John Dietz is the co-founder of the Fox Studios based production company VisPop. As a visual effects supervisor on films like 28 Weeks Later, Where the Wild Things Are, Terminator: Salvation and most recently The Hunger Games, John is known for leading large teams with passion and commitment, and delivering results that blow audiences away.
For the past year he and his colleagues at VisPop have been drawing on this blockbuster experience to develop a slate of high concept, visual effects heavy independent films. John is determined to create original, quality content that will resonate with lovers of high spectacle films around the world. He is exploring amazing new ways of creating these types of films outside of the big studios and with the budget of indy film makers.
John is obsessed with great stories and believes that often the best stories are told by the most passionate people. This is why he is so interested in independent film-makers… He knows that it is often these people who have the best stories to tell.
At ‘Interesting’ John will explore the questions that need to be asked to get a high spectacle film off the ground.
Get tix @ interesting.eventbrite.com.au
Simon Sheikh holds the title of Getup! National Director. An amazing amount of influence for anyone to hold. Getup is the community advocacy group who has been instrumental in driving issues onto government agendas since it’s inception. With just shy of 600,000 members, more than all of Australia’s political parties combined, it is one of the most powerful advocacy groups in Australia and takes it’s cues directly from it’s members.
Simon Sheikh has been running the show since 2008 when he took over from Brett Solomon. He has been driving the group forward and has overseen the effective doubling of the membership and the running of numerous campaigns on issues such as climate change, internet freedoms, mining policy & assylum seeker policy including mandatory detention just to name a few.
Simon has used film to great effect and has done an exceptional job at funding the distribution of film for social change. These often take the form of advertisments touting the getup message and are seen by millions of Australians every year.
At ‘Interesting’ on Monday the 12th of March, Simon will be addressing film-making for social change, the vital elements that make up films for this purpose and will be facilitating a workshop exploring these ideas.
For tix go to interesting.eventbrite.com.au