Kathy Henkel Workshops: The Burning Season

Year 10 & 11 Film

Teachers: Prue Miles / John Carozza

Prior to commencing the production process Year 10 and 11 Film students worked with experienced and critically acclaimed documentary film director Cathy Henkel...

Introduction to The Documentary

Cathy discussed the institutional / organisational details associated with documentary filmmaking, citing examples from her latest feature length documentary The Burning Season. This included funding, permissions, scheduling, set protocols, group dynamics and time management all linking to developing an understanding being a professional filmmaker.

Year 10 and 11 Film students were required to see The Burning Season on an excursion to The Blue Room Cinemas at Rosalie.

For more information on The Burning Season see:
www.theburningseasonmovie.com  www.tenthingsyoucando.com  www.twitter.com/burningseason

The Screening

"We have just got back from seeing The Burning Season at The Blue Room. It was a great location to see your work in and we filled the 60 seats perfectly. My observations of the students whilst watching the film were that they were really engaged with the content and they were actually very vocal in their response to certain characters / scenes..... It is quite a different experience watching a film with a room full of adolescents.... I think they really identify with Dorjee and his passion and seem really keen to meet you." Cathy Henkel

Cathy Henkel's Workshop Presentation

Cathy Henkel's workshop presentation included the following;

The first was a look at the making of the film, divided into the four stages:

– Research and Development
– Production
– Post-production
– Marketing & Distribution

The second session looks at ways of getting a film to reach an audience, including the 10 point distribution plan developed for the film, and some of the results to date.

"I think the students will find this session very interesting because of the 'new world' appoach we have taken.  Audience reach and marketing is often the least understood and most poorly managed end of the screen industries, and if your students want to have careers in the screen industries, they will need to understand this end of the process. The results to date for this film are very interesting.

I will encourage questions throughout the presentations and allow time at the end of each session for feedback and discussion. I would like to end by asking the students to feedback what they learnt that

1. they didn't know before and
2. that will help them with their current film projects" Cathy Henkel

Student response

"Today film maker and producer, Cathy Henkel, visited our school, the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries, to speak with us about her new documentary, “The Burning Season”.  Not only this, but she discussed with us the creative process behind film-making, and then how to distribute and sell our product, as well as the key ingredients essential to creating films within the film industry.  Her new documentary, “The Burning Season”, was inspired after she viewed “An Inconvenient Truth”, a film about the impacts of climate change.  This inspired her, and led her to her passion about fighting this issue, as she began to research, which is the starting point of creating a documentary.

Personally, I felt that what she said was highly applicable in relation to what we are doing presently in film, which is the study of documentaries, and then creating one.  Her passion was inspiring, and her advice incredibly helpful in that we can apply a lot of the themes into our productions.  Not only this, but she told us about how to make a profile for ourselves.

Cathy Henkel was both intriguingly informative, as well as passionate, and much like the strong characters within her films."

Yr 10 QACI student Bella Anderson