As film makers and men, we were interested in exploring the culture and heritage of masculinity in Australia,” Frohlich said yesterday after the Tropfest announcement.

Starting as comedic look at the way fathers and sons relate to one another, the seven minute film finishes with an unexpected emotional twist that wins the audience’s heart.

The film stars two Canberra actors, Ian Croker and Dallas Bland, and features an original song by Canberra musician, Aaron Peacey and the crew was comprised exclusively of Canberra Institute of Technology media staff and students.

For Doran and Frohlich, the Tropfest announcement has reaffirmed their commitment to mobile phone filmmaking, in their view it is the future of independent filmmaking.

“Film making using a mobile phone is exactly the same as for a multi-million dollar block buster, it’s all about the story-telling,” said Doran, who has just completed working as first assistant director on the zombie movie “Theatre of the Dead” at Erindale.

Doran and Frohlich are already into the development stage of a feature film using the same equipment they used on “Always the Son”.

The pair met several years ago on the set of “The Competition”,  a feature film written and directed by Simon Weaving, who lectures in film at the CIT.

Photographs by  Adam Lynch.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews