Co Producers of ‘New Fossil Fiji’ on YouTube
Soon after finishing the Fiji Producers Acceleration course hosted by Film Fiji through the SPC facilitated ACPEU Culture Grant, Blair Robertson assisted another Producer, Avian Sharma, as cameraman and producer in filming Avian’s first short horror film, “Rire”. Lemeki Waqarua, also from the FPAP course, played the role of the monster in the film. Following the editing of that film at Blair’s home studio in Serua, the two started the comedy series, ‘Ratu Na Veli’, currently available on their YouTube site, ‘Newfossil Fiji’. Lemeki stars as the main Veli and partners with Serua local, Lukia. They now dedicate all their time to making films and make content in a variety of genres for their YouTube channel, including: Veli (now comedy + drama), investigative journalism, sports (particularly surfing event coverage), and covering community events in a fun way.
They will soon branch out into doing more interviews about how to improve Fiji’s economy, one industry at a time. They also have a short reality TV show concept to film for their upcoming Serua surfing event which will showcases Fiji’s best surfers in Fiji’s best waves.This includes following the lives of 8 top local surfers leading up to and following the event. They tell a story about having limited resources but are lucky to have access to good equipment and showcasing that life outside the city is not expensive and provides great locations for film. Their goal is to develop their YouTube site into a fully-fledged television channel, showcasing a variety of content—a worthy challenge for a two-man team. They say there is currently a lot of time in the editing room and not enough time in the field! They’ve made 18 short films since completing the course, the longest though is 2:02 hours. They say they have many more ‘Ratu Na Veli’s’ to make.
