Filmmaking graduate inspired by humanity's 'weirdness'

Jason Tozer

Ms Young on the set of Grace with the film's lead actress Natalie Carroll Photo: David Ford

15 August 2006: Multimedia graduate Clare Young returned to campus to share her creative process and inspirations in her filmmaking at the 25th Artists Talk held by the School of Creative Communication.

Ms Young has been involved in producing, writing and directing short documentaries since making Firing on all Pins which documented her family's experience during the 2003 Canberra bushfires.

Along with making documentaries, Ms Young was awarded an internship with ABC Stateline, employed as a production assistant at Bearcage Productions and worked on Jane Campion's latest film The Water Diary.

Despite an impressive resume of more than 15 short films, Ms Young is still reluctant to call herself a filmmaker.

"When people ask me what I do, I vary my answer and rarely say I'm a filmmaker," Ms Young said.

"For me the concept and process of driving an idea out into the world is a lot more - it's development, research, late nights and lots of stress."

Ms Young says her creative process comes from an inherent curiosity that makes her continue to ask humanity the question 'why?'.

"We often tell the stories we want to tell and not what we should tell," she said. "I find there is something unpredictable and weird about people that makes them so interesting."

This curiosity about people combined with her work on The Water Diary led her to write and direct her own fictional short film, Grace, currently in post-production.

Ms Young dived in the deep end of fictional film production by working with cinematic standard 35mm film and children, both for the first time, but says the experience has given her a yearning to work in extended formats.

"Working on Grace definitely sparked a desire to work on feature films," she said. "I would love to one day write and direct my own feature."