AFTT Alumni David Fairhurst took his AFTT student film ‘Guarding Aurora’ and screened it at the Comic-Con International Film Festival in San Diego last year.
He was joined by the cinematographer and fellow AFTT (formerly knows as IFSS) graduate Aleeya McGuid, star Giselle Van Der Wiel and composer Matt Rudduck. They had professional passes for the whole convention and were able to attend panels with Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher, among many others. One of the festival judges, Doug Jones (Pan's Labyrinth) attended the screening. David voiced that; ‘He is possibly the nicest man alive and was very complimentary. We had a Q&A that was well received and I skyped in for another interview for our screening in Arizona at the Prescott Film Festival.
About Guarding Aurora
'Day in, Day out'; wannabe hero Alec protects Aurora, the girl of his dreams, from an army of vengeful ninjas. Alec tries to remain distant but as he finds himself falling for Aurora a number of potentially deadly secrets threaten to tear them apart.’
‘The idea behind the film was to take the fears and struggles that often cause relationships to fall apart and physicalise them on a big action packed scale. To see two fleshed- out characters literally fight their insecurities’ If there’s two things I know well it’s disastrous attempts at romance and action movies so it seemed appropriate I should get them to butt heads at some point.’ – David Fairhurst.
As well as being screened at Comic Con International Independent Film Festival in San Diego, ‘Guarding Aurora’ was also screened at the Prescott Film Festival in Arizona, the Comedy Ninja Film Festival in Los Angeles, was nominated for the Best Student Short in the Winter Film Awards in New York, and won the Audience Choice Award at the AFTT Student Screening Night.
After AFTT
Since graduating AFTT, David has gone on to write nine spec screenplays since. His spec "The Consultant" was a semi-finalist in the BlueCat Screenplay Competition and won the Script Pipeline First Look Project in the thriller/horror category. So as the winner, the Script Pipeline staff are presenting the screenplay to Vertigo Entertainment (The Departed, The Lego Movie) and giving him development assistance with his other projects. ‘I've directed a number of pieces of branded content this year, Including the #MyMSVictory campaign videos with Tim Ferguson for the MS Society. I also wrote and co-directed a 5-part web series "Naturally Wild: Brand Audit" with AFTT graduate Ali Nooriafshar in rural NSW and Darwin. The last update I received from the client said the series has reached around 13,000 views on Facebook.’
Take a look at what other projects David has been up to via his website.
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