Australian Guild of Screen Composers
Press release
20 December 2022
AGSC ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING AND BOARD ELECTION RESULTS
The Australian Guild of Screen Composers are excited to announce the election of a new board after their Annual General Meeting held on November 30. After three years as President, Antony Partos has retired and the board welcomes the newly elected President, Dale Cornelius, supported by Vice President, Me-Lee Hay.
Partos’ tenure has seen enormous wins for the screen industry. After years of lobbying alongside APRA and the other industry guilds, the AGSC is happy to have achieved its goal of keeping feature films offsets at 40%, raising TV offsets to 30%, keeping the Gallipoli clause-allowing overseas shoots to be claimable, keeping the post-production rebate threshold at $500,000, retaining copyright as a claimable expense and retaining subscription TV production of reinvesting 10% of revenue back into making Australian productions.
The AGSC is also one of three industry guilds to have implemented the Credit Maker program, funded by Screen Australia. The program will support four female composers to be placed in a production setting to work alongside an established composer and attain a composition credit. The first round of two placements has been allocated and the second round of applications is currently open.
The other successful program which the AGSC participated in this year, was the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music Office (NATSIMO) Screen Composer Intensive – a program developed to address the underrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander composers in the screen music sector. Composer Rhyan Clapham (aka ‘Dobby’) was the first participant and the program will be rolled out again in 2023.
As the incoming President, Cornelius brings enormous industry experience to the role. Writing across a diverse platform of feature films, television drama, documentaries and animation, he is well versed in tackling the issues faced by screen composers. He is joined by an equally experienced board, including composers, Me-Lee Hay, Caitlin Yeo, Pru Montin, Fiona Loader and Antony Partos, along with arts lawyer Jessica Iuliano and treasurer Stuart Smith (CPA). Outgoing members are composers Elizabeth Drake and Hylton Mowday.
Partos finished up his presidency by saying “I am proud to be part of a community that genuinely supports each other and celebrates our unique careers. I look forward to seeing the guild continue to go from strength to strength”.
