A group of young Swinburne alumni travelled to New York for the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, where their work on the music video 'Even Better' by the artist GRASS was selected to be a part of the slate.
Alum Angela Lopez who worked as the producer of the music video, alongside former classmate Jordan Ruyi Blanch as the director of photography, both attended the event in June.
While not in attendance, alumni Tannaz Shaabanpour as first assistant camera and Milla Pearl Sievers as production designer, were also crucial to the music video's production.
Angela Lopez on set of the 'Even Better', working as a producer for the music video selected for Tribeca Film Festival 2025.
The Swinburne crew involved in the music video graduated between 2022 and 2023 with a Bachelor of Film and Television (Honours) , and have had many opportunities to work together since the end of their studies.
"You meet such amazing people when studying at Swinburne, which was definitely a huge highlight in my university experience. It's always such a great surprise seeing fellow Swinburne alumni or current students on set," Angela says.
Building the relationships from their time at Swinburne has helped the alumni forge strong connections and develop their careers working freelance in the film industry.
"The degree fosters such great collaborative environments, as you're constantly doing group assessments with different people. You're also encouraged to help on projects that aren't necessarily your own graded assignments, so you become really close with the people in your course."
Given the annual Tribeca Film Festival supports independent screen productions and gets thousands of submissions yearly, it's incredible for this Swinburne crew to be chosen.
"It was such a massive achievement for our artist and crew to have our music video selected for Tribeca Festival 2025," reflected Angela. "We put a lot of hard work, love and passion into this project so having this awarded at such an esteemed event was very fulfilling."
On the set of the 'Even Better' music video shoot.
Their music video was a part of this year's short program, and in fact was the first time that music videos were selected in Tribeca Festival's competition.
The crew's video shared the same screen alongside prolific directors such as Ti West ('MaXXXine' trilogy) and artists such as Kid Cudi.
It was also most of the crew's first time ever travelling to New York as well as attending a film festival. They were ecstatic to be involved in the experience.
Angela says the crew were surrounded by many actors and filmmakers they admire and have plenty of inspiration from the experience to forge ahead.
"We received very valuable advice from artists like Robert De Niro (the co-founder of Tribeca), Martin Scorsese, Lucy Liu and Kid Cudi. It gave us a lot of ammunition and motivation for when we returned to Australia."
