Victorian filmmakers Matt Kennedy and Francis Caldow have won the Australian Open’s inaugural Changing Ends tennis film festival with their original film entitled ‘When I Grow Up’.
The film, which tracks the training regime of an Australian Open line judge through the eyes of his little brother, earned the film makers the $5000 first prize beating more than 30 other entries.
The amateur filmmakers were delighted to have scooped the top prize at the Festival. “We’re really excited, it’s our first film so we’re pretty pumped,” said Kennedy. “It took roughly about 30 hours to put together over a couple of weeks.”
Co-creator Caldow explained that the Festival had come along at just the right time for the pair.
“The idea took about maybe a week and a half to come up with and then the filming about another week,” he said. “We were actually unemployed at the time so we needed something to do.”
Staged for the first time in 2010, the Changing Ends Tennis Film Festival invited budding Australian filmmakers to submit a tennis-themed film no longer than 90-seconds or the length of a change of ends in tennis.
The best entries are being played on giant screens in Garden Square and on Grand Slam Oval at Melbourne Park during the course of the Australian Open.
Second place, and a cheque for $2500, went to 15-year-old Alexei Ymer-Welsby (Victoria) for ‘Rapt in Tennis’, the teenager enlisting the help of his mates to perform a rap song promoting the benefits of tennis.
Third-place getter in the competition was ‘New Balls!’, an animated insight into the origin of the tennis ball produced by Marianna Shek, Nathan Ngo, Timothy Bond, Jeanette Rabot and Stevana Lee and Anthony Ho of Griffith Film School.
Fourth place winner was ‘Preparing the World’s Biggest Stage’ by David Brown and Anya Hohnbaum, fifth place was ‘When you Have Tennis’ by Richard Williamson and sixth place went to ‘Crazy About Tennis’ by Vas Anagnos.
