Filmmaker Alison Stanton-Cook has recently been accepted into the Very Short Film Festival’s Tasmanian Mentoring Program, where she will work closely with accomplished actor Marta Dusseldorp to develop her short film, ROE, into a television series.

ROE, which won third place at the 2023 Very Short Film Festival in May, sheds light on the challenges faced by teachers and students in a public high school in Tasmania.

“The idea for the film came to me when I was producing the school musical at a public Tasmanian college,” she tells Tasmanian Times.

“It was the first time I’d been at a school in a really long time, and I was just amazed at the complexity of the student-teacher dynamic and the complexities that the students were going through, as well as how much the teachers had to deal with on a daily basis. What they do is so much beyond educating; it’s a lot of nurturing. I wanted to write the story of a day in the life of a teacher.”

Stanton-Cook wrote the script for ROE – which stands for ‘Running on Empty’ – around a month before the film was shot.

“I knew exactly what I wanted to say, so I didn’t end up writing many versions. And given that it was for the Very Short Film Festival, I left it very bare bones.”

When the script was finished, Stanton-Cook presented it to actor Natalie Venettacci, who is also a drama teacher at the public college.

“She was basically like, ‘Yep, this is how things happen a lot of the time’, and she related to the main character and the situation,” Stanton-Cook says.

Natalie Venettacci was subsequently cast as the main character, and Stanton-Cook asked the public college to shoot the film on the campus.

“The staff there are absolutely amazing,” Stanton-Cook says.

“They said, ‘Not a problem, we’ll arrange the clearances from the Department, and you can have a Saturday. Here are the keys to the building’. They were very kind in not only taking the time to read the script, but to make sure everything was checked off and okay. So, we had one Saturday [to shoot the film], and my husband was the director of photography and camera operator. We had a very talented sound engineer, George Goerss, who brought some extra crew members along with him. David Ortiz did the lighting. I had this great pool of really talented young actors who I trusted with the characters, and they knew the way it worked. We shot the film in just eight hours!”

After ROE was edited together, and Stanton-Cook submitted it to the 2023 Very Short Film Festival. It won third place, and Stanton-Cook also received the Ambassador Award for Best Emerging Talent.

“[It felt] absolutely amazing because ROE is my first short film,” she says.

“There were definitely tears. I also couldn’t believe that this festival was happening down here with these incredible judges, and for them to see the film was just so validating. It was great. It was an emotionally overwhelming night.”

The Very Short Film Festival was held at the Spring Bay Mill, which Stanton-Cook had never been to before.

“It’s just beautiful,” she says.

“The place is so gorgeous, that’s what I love about it so much. And to be in the same room as Marta Dusseldorp and Essie Davis, I was really blown away by that.”

Marta Dusseldorp.

After the ceremony, Stanton-Cook had “so many people” saying to her that they could relate to ROE because they were teachers.

“It was just such a lovely environment.”

Stanton-Cook found out she had been accepted into the Tasmanian Mentoring Program just after the awards were given.

“It was really like, ‘This can’t get any better’, and then it did. I couldn’t believe that they thought of me in this. Some of the other mentees are incredibly talented people who have been doing this much longer than I have, so it was amazing to even be considered alongside them.”

The real ‘pinch me moment’ for Stanton-Cook was being paired with Marta Dusseldorp.

“I felt nervous and excited at the same time because I’ve admired her for years. I remember seeing her in a play for the first time. She’s just a powerhouse. She’s such an accomplished actor and is absolutely killing it with Bay of Fires. It’s really validating and lovely for her to agree to work with me.”

Stanton-Cook is developing ROE into a TV series as part of the program.

“I think there’s such a big, beautiful story to tell,” she explains.

“It’s timely, and I can’t think of any Tasmanian story like this one. I’m eager to learn from Marta about the intricacies of project execution and being a producer. She’s very creative and just incredibly smart [about film and television production]. I will absorb all her knowledge and insights like a sponge.”

ROE

Callum J. Jones studied English, History, and Journalism at the University of Tasmania. He has written fiction and non-fiction for Tasmanian Times since 2018, and can be traced by the smell of fresh coffee.

Follow him on Twitter (@Callum_Jones_10) and Facebook (@callum.j.jones.creative).