Director - Chris Benz

Chris Benz was already infamous as a director of short films before he began working in TV commercials. Chris’ short “car-alarm” comedy ‘Noise” was a runaway hit at Tropfest 2000, winning 3 awards. ‘Noise’ won the Canberra International Film Festival, and screened on the opening night of the St Kilda Film Festival, also carrying off the award for Best Comedy. ‘Noise’ can be found on the compilation ‘In Troppo – the best of Tropfest’. The follow up, ‘Operatic”, screened at the Sydney Film Festival and around the world, and was included as an in flight favourite on Qantas flights.

In 2002 Chris received two Best Director nominations for his TVC work from the London International Advertising Awards for Primus Telecom and Virgin Blue. Amongst a large body of television commercial work. Chris has also developed a documentary project about the forgotten photographer who took Australia’s most famous war photograph – George Silk.

Producer – Nina Hutchinson

Nina Hutchison worked in graphic design before taking a break from the corporate world to complete an honours degree in Media Arts at Rmit. Nina has had several exhibitions of her work in photography, video & sound installation. In 2004 she leapt back into the world of work, this time in production, of music video, commercials, and film, producing two of the ‘Little Deaths’ films and co-ordinating the production of six iconic VB beer commercials by Tony Rogers. In early 2005 Nina produced ‘Webster Say’ a short film funded by GTV9, production managed ‘The Deal’ starring Glenn Robbins, and has since spent six months in production on ‘Charlotte’s Web’, most recently working on local feature ‘Rats & Cats’.