australianscreen ready for launch

I’ve just removed the password from the beta version of the australianscreen site - a massive new site my company has been working on for the Australian Film Commission. It’s fantastic content - a team of curators have been trawling through the archives of the NFSA, ABC, SBS and AIATSIS to build an online database of Australian film and TV productions. On top of that, teachers’ notes have been developed by The Le@rning Federation for selected clips. The end result is like a cross between an Australian IMDB and YouTube - a directory of Australian screen history, complete with video clips.

The content is really diverse, ranging from footage of the Melbourne Cup shot in 1896, classics like The Sentimental Bloke, Breaker Morant, Newsfront, Crocodile Dundee, and Picnic at Hanging Rock, through to recent releases like Ten Canoes. There are even old TV and cinema ads, and even historically significant home movies (including some shot by former prime minister Robert Menzies). There are currently over 500 titles on the site, and there are hundreds more in the pipeline. If what you’re looking for isn’t on the site already, it will be soon!

The site is built entirely in Django, which has allowed us to slice and dice the content in lots of interesting ways. We’ve got tags, location maps (using the ubiquitous Google maps technology) and a Flash timeline (developed by my colleague Greg Turner). We’ll be adding plenty more Web 2.0 goodness in the coming months.

Check it out at → http://australianscreen.com.au.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.