Is Your House Killing You? - SBS

SBS TV series 2007 November - Australia

A high-rating prime-time 7×26min factual entertainment science series for SBS in 2007, as a co-production with Essential Viewing, sold to UKTV, Sundance Channel USA and TVNZ.

Is Your House Killing You? is a groundbreaking, on the pulse, scientific makeover series. Ordinary families are invited to take up the challenge to ‘detox’ their homes. From inner city apartments to country fibros, our expert team swarms, probes and strips back a diverse range of homes in a CSI-style investigation. Some homes sparkle innocently and others are environmental monsters, but they all harbour a parallel microscopic world of hidden dangers.

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 1

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 2

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 3

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 4

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 5

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 6

Is Your House Killing You? Episode 7

Is Your House Killing You? trailer

In 2007 IYHKY was one of SBS’s highest rating shows in its time slot, sold to Sundance Channel USA, UKTV, TVNZ and in several other territories globally.

Director Jennifer Lyons-Reid and producer Carl Kuddell from Tallstoreez Productionz created the concept and formed a co-production with Essential Viewing in Sydney, to produce the first-ever South Australian factual format series series with the financial support from the SAFC.

Key creatives for Is Your House Killing You:

Executive Producer: Chris Hilton
Producer: Carl Kuddell
Series Producer: Sonja Armstrong
Series Director: Roger Power
Episode director and science producer: Jen Lyons-Reid
Series concept: Jen Lyons-Reid, Carl Kuddell, Chris Hilton

© 2007 Tallstoreez Productionz Pty Ltd, Essential Viewing and SA Film Corporation

9 steps for successful underage drinkers

Karoonda Area School - underage drinking campaign - 2007 August - Karoonda SA

9 Steps to Become a Successful Underage Drinker is a fabulous discussion starter about underage drinking: ‘9 Steps to Become a Successful Underage Drinker’ is a comedic take on ‘how-to­’ videos and drug education with a high impact ending that will have your students talking for days. Goose bumps guaranteed!

The Karoonda community commissioned the Hero Project team to work with a group of local youth to produce a documentary about the impact of drink driving on small rural towns.

Initially the group discussed interviewing the local police officer and locals to create a documentary about the issue. When the Hero Project team asked if they would watch this film, they admitted they find ‘educational’ videos boring. So their task was to make a film they would watch. After lengthy debate from the young people and adults in the room, the Hero mentors suggested the team work with a satirical reversal to get the message across. They brainstormed all the stories ‘everyone shares about their youthful exploits’, and so the conversation began… The team drafted the 9 steps in the first session and then shot them over several sessions working with the Hero mentors. It was fantastic to work with the youth team and the Karoonda community, who all pitched in to support the project, from offering locations, making props and acting in the film.

Using humour and a satirical reversal this film drives a serious punch and comes with an urgently needed resource pack to support teachers and youth workers to tackle the issues of underage drinking.­

Partners

Apple

Arts SA Health Promotion through the Arts

Country Arts SA

Karoonda Area School

Mallee Health Service Inc

Murray Mallee Community Education Network Inc

Mission Possible - Education SA

Anti-racism DECS school project - 2007 July - Adelaide SA

The Hero Project team worked with 20 students and several teachers to produce a multi-cultural awareness video for the Department of Education Multicultural Unit.

The Hero Project worked with 20 students from Gilles St Primary School, Adelaide, to record positive example and activities around multi-cultural educational practice.

The participating teachers from several Adelaide schools received professional development training to use digital media in the classroom. The team included Helen Grant [Gilles St PS], Shona Russo [LeFevrre HS] and Andy Mewett [Glenunga HS].

Mission Possible screened as part of the Come Out 2007 Youth Film Fest at the Mercury Cinema in Adelaide.

DECS SA used the film to promote their multicultural unit across Government schools in South Australia. The film was officially launched by Minister for Education Hon jane Lomax-Smith at the Glenunga International High School alongside a new multicultural manual.

Hi there!
Just wanted to say thanks again for the opportunity to work with you all this week. My learning curve was huge- even though I know I saw a fraction of all the roles you do there. Hope the edit went well today…
Thanks again. You will hear from me next term!
Cheers, Shona Russo
LeFevrre High School

Partners

Apple

Department of Education and Children Services

Gilles St Primary School

Pinnaroo Surfer series - ABC

2007 June - Pinnaroo SA

The Pinnaroo Surfer, 10x 3min mini-series for ABC JTV.

‘I don’t reckon you can see Pinnaroo in one day, unless you’re driving through.’ Over 10 episodes, Kade shares his wisdom about Pinnaroo bush life, local Mallee landmarks and stuff.

Kade Richardson and Sam Long were finalists at the 2007 Document Your World competition, hosted by the Australian International Documentary Conference. They were 1 of 5 Australian youth teams who pitched their film ideas in front of a large audience, to a panel of broadcasters. ABC were on the panel and commissioned this mini-series for ABC’s JTV. Over the following 6 months the Hero Project team conducted a series of master classes with the ‘Oo in Pinnaroo’ team to produce 10 kooky episodes about life in Pinnaroo. The series was broadcast in early 2009 on ABC2.

Both Kade and Sam were selected for Flinders University Screen Studies. Kade has supported others in Pinnaroo to get their stories out, shared his laconic humour on ABC radio in Broken Hill and is working on several film ideas. Sam is now producing videos for a range of community organizations in Murray Bridge. Channel 9 commissioned his services as a local stringer at the age of 16!

Football Legend

Heavyweight Champion

High Noon

In Competition

My Watering Hole

Painting a Masterpiece

The Fish Whisperer

Thinking Man

Camping's the best

Partners

ABC TV Triple J

Apple

Arts SA Health Promotion through the Arts

Australian Childrens Television Foundation

Australian International Documentary Conference

Country Arts SA Regional Arts Fund

Mallee Health Service Inc

Cooking Up A Storm - Come Out Festival

Come Out Festival Youth Festival workshop - 2007 May - Adelaide SA

The Hero Project team worked with 10 participants from regional and remote SA to run a documentary master class during the Come Out 2007 Festival. Come Out commissioned the youth crew to document a range of festival activities and events. The regional youth also took part in an open 1-day session with over 30 Adelaide school students.

The diverse youth team created an engaging promo about the multitude of events during the Australian Festival for Young People, aka Come Out 2007. The team discovered what it is like to work to a client brief: guaranteed to be a challenging production – and the team handled it very well. It involved brainstorming the overarching theme, devising interview questions, securing interviews and permission to film performances, production managing multiple locations and promoting efficient teamwork to shoot and produce on the go.

The participants delivered a great snapshot of the festival – they played with the 2007 Come Out theme and searched for the best ingredients to cook up a story.

Come Out screened the film at the end of the festival week and used it as part of their promotional campaign. Most of the participants had previously worked with the Hero Team in their own home towns, so it was exciting to meet other youth and share their skills in Adelaide. At the end of the week they took a lot of new skills home to share with their media hubs.

Partners

Apple

Arts SA Health Promotion through the Arts

Come Out - Australian Festival for Young People

Country Arts SA Regional Arts Fund

SA Youth Arts Board

Adelaide Bites - Adelaide Fringe

Adelaide City Council youth art campaign - 2007 May - SA

We made 10 experimental short films for Adelaide’s new, large public digital screens, by SA youth sharing stories about Adelaide, as part of our public art game, Love Referendum, for the Adelaide Fringe Festival, supported by Adelaide City Council and Arts SA. Love Bites - do you love or hate Adelaide?

Partners

Adelaide City Council

Arts SA

Adelaide Fringe

Apple Educational Conference

2007 April - Sydney NSW

The Hero Project was invited to present its empowerment methodology to representatives from Apple’s national educational retail partners.

Over 100 people attended our presentations in Sydney. One of the participants dubbed our methodology ‘the missing link between Apple’s hardware and software’. We received fabulous feedback – several channel partners opted to take Directing the Hero Within on for retail.

Partners

Apple

Mid North Schools workshops

Mid North Schools workshops 2007 April - Clare SA

The Hero Project mentored students from 5 area schools in the Lower Mid North region during 2x 1-day edit-in-camera workshops.

The films screened as part of the Eat My Shorts festival during National Youth Week.

Supernatural in the Mid North

G'day Mate

Danny's Legacy

Barrels of Snow Town

Partners

Blyth Area School

Burra Area School

Clare High School

Lower North Health – Community Health Promotion

Riverton High School

Snowtown Area School

Love Referendum - Adelaide Fringe

Love Referendum - public art game 2007 March - SA

Developed as an interactive alternative reality game ARG for the public realm, the initial phase included a series of video clips, viral postcards and an interactive website. Is Adelaide in the grip of a potentially fatal pandemic called lovesickness…?

Has it become a sentimental slave to romance or a slick metropolis for the cool and uncaring? In an urgent call to action, the Department of Deliberation is conducting a statewide referendum in December 2007.

It will ask the public to decide whether they are lovestruck or lovesick. Results will be tallied and citizens will be officially (and spectacularly) notified during opening night of the 2008 Adelaide Fringe.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Artistic Director - Jennifer Lyons-Reid

Producer - Carl Kuddell

Game development mentor - Christy Dena

Graphic design - Working Images, Drew Joyce

Love Referendum was supported by Arts SA Public Art

Partners

Adelaide City Council

Arts SA

Coding Cultures Conference

2007 March - Sydney NSW

The Hero Project was invited to present its community empowerment at the Coding Cultures Symposium 2007 in Campbelltown.

Campbelltown Arts Centre in partnership with d/Lux/MediaArts, presented Coding Cultures from Monday 5 – Friday 9 March 2007. Coding Cultures explored the opportunities that new information technologies including mobile phones, the internet and other on-line spaces, are providing for communities. Coding Cultures was a week long program of international residencies, free Concept Development Labs and a one day Symposium at Campbelltown Arts Centre.

Our presentation at the Symposium was well received, bringing participants up to speed and networked into the latest in community based media practices and cultures. We also managed during the conference to connect the Hero Project to Jamaican artists Mervin Jarman [the Container Project] and Canadian artists Camille Turner, with the aim to collaborate on future projects.

Big thanks to the fabulous Francesca da Rimini and our friends at Dlux for setting this up! Find out more about Coding Cultures and its handbook here:

http://www.dlux.org.au/codingcultures/handbook.html

Partners

Campbelltown City Council

dLux Sydney

dreamcatcher - Adelaide Fringe

dreamcatcher - Adelaide Fringe multmedia project 2007 February - SA

An art exhibition, public mobile video projection, provocative art interventions, a limited series of 20 unique resin sculptures and 2000 postcards competition across South Australia.

Marvel at the sheer beauty of a dancing plastic bag, the most ‘beautiful thing’ on a magical flight through the City of Adelaide. It twirls to a modern Pied Piper’s tune, peddling imperishable dreams and subtly transforms the City’s structures, leaving behind small icons of suburban utopia.

Dreamcatcher is testament to our capacity to see beauty in the mundane and dangerous, and just when you think its over, the bag lifts again, sporting its insignia: Eternity.

Dreamcatcher sculptures

Grotesque yet strangely alluring… Recent archaeological digs in Adelaide [code named dreamcatcher] have uncovered several petrified objects from an epoch which the Dreamcatcher Museum have classified as ‘Oil Age: Plastic Era’. The objects appear to be flimsy plastic vessels. Historians believe they were used for trade and exchange and were probably associated with human sacrifice and mass rituals.

The limited series of 20 unique sculptures, lusciously translucent and seductively textural, are made from plastic bags - stamped with Eternity - each manipulated and set in a large block of glassy resin, with its own custom made iron stand, labeled with the work’s edition number. 10 sculptures were publicly auctioned as part of the Adelaide Fringe 2007, raising funds for SA students clean up the beaches and remove plastic bags from the ocean.

If you are interested to buy one of the remaining artworks or want to exhibit the work, please email us

Commissioned for the Surface Tension Public Art Program of the Adelaide City Council and Australian Network for Art & Technology; as part of the 2006 Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Partners

Adelaide Fringe

Zero Waste SA

ANAT Surface Tension

Adelaide City Council

Document Your World at AIDC

Australian International Documentary Conference - 2007 February - Adelaide SA

The Hero Project team worked with 15 youth finalist from the national Document Your World competition, hosted by the Australian International Documentary Conference AIDC in February 2007.
The Hero Project mentored the youth teams to prepare their film proposals as a public pitch. This first ever youth-documentary competition saw entries from across Australia, vying for the change to pitch in front of a panel of commissioning editors from ABC and SBS, IDFA’s Director, the Australian Children’s TV Foundation and executives from the media industry.

The events MC was Steve Cannane, from Triple J’s Hack, judges included Amanda Duthie (ABC TV), Carl Kuddell and Jen Lyons-Reid (Tallstoreez), Bernadette O’Mahoney (ACTF), Aimee Knight, Warrick Burton (SBSi) and Magda Estetima (IDFA Amsterdam).

Pitch Introduction

Pitch 1 - LOL

Pitch 2 - Artists Not Aliens

Pitch 3 - The Oo in Pinnaroo

Pitch 4 - In Our Shows

Pitch 5 Legends of Quorn

Q&A + Thankyou

AIDC Podcasts

The 5 finalist teams from Whyalla, Quorn, Murray Bridge, Pinnaroo and Adelaide prepared a 5-minute verbal pitch and a 2-minute video trailer for their documentary proposals – in 2 days they prepared, wrote, test-pitched, shot and edited the most amazing public presentations – feedback from the panel and audience was that it was the best presentations at AIDC that year…

The participants delivered very compelling presentations. In front of over 100 experts and a high-caliber panel from ABC, SBS, Tallstoreez and ACTF, they held their own. Stories included: LoL: Cyberbullying, the Oo in Pinnaroo, Life in Quorn, Artists not Aliens and Nunga Media.

The winner was ‘LoL’, a documentary about cyberbullying; the team won a development purse of $5000 from ABC jtv, to develop a half-hour documentary proposal.
The runner-up was ‘Oo in Pinnaroo’; who were approached by ABC to produce a 10-part mini-series, mentored by the Hero Project.

The teams also produced a series of short clips during the conference for AIDC, interviewing documentary makers and broadcasters about film making and key points of the conference. The clips were shown on huge screens on the same day  they were shot. It was fabulous to see the 15 Document Your World heroes mingling with the pro-crowd and gleaning valuable intel.

Partners

ABC JTV

Apple

Arts SA Health Promotion through the Arts

Australian Childrens Television Foundation

Australian International Documentary Conference

Country Arts SA Regional Arts Fund

Pilchard Ninjas - Port Lincoln SA

Port Lincoln youth workshop - 2007 January - Port Lincoln SA

The Hero Project team were commissioned by the Community House in Port Lincoln to engage young people in their activities. The 10 youth participants agreed to make a promotional video to get more people to engage with the community house, as long as it involved fish… enjoy their film, Pilchard Ninjas.

The team created an engaging promo-clip about the community center – but really most of young people came to the social centre to make a fun film – so they worked on combining the two! They identified they wanted to create something Python-esque and that the fish factories are a big issue in town [renown for its tuna]…During the workshop the young filmmakers learnt all basic skills required for video production, including scripting, story-boarding, camera + sound work, acting, directing, editing and music production.

The participants delivered an engaging compromise – while sticking to their quirky film ideas, they managed to arrive at a wonderful conclusion, that supports their social centre in a humourous and upbeat way.
Port Lincoln Community House continued to build a youth media centre and purchased digital media equipment.

2 community members took part in the Hero Youth Media Festival master-class at Come Out 2007. 
Their team had the task to document the Come Out Festival – and they were cooking up a storm!

Update February 2010: Some of the young people involved have started a new youth organization and media centre in Port Lincoln, called 2-way street.  Check it out here.

Partners

Apple

Arts SA Health Promotion through the Arts

Community House Port Lincoln

Country Arts SA Regional Arts Fund