The TAC’s annual Split Second Film Competition asks young Victorians to take a creative approach to tackling a serious road safety issue. The focus for 2021 was drink driving. Swinburne Alumni Felix Barnett was the 2021 winner, giving him access to substantial resources to produce his script, “To Die For”. This included a $70k budget, the expertise of production house Sweetshop and a screening schedule in partnership with Village Cinemas.
In 2019, during Felix’s Communication Design course at the School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University, he participated in the innovative road safety program, Re:act. Re:act challenges tertiary students to create ways to raise awareness of road safety issues and change behaviour among 18 – 25-year-olds, an over-represented group in road trauma. For Re:Act, Felix’s creative team focused on vulnerable road users, pitching their ‘C’MON SENSE’ campaign to a panel of industry leaders. As a member of the target demographic, for Felix the most important take-away from participating in Re:act was grasping ‘the value of peer to peer advertising — getting the target market to create the communications makes a tonne of sense as they will have the most pertinent insights’. Felix not only valued the creative experience, explaining that, ‘being exposed to the data in the Re:act program, I’m much more aware of the issues surrounding road safety than many of my friends. I’m always thinking twice about my actions around the road’.
Re:act was a major influence on Felix’s Split Second entry. He explains how ‘the React program absolutely influenced the development of my script ‘To Die For’. When I saw the Split Second competition, I saw it as a space I’d worked in before and thought I could put my insights towards another great initiative’. His ‘To Die For’ script challenged ‘young drivers to think twice about having a drink before they plan to drive. Especially around my age group, who are coming off their Ps and are now balancing drinking and driving’.
Felix submitted the script for the competition in late August 2021. He found out he won a month later and was put in touch with Sweetshop, soon after that developing a director’s treatment and storyboards and participating in location scouting and casting. Held up by lockdowns, production finally commenced in late November 2021, with the film being released in Village Cinemas across Victoria at the start of February. Since graduating from the Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) Honours in 2020, Felix has been working at the boutique advertising and design agency, The Bundy Agency.
For more information on the Split Second competition, visit https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/split-second?fbclid=IwAR0DHKxuH4ST5ldcEBv5Vw470zrxvSdXJkWDLyJcKMV8lLwVcM45MDVGllQ
