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J.HARKNESS WRITER/DIRECTOR Brian Duff, film
critic for FILMINK magazine, described J. Harkness as “a man ahead of his time”. Born in Penrith, New South Wales,
Australia; a child of a Housing Commission estate, J developed, at young age, a
serious love of poetry. As one critic for DB Magazine once noted, “Harkness’ work stems very much from the
cinema as poetry genre …” While still in primary school, Harkness won a
scholarship to a prestigious private school, which was “worth more than his
father earned per annum driving buses”. Upon completing high school, Harkness
briefly pursued a professional career in journalism and secured a position with
the NSW Newspaper, The Advocate. He was considered something of a prodigy in
creative writing but soon decided he was unable, “in good conscience”, to call
journalism creative writing. He then relocated to Adelaide, to attend Flinders
University of South Australia, studying Drama and Film, which led to his
undertaking a Masters Degree in these disciplines. In between his studies,
Harkness completed more than 20 short films, enjoying numerous festival
successes and awards. He also continued to hone his craft by directing
commercials and documentaries and it was at this time that he conceived the
feature film, Shot Of Love. As Billy Baxter observed in FILMINK, “While Harkness won’t blow his own horn,
others gladly will.” Cameron Miller, CEO of Verdict Pictures, says “When I first saw Shot Of Love, I was blown
away by the talent of J. Harkness. Watch for big things in the future from
him.” J has received a myriad of awards and major festival selections for
his work and achievements. Birthday is the second feature film by J. Harkness
as a Writer and Director.
DENSON BAKER ACS DIRECTOR
OF PHOTOGRAPHY Denson Baker ACS
is a cinematographer of feature films, music videos, documentary, commercials
as well as Director/DP of Award winning and Australian Top 10 music videos for
such artists as Magic Dirt, The Sleepy Jackson, sQuire, Anieki, Cosima, HiFi
Mike, Sleek The Elite, Amanda Baker & Charlton Hill among others. Coming
from an art & design background studying painting, photography and graphic
design; Denson is also a graduate of the Australian Film Television & Radio
School where he was Cinematographer of the year in 1999; In 2002 he won the AFI
Award for Best Cinematography in a Non- Feature and has worked internationally
shooting in Europe, India, New Zealand, The Pacific and throughout Australia.
In 2005 Denson was accredited by the Australian Cinematographers Society
allowing him the honour of carrying the accreditation ACS after his name.
Denson's best known cinematography credits include Steve Pasvolsky's feature
film Deck Dogz, Daniel Askil's internationally acclaimed short film We Have
Decided Not to Die, the cinema released documentary Kanyini as well as recent
music videos for Expatriate, The Presets, The Softlightes, Jimmy Barnes, Ash
Hansen, Cut Copy & Paul Mac, the Black Eyed Peas Live & Snoop Dog Live
for MTV; plus commercials for Motorola, XBOX, Panasonic, Jagermeister and MTV.
Denson was recently nominated for an AFI award and also won an IF award for his
outstanding cinematography on the highly acclaimed The Black Balloon by
director Elissa Down, starring Toni Collette, Gemma Ward, Rhys Wakefield and
Luke Ford. Denson’s most recent credit is as D.O.P on The Waiting City, by
promising newcomer writer/director Claire McCarthy starring Radha Mitchell and
Joel Edgerton. BEVERLEY FREEMAN PRODUCTION
DESIGNER Beverley Freeman
has worked as a production designer, art director, costume designer and make-up
and hair supervisor on films and TV commercials in Australia, America, England
and Germany for over two decades. Her feature credits include Black &
White, starring Robert Carlyle and Kerry Fox, Ebbtide, The Life of Harry Dare,
Heaven’s Burning, Alexandra's Project, Ten Canoes for which she was nominated
for an AFI Award for Best Production Design, & Dr Plonk which is Freeman's
eighth film with Rolf de Heer to date following The Tracker, Dance Me To My
Song, The Quiet Room, Epsilon and Bad Boy Bubby. OLLIE OLSEN
COMPOSER Ollie
Olsen is an Australian Composer, synthesist and sound designer who has
been producing and performing rock, electronic and experimental music for
the past thirty years. He is best known in the mainstream for his collaboration
with Michael Hutchence on Max Q in 1989. In 1984 film director Richard
Lowenstein approached Ollie to have his then, musical collaboration
Whirlywirld appear in the feature film Dogs In Space. Ollie supervised the
reforming of many of the soundtrack’s bands and then worked on the production
of music recordings for the soundtrack. The highly acclaimed film was released
in 1986 and has since reached cult status. Ollie was nominated for Best Music
Score at the 2001 Australian Film Institute Awards for his work on the movie
Head On. |