Well folks, strap in because the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has just announced its winners for the annual Split Sceond Competition.
For those unfamiliar, the TAC annually hosts a competition calling for young filmmakers to submit scripts relating to road safety. The winner’s script is then turned into an actual short film that we all get to watch online. This year’s theme was “Split Second” and participants had to choose between two road safety focuses: driving whilst tired or seatbelt usage.
This year was a little bit different, you see. For the first time in the competition’s history, two winners have been crowned and will receive the big reward. The TAC said they wanted to speak to young drivers in their language to help them understand the risks on the road. As part of this, the competition announced its support in lifting culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities by backing their creative talent.
The very lucky winners of the comp are Olivia Hartanto and Rhys Delios Callanan. The duo will be receiving a $5,000 cash prize, a $35,000 production budget to make their short film, plus mentoring from Truce Films and creative agency TABOO. Not too bad, right?
Let’s get to know these winners a bit more, shall we?
Olivia Hartanto is a third-year animation student at RMIT who won for her script Captain Buckle. This script is a comedic animated short film about the importance of seatbelt use. It’ll also be the first animated short that’s won the TAC competition.
Olivia found out about the competition thanks to her uni, who shared a call-out for the TAC (proof you should actually check your uni emails more often). Being an animation student, she stuck to her roots and wrote something for herself, despite the competition historically only producing live-action films.
The second lucky winner of the comp was Rhys Delios Callanan, a design graduate who won for his script titled Fashionably Late. The film tackles the issue of driving while tired and depicts why a quick pit-stop nap can go a long way in reducing fatigue. It’ll also feature a horse and carriage, which is big news for the goths in the chat.
Rhys was inspired by the idea of tying the theme of fatigue with the message that it’s okay to be late. “People often drive tired because they’re running late, and they don’t want to miss something,” Rhys said. I wanted to connect that with a positive and quirky sentiment of being fashionably late because it’s a statement.”
Getting involved in competitions like the TAC’s isn’t only good for launching your filmmaking career. It’s also a great opportunity in getting involved in spreading a positive message, which could potentially save lives.
“[The competition] was a really good thing to enter to raise awareness for [younger age groups] and get them engaged with road safety in a bit of a fun way,” Rhys admitted. “I wanted to help get that message out to fellow peers and hopefully make the roads safer.”
Nothing is scarier than that blank white page when you start putting ideas to paper. Believe me, I spent half an hour like this before properly writing up this very article.
And as cheesy as it sounds, the process really is half the journey. Olivia said that you should make what you want and to not let something being hard deter you. “Animation takes a lot of hard work and dedication,” Olivia said. “But when you see the final product, it makes everything worth it.”
Rhys shared a similar sentiment, saying “It’s one of those things we all have to do. Just keep persevering, keep writing and keep coming up with ideas that’ll make people want to sit down and watch it, whether it’s an ad or a short film, a TV show or a movie.”
“It was a really awesome experience. But overall, I have been excited about everything along the way,” shared Rhys. “Pre-production, all the problems that can happen, problem-solving those issues, making sure that the idea stays, how it was envisioned. All of that has been a great learning experience, and I’m very excited to get into the editing process.”
If you’d like to stay up to date and watch the short films, visit the Split Second website for more details. You can also find the previous winners of the TAC’s film competitions on this site, plus tips on how to pitch your own short film in the (hopefully) very near future.
You can watch Captain Buckle by Olivia here.
You can also watch Fashionably Late by Rhys here as well.
Image credit: TAC
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