2020 - Rivers College students learn filmmaking skills to tell their own stories

Words: Sharlene King
Published: 11 September 2020

Rivers College Kadina students learn Nextwave Online filmmaking — Poppy, Hayley and Montana, all Year 10 students at Rivers College Kadina, experiment with filmmaking equipment.

A select group of regional Australian schools is first in line for free access to the filmmaking course Nextwave Online, thanks to Southern Cross University and Screenwave International Film Festival.

Nextwave Online is a new national film education program, delivered remotely online for students and teachers to host in classrooms or from home. Teachers receive companion guides to teach the modular video episodes, which include 10 x 20-minute episodes. The episodes comprehensively teach introductory filmmaking, with additional free resources and activities available.

Video: Learn the essentials of filmmaking at Nextwave Online (1:27)

Video transcript

David Horsley: Festival Director.
Swiff has partnered with a Southern Cross University to create a new program called film for the future, which provides free film education access to schools all around regional new south wales basically taking the opportunity that technology provides us these days because filmmaking technology is in everybody's hands but it's about giving them the skills on how to tell story and how to, how to basically become a filmmaker.

And not necessarily just for the arts but across all disciplines and science and health and agriculture and things that mean that that are important to to regional Australian communities.

Associate Professor Grayson Cooke: Southern Cross University Lecturer and media artist.
So Southern Cross University is a sponsor and partner of the next wave filmmaking initiative. I'm really happy that we've been able to partner on this. I think it's really essential that students especially students in regional areas get this kind of digital literacy training and what's really exciting is that you know they'll be doing filmmaking within this program we run a digital media degree where we teach skills in filmmaking as well as design and journalism and what have you and when you learn to become a filmmaker you learn to become a storyteller and once you can tell stories you can tell them across a whole bunch of media whether you want to be a you know a photographer photojournalist news writer or a filmmaker and so these fundamental skills and digital literacy are actually really transferable across a whole range of areas in the media industry.

And that's why I think it's really exciting that we're able to partner on this project.

Close transcript

With their newfound filmmaking skills, young regional Australians aged 10-25 can make short films and enter them into the Nextwave competition, with the finalists screened at the Nextwave Youth Film Awards at SWIFF in Coffs Harbour, before being screened all across Australia for Youth Week each year.

The Rivers Secondary College’s three campuses – Kadina, Lismore and Richmond River – are some of the first secondary schools to participate.

David Horsley, Founder and Director of the Screenwave International Film Festival and Nextwave Online, and Associate Professor Grayson Cooke, media artist and Director of Research School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University, visited Rivers' Kadina campus to share some filmmaking tips with the students.

“It is exciting that College students in the Creative and Performing Arts will have an opportunity to participate in this program,” Executive Principal Ian Davies said.

Learn more about Nextwave Online.