One Door Closes
The three finalists have been selected for Project Greenlight Australia, and M. is not among them - the bastards.

The screening was an entertaining event. Slated for 6:30 sharp, the invited families and friends (and a selection of the top fifty and top hundred from the previous rounds) were lined up outside the velvet ropes along the green carpet, where we waited and waited for the arrival of the contestants, vox pop'd by the documentary crew, who also took the opportunity to shoot some POV footage while we clapped, cheered, and set off our camera flashes for some reality filler. M. was ushered through first, looking terrific, followed by each of the others one at a time. While they posed for stills, the rest of us headed into the theatre and our assigned seats. Our seats were right up the front, which was unfortunate in that the clips were a bit hard to see. Fifteen minutes or so of exposition, including a diatribe on the perilous state of Australian cinema by the head of Movie Network (fair enough, when the top arthouse movie can't make enough to cover its costs and the top commercial release is such dreck that it can't either), and much thanking of the last minute participation of Microsoft (who added a $5K one-off prize for the best clip; pretty sweet, but we didn't win that either). We got a montage of the 3-minute bio clips, some of which were very inventive, and then the screen assignments, 3-minute scenes from each contestant's script.

M.'s scene was top-notch. It didn't have special effects, as a couple of them did, and it didn't have "sound design," which is what some of them had in place of the music you weren't allowed to use, but it played well, looked good - better in fact than some - and got a really good reception from the audience. The inventive title sequence drew appreciative noises around the theatre, making the hard work by Ingrid and Thomas and M.'s Director of Photography, Dom Egan, worthwhile. That shot near killed us all to get, but worked beautifully.

The Microsoft prize went to the clip with the most flash, and the final three - Solo, a crime drama; Heidi, which isn't about a little Swiss orphan; and Case - all exhibited talent and ambition.

Drinks and snacks in the lounge afterward, at 9 p.m. after all the speeches and so forth, and by God we were all starving. Not that even one thing that came through the door was vegetarian, of course, so by 11:00, when they chased us all from the theatre, everyone was pretty well done in.

Thi isn't the end of M.'s script, of course. Movie Network retains the option on it through the end of the year, and having made it this far, there's the potential for grant money for development and the possibility for production just on the credibility achieved. We may yet see this project come to fruition. And if she can manage another script, there's next year's contest, too.