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Travels From:
Sydney
Fee Range: E
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Michela Ledwidge is an award-winning creative and technical director who specialises in real-time and virtual production (using game engines for film & TV). She is known for interactive and immersive productions Through The Eyes of Our Ancestors (2023), A Clever Label (2021), ACO Virtual (2013) and Horses for Courses (2001). She has extensive experience leading teams, working hands-on with digital tools like Unreal Engine, Houdini, TouchDesigner and PyTorch. She writes words, code and music, directs, and produces. She has been building and shipping software products since the 00s. Michela made her voice acting debut playing Esther Fitzgerald in the critically acclaimed video game Wayward Strand (2022).
Her work for other producers includes VP direction on the Animal Logic animation Unhinged (2022), on-set hologram (VFX) consulting on Seth Larney sci-fi 2067 (2020) and VP direction and editing of Harry Shearer musical satire, The Many Moods of Donald Trump (2020).
Michela's early life was marked by global diversity, as she lived in several countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, with her diplomat father, who worked with the Australian Trade Commission, and her language teacher mother who speaks 7 languages.
Since 1993, she's been the driving force behind ambitious creative and technical media projects spanning Europe, Australia, and the United States, always driven to combine technology with humanities. In 1993 doing a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree majoring in Computer Science and French at the University of Sydney, Michela created the first website in NSW and a hybrid web browser / web page editor as part of her thesis �Cruising and Creating with WHype�.
After university she (along with two librarians) created the inaugural National Library of Australia�s web service. In 1996 she joined the first web agency in Australia, Next Online, as the sole developer. In 1997 she won Brilliant Digital Entertainment�s �Interactive Screenwriting� competition and was subsequently commissioned to write her first non-linear narrative ten weeks in the headbin. In 1999 she moved to London and helped build many landmark digital products and services including the launch of the Euro at Reuters, boo.com (Europe�s highest valued Internet startup), the BBC Discussion Forums and the BBC iPlayer streaming service.
In 2004, she founded Mod Films in the UK with a NESTA Invention Award for �Remixable Flim�. This was followed by Mod in Sydney, Australia, in 2010. Michela is well-regarded for her groundbreaking 'remixable' approach to media architecture, earning her numerous awards. Beyond her creative pursuits, Michela has served as Vice President-Digital for the Australian Directors Guild and as a member of the BAFTA Interactive Committee. She co-founded Sydney�s Unity Users Group and the Women in AR & VR meetup. She is an Honorary Associate of the University of Technology Sydney. She is a long term contributor to ACM SIGGRAPH, including as chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Real-Time Live! Her work has been recognised internationally including at SXSW and SXSW Sydney.
Recent achievements include deploying Grapho, her graph data toolkit (knowledge graphs + AI) on projects with the National Film & Sound Archives, Neo4j and the Indigenous Rangers Biosecurity Programme. She is working passing the HSK21 Chinese Proficiency Test and gaining her Kung Fu blue belt.
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