Clip Combat is a competition encouraging young South Australian filmmakers to create a music video for an original song, with the winner being announced as part of Umbrella: Winter City Sounds.
The result of a partnership between Music SA and the Department of Innovation and Skills, Clip Combat has been spearheaded by Music SA Business Manager Gareth Wilkes who is also an active filmmaker, making it a project dear to his heart.
“While I’m the Business Manager of Music SA, I’m actually also a filmmaker and I’ve been a filmmaker for 15 years,” Gareth says.
“So it made sense when the Department of Innovation and Skills brought this project to Music SA, because it’s so heavily bridging the screen sector and the music sector.”
Gareth believes the competition is a great opportunity for young, budding filmmakers to pool their creative talents to develop a music video. “It’s a pet project of Minister Pisoni,” Gareth explains.
“Basically he’s very much interested in music videos and contemporary music, and he came up with the idea to do a competition for high school aged kids for music videos. [Music SA] suggested opening to 13 to 25 year-olds purely to maximise the potential of getting the numbers in. That’s why we’ve separated it out to a high school award and an open award.”
The overall winner will be announced from a public and industry panel voted group of finalists at a special screening at Mercury Cinema as part of the Umbrella programme. There’s over $5,000 in cash and prizes on the line, including national exposure and professional mentoring making this a lucrative opportunity for young creatives.
In line with Umbrella’s charter to keep live music pumping through Adelaide’s chilly winter and promote South Australian talent, Clip Combat is helping to promote collaboration between emerging filmmakers and musicians making original music.
“Umbrella is about activating South Australia during winter time and bringing more contemporary music to South Australian audiences,” Gareth says.
“I believe that creating local music videos is doing exactly the same thing – it’s bringing local, original music to South Australian audiences through visual medium as well as through live performance, so it really is building on what Umbrella is doing by creating more opportunities to consume that content.”
Guests at Clip Combat will also be treated to a big screen premiere of 'City of Music', a short documentary that follows local muralist Dave Court as he interviews 17 iconic South Australian musicians and industry practitioners to get inspiration for Adelaide’s largest CBD mural, highlighting Adelaide as a City of Music.
The overall winner of Clip Combat will be announced at a free special screening at Mercury Cinema (Adelaide) on 18 July, as part of Umbrella: Winter City Sounds.
