Rowlands Mix has the Golden Touch   

Cracker Bag directed by Glendyn Ivin is the story of a little girl called Eddie, getting ready for cracker night - her favourite night of the year. It was two years in the making, and when the AFC took little interest in supporting it, Glendyn and Jane decided to fund it themselves.  Melbourne's film and post industry supported the film, as one can see by the cream of this city's technical talent on the credits list. 

When invited into the St. Kilda film festival, the two film makers decided they wanted to take the film from a video finish to a cinema release. Rowlands was asked to do the Dolby Digital Surround mix for cinema.

While this was in progress, the news broke that the film had been accepted to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.  There was naturally huge excitement.  A week later there was a preview screening at Cinema Europa in the Jam Factory and all concerned with the film were there to see it, and to wish Jane and Glendyn well.

Cracker Bag was chosen ahead of eight other international entries for the Palme  D'Or, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival each year.

Despite the fact that the US and Japan dominate video game design and marketing, Chris says Australia is fairly well respected as a boutique producer.

"Australia is actually quite well known internationally and Melbourne is the focus of the Australian industry. The Victorian Government has been really promoting and getting involved with it through Multi-media Victoria - they offered grants for companies to go over there - and they're really trying to push Victoria as the home for computer games in Australia.

"We're looking at doing both the sound design for the actual games, you know the sounds for the cars and explosions and bullets and all that sort of thing, and we're also doing composition so if people want music composed for levels then we can handle that.

"The other thing that a lot of games are getting into is actually licensing existing music.. or licensing new songs and using that in their in-game sound. There are actually quite a few bands over in the US who will release their songs on the game, they won't release to the radio, the first place you'll hear them is on the actual game itself....so we'll be looking at doing a lot of the licensing here in Australia and also doing the voice casting and voice recording."

Chris says it was almost impossible to get time at E3 with any of the contacts from the major players such as Sony or Nintendo - who were available only by appointment.  But LA turned out to be the perfect place to start making valuable local contacts.

"That's why E3 was brilliant because there was an Australian stand over there and you got to meet all the local game developers and the local publishing companies and actually get in front of them. Some of the people we were talking to I think, within Australia, would consider themselves a bit too big to talk to a small company just getting started.  But once you're over there and there's only 20 Australians there, suddenly they're a lot more willing to talk to you and it's a lot easier to get to know them."

To start with, Chris and Thomas will freelance from a home base.

"There will always be advantages of having your own studios at your beck and call but I think in an industry like this it is better to be small and be able to do the guerilla things..when there's a job there you're working flat out and when there's not you're not incurring massive overheads which would cripple you otherwise.

"It also means you get to work one on one with the client. When you're starting up it's better to build those personal contacts because then people will ask you back."

Bureaucrats Study While Radio Broadcasts

In his speech to the Canberra ABA Conference, Federal Communications Minister Richard Alston acknowledged that CRA and several commercial radio stations were ready to begin trial transmissions of digital radio.

"We are keen to see the CRA trials in Sydney on behalf of both the commercial and national broadcasters make rapid progress and I understand that some leading CRA members are almost ready to begin transmission," the Minister told the delegates.

"The more informed we are at the outset, the greater the prospect of making digital radio work-for Australian industry and equally importantly for Australian consumers.