TEAM BIOS

Sheersha Pererra - Writer and Director

Sheersha teaches film at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. This film is very much her baby, formed from her own life experience and her passion for Sri Lankan cinema. Big Girl is part of her practice-based & practice-led research looking at female sexuality in Sri Lankan cinema.

Cameron and Sheersha first teamed up to create the experimental short film She in 2004. This work explored many related themes to Big Girl (such as sexuality and cultural identity) and can be viewed as a predecessor to the Big Girl project. She went on to screen at the St Kilda Film Festival and at the French Film Festival in Columbo where it won a Merit award.

Sheersha has been teaching film since 2008 and when not teaching or raising her young daughter, she has been a part of many projects run by Cameron Ford and Alex Scott.

Iranthi Abeyasinghe - Producer

Iranthi is the head of Mindfire Productions, a leading independent film and television production house based in Colombo. She brings years of experience and skill producing media in Sri Lanka to the project.

Beginning her media career in 1986 assisting respected director D.B. Nihalsingha, Iranthi went on to work on a large number national and international productions before founding Mindfire Productions in 2009. She has produced scores of feature films, teledramas, documentaries and television commercials, and has worked with such leading lights as Prasanna Vithanage, Sudath Mahadivulwewa and Asoka Hadagama for whom she produced Flying with One Wing (2002) and This is My Moon (2000) which together won many notable international awards.

Iranthi is a stalwart supporter of the project and the person on whom we will all very much rely when shooting commences.

Ian Dixon - Executive Producer and Co-Writer

Ian works as senior lecturer in filmmaking at SAE Institute, Melbourne and delivers academic addresses internationally. He brings impressive writing and research skills to Big Girl in addition to much practical experience in the making of films and television.

Ian Dixon has worked successfully as writer, director and actor in film, commercial television and international theatre. His production credits include:  Neighbours, Blue Heelers, SBSi, City Homicide, Martial Law, Guinevere Jones, Heartbreak High, Struck by Lightning, Rush and Underbelly. Ian’s films have won awards both locally and internationally - including a Director Commendation at San Francisco International Film Festival. He has been funded to write scripts for Screen Australia and Film Victoria and is an active director and producer. His short film Interference (with cinematography by Cameron Ford) will be released soon.

www.iandixon.com

Victoria Duckett - Executive Producer

Victoria Duckett is Senior Lecturer in Screen and Design at Deakin University, Melbourne. Before this, she taught at the University of Melbourne (Victorian College of Arts), the Università Cattolica, Milan (Department of Communication Studies and Performing Arts) and in 2000 was the inaugural Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. She received her MA and PhD on scholarship from the School of Film/TV UCLA where she was awarded the Charles Boyer Award (Sorbonne, Paris III) and the Women’s Studies Award. Author of over 70 articles and book chapters that explore women and media industries, her most recent book was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title (Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film, 2016).

She is a founding editorial member of Feminist Media Histories (University of California Press), on the editorial board for Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film (SAGE) and an editorial member of FAScinA (Studies of Cinema and Audiovisual Media, Edizioni ETS, Pisa).

She is currently director of the bilingual Omeka project Guglielmo Giannini: A digital archive of theatre, film, entertainment and political activism (http://giannini.deakin.edu.au/about-the-collection). This makes new historical materials available and accessible to international scholars and serves, in 2019, as a launch to international conferences, exhibitions, and film programmes.

Cameron Ford - Director of Photography
and Camera Operator

Cameron is an accomplished writer, editor and director of photography. Having been active in Melbourne (and abroad) for many years he brings to the project the visual style and appreciation of technical detail that will capture the images on which the project is built.

Cameron's work spans many lengths and genres. From shooting Too Far (2005) a comedy short that took him to Tropfest, and The Grey Cloud (2007) a highly stylised noir thriller that won him the Tropfest award for Best Cinematography, to shooting his first feature film on Drama (2013) shot on location in Paris and London. In 2014 Cameron shot, edited and was the additional on-set director for the surprise hit web series The Katering Show - funded by Screen Australia. As of September 2015, he has just returned from filming an epic documentary The Bikes of Wrath which saw him, and 3 companions traversing America by bike, in a tribute to the John Steinbeck novel 'The Grapes of Wrath'.

www.cfordfilm.com

Alex Scott - Melbourne Producer,
Fundraising Trailer Editor, Website

Alex is a professional video editor, animator and committed production 'all-rounder'. He writes, directs and produces a wide variety of projects. His job on Big Girl is to help manage the shoot during it's Melbourne pre-production phase and to ensure that everything is in place for the the production.

Since establishing himself as a freelance editor and animator in 2007 Alex has been constantly in work and has supplemented this with a full slate of other productions where he has served in a large variety of roles. His directing credits run from shorts, music clips, webseries and documentaries to a 45 minute episode for the miniseries Sonnigsburg - currently in production. He has worked as 1st assistant director or production manager on many of Cameron Ford's projects. He has produced artwork and posters for many independent productions. He has also produced a 'full-dome' 3D animation for use in the Melbourne Planetarium as part of the Elemental project, which is currently touring internationally.

 www.alexscotteditor.com

Paige Bailey - Editor

Paige is a freelance editor, who has worked on a variety of projects, mainly short films and advertising, however Big Girl is her first exciting step into feature film. Editing has always been a passion, and she hopes to bring that and have it show through the final product.

As a recent Deakin University graduate Paige has been able to explore different styles of film and the experimental nature has meant that she has had to opportunity to combine her experiences of editing narrative and documentary together into one project. the opportunity to work on a project as big and thought provoking as Big Girl as been a blessing from the first meeting.

Paige hopes that this is only the first of many projects she gets to work with Sheersha on.

Lucas Morgan – Sound Designer & Music Composer

Lucas is a multi-­‐ instrumentalist who gravitated towards film after graduating from a BA Audio Production in 2015. Moving from live performance, Lucas has worked as an audio engineer, sound designer and music composer on many diverse post-­‐ production projects such as short films, animations, a Netflix series, live contemporary dance pieces and now feature length documentary. Lucas strives to diversify his repertoire and creative approach with every unique project that comes his way.

From crafting the soft intricacies of foley and atmosphere recording to impactful sound design and highly textured music composition, Lucas focuses on the cohesive nature of all elements in sound with a large emphasis on blending diegetic and non-­‐ diegetic sound seamlessly.

Grady Hancock - Post Production Manager

Dr Grady Hancock is a lecturer in Screen and Design at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her research interests include Australian film and female filmmakers, science fiction and affect, and feminism in all film forms.

Grady has been chair of RevCon Academic, the conference arm of Perth Revelation Film Festival, for the past three years, and has worked in diverse areas of film and academia including art direction for Angie Black's feature film The Five Provocations, moderator for the Melbourne Women in Film Festival and founding member of Deletion an online forum in science fiction studies.

Grady has been lecturing and teaching film since 2010. Her monograph Re-Visions: Australian Social Realist Film Through a Feminine Lens will be published later this year.

Rebecca - Early Post Production Supervisor

Rebecca is a new face in the Melbourne film scene. Just finishing her film degree at Deakin University, she has made an effort to expand and push her creative intuition through mostly directing, cinematography, and producing work both at University and outside projects.

Rebecca hopes to try different aspects of the filmmaking process to become a better filmmaker and find her passions, as well as broaden her understandings of international and independent cinema to create more immersive films.

She strongly believes in the Big Girl project and is eager to be a part of Sheersha’s team to push the story out to an audience eager to experience her story.

Matthew Rooke - Edit Consultant

It’s a passion for communication that drives Matthew and a need to tell the story but he speaks in vision, expresses in sound and feels through music so his most comfortable connection is audio visual.

Post graduating film school of Latrobe University and the Victorian College of the Arts, Matthew has worked in the roles of Director and Editor on numerous short films and documentaries. His work has been broadcast and appeared in festivals, wining awards both here in Australia and overseas. He loves working on projects involving different cultures and languages which bring their own individual challenges and unique rhythms and structures to deal with. His favoured genre is blending the socio-ethnographical with the structurally experimental and striving to develop a clear communication in the original form of the subject’s narrative. He loves working with music.

When not doing this he can be found harnessing the wave energy of Victoria’s South West Coast and surfing in some hopefully uncrowded point or beach breaks.

Connor Doherty - Interview Editor

In 2018 Connor will commence his honours year of film at Deakin University. He graduated his bachelor degree with distinction after having edited for the major assessment film in third year.

Connor has also edited for RMIT’s television department, working on field segments for their 2016 flagship show, The Leak and has completed various other editing jobs within the last few years.

Connor was drawn to the project because of his love for editing and his great interest in politics, in particular the politics concerned with gender and assigned sex.

Jason Barter - Post Production Consultant / Online Editor

Jason's knowledge and understanding of the phases of post-production continues to excel as he strives to fulfil his passion for story telling.

Since finishing his studies at Deakin University, Jason has strive to fulfil this passion in all things Post-Production with specialities in both Editing and Sound Design. Working on several short films, he has continued to develop his skills in both Production and Post-Production, whilst developing an understanding of the technicalities.

Rachel Barber - Behind the Scenes Producer, Videographer and Editor

Rachel is currently in her final year of studying Film and Television at Deakin University. In 2017 she edited her final major project, and was nominated for Best Achievement in Editing as part of the annual Visionnaire awards.

Being a passionate editor, Rachel’s involvement in the Big Girl project is circulated around producing quality, behind the scenes content of the process of the documentary. She hopes to bring a modern and stylish flair to these videos, whilst having some cheeky fun with her fellow post-production crew.

SPECIAL THANKS

MENTORS

DONORS

SOUL PROVIDERS

My children Raniska Autumn & Topaz , Thathie, Ammi, Mr D, Mrs. D, Brier, Michael and Kristy, Roshi, Regina Aunty, Neelie ,Thushari Akka, Nilmali Akka, Rod, Dilrini & Kishani, Dhanu, Andre, Anja, Rodney, Imo, Tanya , Jenny, Meaghan, Nina, Nolan , Vivek, Erin, Maya, Sonia, Lesley, Alison, Farah, Noshi, Saima, Urooj, Abdul Rehaman, Rashmi Akka, Jagath Aiya, Rajitha, Amara Akka, Sujann, Niraj, Ashy, Wendel, Sharon, Howard, Dilan, Mich, Chaluka, Tashi, Michael, Ruv & Serina