Hobart’s Ella Watkins wins major filmmaking prize

A young Hobart starlet has made a major breakthrough in her screen career, one she hopes could lead to her own show on a streaming platform. HER STORY >>

A young Hobart starlet has made a major breakthrough in her screen career, one she hopes could lead to her own show on a streaming platform.

Ella Watkins won Screen Forever’s ‘Got A Minute?’ competition, where budding filmmakers submit a pilot for a high quality 10 x one minute episode series.

Miss Watkins entered The Down Under, a show where she plays multiple demons in a post-death processing department.

“I was thinking about working a dead end job and came up with this corporate world,” Miss Watkins said.

Ella Watkins of Hobart is a full time content creator specifically for TikTok and has been awarded a grant from Screen Australia and Screen Forever with her series The Down Under which she also starred in. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

“How do you figure out how to be yourself in a world where everyone is telling you what to be?

“It’s about the demons trying to figure out who they are when they have been created for this one purpose, working a dead end job.”

The 26-year-old uploaded the pilot episode to TikTok where it has since amassed more than 1.5 million views and received nearly 420,000 likes.

@ella.whatkins

The charismatic Tasmanian has built an empire on the platform, with more than two million followers and numerous videos reaching more than 12 million people.

“I didn’t create content for the app specifically when I first got TikTok in 2019, I put YouTube content on there,” she said.

“I got off the app and wasn’t on it for a year, but at the end of May last year I gave it another crack because my friends were telling me my style of comedy was perfect for it.

“Ten days in my first video went viral and I saw the audience you can get and said ‘wow’.

Ella Watkins of Hobart is a full time content creator specifically for TikTok and has been awarded a grant from Screen Australia and Screen Forever with her series The Down Under which she also starred in. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

“Within the first 20 minutes it went viral and started going in a way I’d never seen before.

“About two months later I got my first brand deal, and thought this could be a career and other things could arise from it.”

Miss Watkins’ win in the Screen Forever competition came with a $25,000 cash prize to go towards the production of her ten episode mini series.

She hoped it would be just the start for The Down Under.

“I hope my audience love it and it can grow into a twenty minute episode series for a streaming platform. That’s where I see it going.”