The Western Australian Screen Awards

Or better known as the WASA's.

Getting involved with the industry being a particular unit itself in my course it's relatively a mandatory move to step into some of its functions; with the WASAs being potentially the largest and most sophisticated, it seemed the correct place to start. I placed my name in for some voluntary work at the Octagon Theatre, at the UWA (University of Western Australia). I was hoping to catch some of the ceremony but unfortunately the role Sally had given me involved working during the majority of the screening; I snatched up a programme for the sake of finding out the names of films and people though.

Slight occupation rundown: Started 3pm. Spray painting large, several gallon drums gold and moving them to/from the courtyard at the middle/end of the ceremony. Setting out each individual award programme on each seat in the theatre. Starting up heater things which generally disagree. Fetching speakers for the resident DJ, and cleaning up the courtyard once the party was over.

Slightly disappointed with the lack of Animation students not volunteering in the same area of work as me, but I established a friendship with a couple of the film students giving me a decent network into that particular group; considering Animation and Film students appear to stick to their own groups from my observation, I can ask help of them where required or they can do the same vice versa.

Attempted the odd mingle with several complete strangers but received awkward response most of the time, so both parties ended up back in their groups as predicted (Film substantially larger than Animation). After an unknown amount of time I spotted Graeme Watson (Our course coordinator), deciding to exploit the fact that he could introduce us to people and suggest to our small group of, Evangeline, Shani, Daniel and I that we move in that general direction. The suggesting paid off and we were introduced to Kate Vyvyan, Secretary of WAnimate. Our chatter covered several topics, namely the Wam-Bam competition which I was most interested in, and also Adam Elliots appearance the Sunday of the same weekend as the Wam-Bam; plus several other 'mingle' things. I was hoping in our time with talking to Kate that someone else would randomly join our group and introduce themselves but at this stage I've filed that under wishful thinking; if I actually want to 'chat' and get involved then it's something I'll have to push myself into rather than just hope it stumbles across me. Regardless, I was glad to meet someone in the industry tonight, more proud to think my suggestion lead to it albeit through Graeme.

After that it was a slow road to the Animators all heading home leaving me there with the selective hearing Film students. Fortunately graced by the presence of Ebbie, our course facilitator, who introduced me to Clancie (Sir name currently unknown) who was in Ebbie's Animation class with her. That conversation pretty much went over Tiki the Weasel and D20 Role Playing.

It got to a stage where everyone Animate wise eventually left, I chose to just wait until Packdown time considering it was around that stage where everyone was too intoxicated to mingle with successfully. Finished off the night at 1am cleaning up the place with Greg from Film, Graeme, Sally, and the crew from the Octagon.

Wam-Bam'll be up next. Assides from that I've established my Facebook profile among other things. It all seems to be sliding into place.