Mark Poole is a writer and director of both drama and documentary. His most recent film Fearless about 92 year old playwright Julia Britton recently screened on ABC1. His career began when the feature film he wrote, A Single Life, won an AFI Award in 1987. Since then he has written more than 20 hours of broadcast television drama, won a directing award for the short film Basically Speaking at the St Kilda Film Festival, and was honoured with a major AWGIE, the Richard Lane Award in 2008.
View all posts by Mark →
A bevy of talented Australian writers have been selected to participate in the screenwriter accelerator program.
ALL SCREEN
Image: VicScreen Marketing
Nine Australian writers have been selected to participate in the highly coveted screenwriter accelerator, Impact Australia, delivered by Impact and Gentle Giant Media Group.
Launching in Melbourne, the eight-week intensive will see talented writers from Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory convene at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts’ Southbank campus to participate in the program.
The successful participants of Impact Australia 2022
Victoria • Other People by Jordan Prosser • After Her by Sunanda Sachatrakul • Don’t You Remember by Dannika Horvat
New South Wales • Norfolk by Elias Jamieson Brown • The Mandala by Joel Perlgut and Victoria Zerbst • The Almost Insufferable Burden of Being a Talented Woman by Siobhan Domingo
Queensland • Roxbury Manor by Paul Clarke
Australian Capital Territory • Poly by Naomi Telushkin
These participants will be mentored by industry-leading screenwriters from around the world. This team of ‘Shapers’ will support and empower the diverse group of creators with the goal of accelerating the selected projects to be pitch-ready for global buyers and producers at the Impact Global Pitch Day in January 2023.
This year, the ‘Shapers’ will include Shaun Grant (Nitram, The Snowtown Murders), Kai Yu Wu (The Flash, Paper Girls), Sarah Lambert (Lambs of God, Love Child), Stuart Beattie (Obi-Wan Kenobi, I Frankenstein), Hunter Covington (Community,Black AF) and Stacy Traub (Black-Ish, Glee).
Impact CEO, Tyler Mitchell said: ‘The success of Impact alumni has been phenomenal to watch. With 8 movies produced, a Best Foreign Film Oscar candidate, 48 projects set up at major studios and networks, and the series Firebite on AMC+, which was co-created by Impact Australia’s Brendan Fletcher – it’s just been incredible to see these writers’ careers take off. We can’t wait to see the exciting material that emerges from this talented group of Creators and look forward to bringing this next wave of Australian creative talent and their projects to the global stage in January 2023.’
‘It is so exciting for Impact Australia to return to Melbourne for its third season, for the first time in person at the Victorian College of the Arts on the University of Melbourne Southbank Campus,’ said Gentle Giant Chairman and CEO Greg Basser.
‘None of this would have been possible without the great support from Screen Australia, Vic Screen and the University of Melbourne along with our partners at Screen NSW, Screen Queensland, Screen Canberra and Screen Territory. We can’t wait to see what these outstanding nine creators deliver as they work with some of the best writers from the global screen industry under the watchful eye of the Impact team. Melbourne and Australia continue to show that they truly are the home of original content for global audiences.’
‘A huge congratulations to this year’s talented cohort,’ said Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason. ‘We’re thrilled that Impact is back in person this year and we are pleased to support these impressive writers with an opportunity to build invaluable relationships through the program and forge pathways to achieve global success with their screen stories.’
‘As global demand for quality screen content continues to boom, we’re positioning Victoria’s screen industry for success – delivering more local jobs on some of the world’s biggest screen projects,’ Victorian Minister for Creative Industries Steve Dimopoulos said.
‘We’re backing Impact as part of our $191.5 million VicScreen strategy, which is just one of the ways we are investing in local skills, stories and talent.’
Impact Australia is supported by Screen Australia and Learning Partner the University of Melbourne, in partnership with VicScreen, Screen NSW, Screen Queensland and Screen Canberra.
The mentorship program launched on 26 September and runs for eight-weeks, culminating in the Pitch Day in January 2023. For more information visit the Impact Development website.
The box office sees a small elite flocking to You Won’t Be Alone, as mainstream audiences prefer a pair of elderly lovers wisecracking in Ticket to Paradise.
Goran Stolevski’s Australian-Macedonian film You Won’t Be Alone arrived this year with some excellent reviews. ‘A spellbinding horror movie from a great new talent’, said The Guardian, though David Stratton admits to being down on the film.
We will side patriotically with Variety, which contributes, ‘Drawing on his Macedonian roots, director Goran Stolevski delivers a truly unique feature debut: an erotically charged, at times brutish quest for identity, disguised as an elevated horror film.’
The film also played at the Melbourne International Film Festival, where Stolevski’s sophomore featureOf An Age opened the festival to rave reviews. 2022, it seems, is the year of Stolevski.
But how does the Box Office treat that true filmic reality – a new talent with a powerful vision? It went out on seven screens and made just $11,000. Here’s hoping this is ‘week one’ in a cunning plan by distributor Madman. It has taken $422,000 around the world including $405,000 from the US, before streaming in North America on Peacock.
In other news, Del Kathryn Barton’s Blaze has been in cinemas for five weeks, is now on only one screen and has made $85,000. It seems daring cinema is not being celebrated – and magic realism is treated like the pox.
The box office ladder
For the second weekend in succession, soft rom-com Ticket to Paradise from Julia Roberts and George Clooney takes the top slot with a hefty $2.87m, even as all the states went into school holiday mode and saw younger audiences filling theatres.
Ticket toParadise lost 61 screens to run on 454 total, but only dropped 5% in total box office, to put a solid $7.8m into the exhibitor bank accounts.
DC League of Super-Pets went up by 50% to reach $7.87m, almost challenging Ticket to Paradise for top slot. In fact, it has made $4,000 more than Ticket to Paradise over the same two weeks by pulling ahead this week.
Paws of Fury climbed into the ring to face the Super-Pets, but took only $559,000. It has 150 less screens, but is also burdened with a younger demographic. It opened in the US back in July with $9.7m, and ultimately made $38m around the world. The budget was around $70m.
The other reasons for the Fury flop? it is a parody/homage to Blazing Saddles (which is too confusing for the young’uns), and it has been accused of racism for using Chinese gang tropes.
Avatar has been re-released and lit up 500 screens to make a modest $1.39m to claim third place on the ladder. IMAX would have been a significant contributor. It turns out we still have an appetite for colourful space adventures.
Fall, at the number four slot, probably deserves more. Two people trapped up a 2,000 foot mast is an elegant premise that makes no bones about the emotions on offer, and it did very well internationally. $20m off a budget of $4.6m will make UK expat director Scott Mann very happy after a miserable run of three indie action flops, none of which took more than $6.2m.https://www.youtube.com/embed/iSspRSGc4Dk?feature=oembed
We got this film late, and it claimed $754,000 off 264 screens. Not bad, with more to come.
Bullet Train, fattened up with $12.05m over 8 weeks, is coasting into its final station, but still making $337,000 on a weekend. Horror pic Orphan: First Kill has taken $2.56m in four weeks; Rom-com After Ever Happy is slogging along with $1.80m in three weeks, and horror funny Bodies Bodies Bodies has hustled $692,000 in two weeks, which is not bad.
Elvis is sitting on the porch strumming a guitar with $33.27m.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande has hung in for six weeks to reach $3.06m, with $85,000 this weekend on 94 screens. Without a US release it made $9.72m around the world though some of the figures are obsolete.
Three Thousand Years of Longing never found an audience. Here it has made $1.21m in four weeks and is down to 75 screens and $90,000 over the weekend, though the international total is $24m. However, $12.58m comes from the US, so Leo Grande pushed it fairly hard. They are very different films, but they both have Australian directors.
The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson has been around for 21 weeks, is now on one screen, and has made $1.90m, but won’t cross the $2m barrier. So near and so far.
See How They Run is built around Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap, which a producer tries to option before his murder. Even the Christie herself becomes involved. Who knows how it will go here, though competition for grownups wanting some silly fun is limited.
Smile is yet another psychological horror rooted deep in the supernatural, involving doctors and self-generated horror. It’s said to have good scares, but little stands out in rewriting an ageing genre.
In other words, the school holiday films are playing out, and nothing much else is happening.
Go and see You Won’t Be Alone if you can find it. You will belong to a small, smug elite – and don’t we all want that?
By Sandy George. 6 September 2022. Screen International
Melbourne-based producer Arenamedia is on a roll. The filmmaker-driven independent, run by Australian producer, director and writer Robert Connolly, has three films — Blueback, Emily and Sweet As — playing at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Connolly wrote (with Harry Cripps) and directed 2021 Australian box-office hit The Dry, starring Eric Bana, and his directing credits range from his early social and political critiques The Bank, Three Dollars and Balibo through to family film Paper Planes, International Emmy-nominated TV series The Slap and Deep State for Fox Network Group. As a producer and executive producer, Connolly has also worked on films and series such as The Boys, Romulus, My Father, The Warriors, Gallipoli and Chasing Asylum.
With Connolly often busy directing and writing, Arenamedia has three other full-timers who produce or executive produce: Liz Kearney, Robert Patterson and emerging writer/producer Tara Bilston. James Grandison — who runs the Western Australian office and produced Blueback alongside Connolly and Kearney — Kate Laurie (Petrol) and Chloe Brugale (Because We Have Each Other) are non-exclusive producers at Arenamedia.
“We are lean but have a model that allows a diverse amount of work,” says Connolly, who notes that all Arenamedia producers and other key creatives have a stake in their own productions via partnership arrangements. “The whole producing team share an interest in deeply humanist stories, whether they be dramas, thrillers or comedies… We’re not trying to second-guess the market.”
Like many producers, Connolly believes television has taken over the middle ground of scripted content, forcing a polarisation of cinema. This partly explains Arenamedia’s slate being either bold, hard-to-finance films by new and emerging directors or films of scale, usually driven by Connolly himself.
Environmental drama Blueback — premiering as a special presentation at TIFF — is an example of the latter. It stars Mia Wasikowska, Radha Mitchell and Eric Bana, and is written and directed by Connolly based on Tim Winton’s novel. “It has this epic, dramatic scale but at its heart it is a profound film about saving the ocean, and a commercial film with big environmental ambition,” says Connolly. HanWay Films has pre-sold Blueback to territories including Weltkino Filmverleih in Germany, while Roadshow Films will open it locally on January 1, 2023.
Meanwhile, Emily is actress Frances O’Connor’s feature directing debut and opens TIFF’s Platform section. Emma Mackey plays author Emily Brontë, and the Tempo/Beaglepug production with Arenamedia has been pre-sold widely by Embankment Films, including to Bleecker Street for the US.
Jub Clerc’s directing debut Sweet As is playing in TIFF Discovery, anchored by emerging First Nations actor Shantae Barnes-Cowan’s performance. Investment from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF)’s Premiere Fund meant it received its world premiere there on August 13.
“The whole producing team share an interest in deeply humanist stories, which could be dramas, thrillers or comedies,” says Connolly.
Diverse portfolio
ROBERT CONNOLLY
Meanwhile, Force Of Nature is in post. The sequel to The Dry is again with MadeUp Stories and features five women who go on a hiking retreat in the Australian bush but only four return. “We’re unafraid of making unashamedly Australian work with Australian talent,” says Connolly.
Also in the works is Mike Hailwood Film, based on the UK motorcycle racing legend’s 1978 comeback. Bana is writing and will play Hailwood and direct alongside Connolly. “It will shoot on the Isle of Man, in Victoria and possibly in New Zealand but maybe not until 2024,” says Patterson.
There are also a pair of animated features on the slate: stop-motion Memoir Of A Snail, written and directed by Oscar winner Adam Elliot (Harvey Krumpet), and Magic Beach, based on Alison Lester’s children’s book.
Kearney and Connolly are also involved in Originate, a VicScreen/SBS initiative that aims to champion new voices from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. They will act as executive producers and mentors on the project that goes into production.
Patterson says Arenamedia has strong theatrical ambitions for its projects. It has its own distribution arm CinemaPlus and sales arm North South East West, which makes it easier for the firm to access finance from government agency Screen Australia — whose eligibility criteria stipulates that local distributors and international sales agents must be attached prior to production.
But Arenamedia will partner up where appropriate. Sphere Films and Roadshow picked up Sweet As on completion, for example. Roadshow has signed on for six Arenamedia theatrical releases, including The Dry and Force Of Nature. Madman has Emily locally. “We’re all about the cinema experience for communal consumption,” says Patterson. “We’re not purists and snobs but it’s what we all do and love.”
Playwright Suzie Miller received the Major Award at the AWGIES for her play Prima Facie, part of a career build between Sydney and London which spans 20 plays in 20 years, spread over 70 productions around the world. She has received a lot of support, and was mentored by Edward Albee for three years.
Now Miller is also working in television and film, after a short burst with the small screen over 15 years ago. She has been involved with Hoodlum, Heiress Films, Bunya Productions and Matchbox Pictures.
These are many of the companies known to support writers effectively and understand her achievements. Miller told Screenhub in an interview that, ‘I have a fantastic manager [at HLA], who introduced me to the people she thinks are critical. So it is almost like there’s a mediator between me and who I end up working with. I do have fabulous producers, each one of them sort of hand picked, and we see eye to eye on issues and storytelling. And that’s just been a blessing really.’
A legal impediment
Miller has been a practicing lawyer, enjoying the combat of the courts, and loves ideas. She also has a practice-based PhD in theatre/science for which she wrote a play about a mathematician. There is a particular legal switch between theatre and screen which gives playwrights the irrits.
‘When I was mentored by Edward Albee, he really emphasised how significant it is that playwrights keep the copyright on their product’ she said. ‘No matter who pays for the commission, you can never be sacked as the writer. That idea of being sacked from your own project is terrifying to a playwright because it never happens,’ she said.
‘You can be passed over because someone decides it goes in a direction they can’t program, but you are still paid the commission and you own it outright and you can take it somewhere else.
‘I feel that I’ve been really lucky. Possibly I’ve been blindly going in as a playwright, where you project ownership of the story in some way, because you don’t know any other way,’ said Miller.
At the moment her screen collaborations are her own creations so she is not sharing them with other writers.
Relating to audiences
From a screenmaker’s perspective it seems that playwrights have a different relationship with audiences during the process of creation. They can work with a company, evolve in the collective moment, and show it to audiences very quickly. In screen the process is much more segmented and shared with viewers long after the show is built.
Not so, Miller replied. ‘What people don’t realise about playwrights is the years of writing before you actually get the actors in a room rehearsing. When you are fine tuning and getting notes from producers or directors or dramaturgs.’
‘When I was mentored by Edward Albee, he really emphasised how significant it is that playwrights keep the copyright on their product’
Prima Facie is a one woman show described as ‘an unsparing study of the Australian legal system’s treatment of sexual assault cases’. The play, which opened to standing ovation, concludes with a simple but compelling statement – spoken by the character Tessa, played by Sheridan Harbridge – “something has to change”.’
Miller pointed out she could have written that work any time in the last ten years, but she effectively had to wait until it had a political context. Theatres had to sense the movement and audiences had to grasp the moment too. That is ten years of patient evolution.
Screen producers understand that gap; Miller argues that writers are better off on this side because the development process can be financed earlier in the evolution of a project.
Starting with ideas
In general it seems that playwrights bring an intense sense of dialogue and the ability to explore complex material in very simple ways to the table.
‘Yes, that is what it really does,’ Miller said. ‘And that’s based on the fact that there’s no money. Theatre people often start with broad strokes and themes and metaphoric devices, to think about the whole picture and then bring it down to two people having a conversation.’
‘What people don’t realise about playwrights is the years of writing before you actually get the actors in a room rehearsing.’
When she goes into a film and TV spaces, she finds the opposite. ‘It seems they start with the dialogue and then try to infuse it with the thematic and the bigger picture stuff. [Playwrights] actually have to have all these ideas really flowing around on a metaphoric basis before we can create the characters that actually bring the audience to that place,’ she explained.
‘The development of an idea is about shaping or sculpting as opposed to the writing, as it does require you to think in sort of a few dimensions, rather than just in text. And then you have to, somehow, briefly bring it into text by creating characters that can carry the audience. And that’s why you have quite deep characters. So it’s not because you do that character work that everyone seems to do by lot of background writing, it’s more that you just think about a person, that’s someone who is flawed because of an idea that you want to get.
‘The world building is so exciting, but then the character building is something that I just get so excited about, because you never know how you’re going to trip your character up until you do it. Or how you how your character is going to go into a deeper kind of freefall. About life or a deeper kind of way, where the stakes just keep increasing, until you’re actually at the moment where you’re about to run it, and then it sort of writes itself, and you’re terribly excited about it.’
Miller made an excursion into serial television early in her career. She hated it, and has been cautious about coming back. But it seems that theatre and screen are becoming more and more similar.
‘It feels with film and TV there is a hunger for production and a desire for great content. And I am sure theatre would say that as well. But theatre is more of a hierarchy, and film is more collaborative in a really special way. It’s not just the writer on their own forever. There’s people involved if you want them to be involved – which is an interesting irony because you imagine that would happen in theatre. And it does, to a point, but they just don’t have any money to subsidise writers.’
You weep for them
It seems to me that the screen side has replaced the traditional live performance notion that drama is conflict.
‘Ultimately, I steer us away from the idea of just conflict,’ Miller said. ‘Because young writers see conflict as a fight, but it’s not always an argument – sometimes it’s just conflict with inner tension, it’s like a tension has to be there. And conflict can be like an emotional conflict. You just feel it in your bones, because the characters got such a depth to them. But also I am saying that conflict is actually a sophisticated way of thinking, it’s just about the stakes for someone. But once you’ve had good characters, you cry for them inwardly, you weep for them.’
The streets of St Kilda
Suzie Miller grew up in St Kilda, and was the first generation of her family to go to university. ‘My father wasn’t an emotionally expressive person,’ she explained. ‘But he really loved maps, and he had an elegance with mathematics. And so he sort of brought me into that world really early. So I never had that fear of science and math which lots of girls had. it was always something that was magnificent. It was almost religious for me in a way, like it had a kind of beauty to it.’
She studied immunology at university where she realised the jobs were mostly in areas like pharmacology or research.
‘Really what happened in my final year was is that Chernobyl exploded. I thought, “Oh, this is a huge, I want to have a conversation, I want to turn on the television, I want…” – I realised I am very much a person that loves to be in dialogue.’
To the surprise of her family, she went to law school. ‘But there was a certain point when I was on a program working in King’s Cross with street kids and young drug addicts. And I was going home every night thinking, “Oh my God, this is so overwhelming,” and I turned it into a play about 24 hours in the community. And it went on at the Opera House and in King’s Cross. And I remember people coming up to me saying I had no idea that these people could be my sister or my cousin or they were always just the junkies down the crowd.
‘I realised I am very much a person that loves to be in dialogue.’
‘When you’re actually sitting in the theatre, and you’re forced to relate to the characters, I felt that there was there was a chance for me to express their humanity in a three dimensional way. And so that kind of changed me forever, actually. Because I thought, “Right, I think that’s what I have to do.” It sounds so naïve. That is actually true. I mean, I was in law because I wanted to change the world. And actually, before that, I was hoping to find a cure for cancer when I was a scientist.’
She described the kind of childhood that belongs in a novel. Long before St Kilda gentrified she was a bit hyper-active, eager to learn, hanging out in the streets, working in the chemist and a printers and the hot bread shop (opposite the cake shops in Acland Street) and delivering papers and generally being ‘a bit naughty’. Going home to play chess with her father.
But she talked about her mother in a special way. ‘To be honest, my mum was amazing. She was the most charismatic, beloved person, by all her friends in the community. She was also really badly visually impaired, but she sort of cut through everything and was sort of magnificent.
‘She ended up becoming the Mayor of St Kilda because she was so community minded. Because of that I have never questioned that I would have my own journey.’
David Tiley was the Editor of Screenhub from 2005 until he became Content Lead for Film in 2021 with a special interest in policy. He is a writer in screen media with a long career in educational programs, documentary, and government funding, with a side order in script editing. He values curiosity, humour and objectivity in support of Australian visions and the art of storytelling.
Jon Bell’s ‘The Moogai’ will receive production funding from Screen Australia.
New seasons of Total Control and children’s titles Rock Island Mysteries and Strange Chores, as well as feature films from Northern Pictures, Made Up Stories and Causeway Films are among the nine projects that will share in $12 million of production funding from Screen Australia.
Four feature films, three television dramas, and two children’s titles will be supported through the agency, the likes of which also include a feature version of Jon Bell’s award-winning short The Moogai, and television dramas While the Men are Away and North Shore.
Screen Australia head of content Grainne Brunsdon said there had been a “solid pipeline of impressive applications” so far this financial year, making for an “incredibly competitive” selection process.
“We know there is an appetite for fun, joyful drama content in the international market right now and we’re pleased to announce a number of distinct Australian dramedies and romantic comedies that will engage global audiences as part of this mix,” she said.
“We are also proud to support Australian creatives expanding their skillset, including Northern Pictures producing their first feature film Little Bird and Arcadia bringing to life their first episodic drama with While the Men Are Away for SBS.”
Head of First Nations Angela Bates said the titles supported through her department explored “important themes of intergenerational trauma, colonisation, and power”.
“We are proud to announce two premium dramas today including a new season of Total Control, which continues to not only captivate viewers but also provide important opportunities for emerging filmmakers above and below the line,” she said.
Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths in ‘Total Control’.
The successful projects are as follows:
First Nations
The Moogai: A psychological horror from writer/director Jon Bell, who teams up with producers Mitchell Stanley, and Causeway Films’ Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings. The film follows Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young couple who give birth to their second baby. What should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her children. Fergus desperately wants to believe her but grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. The Moogai is financed with support from Screen NSW. Australian distribution is by Maslow Umbrella 387 Entertainment with Bankside managing international sales.
Total Control (season three): A six-part third series of the ground-breaking drama for ABC starring Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths. In the corridors of power, adversaries Alex Irving and Rachel Anderson battle to control their political destinies. Season two writers Stuart Page and Pip Karmel again team up with producers Darren Dale, Erin Bretherton, and Rachel Griffiths. They are joined by writers Julia Moriarty, Meyne Wyatt, and Debra Oswald. Total Control season three is financed with support from the ABC, with All3Media managing international sales.
Feature Films
Addition: The debut feature film from writer Becca Johnstone and director Marcelle Lunam, who are working with producers Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky, and Jodi Matterson of Made Up Stories, and Cristina Pozzan of Buon Giorno Productions. This romantic comedy follows 30-something-year-old Grace who has a thing for numbers and the inventor Nikola Tesla. But when an average guy, Seamus, comes along, Grace falls for Seamus and her meticulously ordered life begins to unravel around her. To let this love in, she must let go of the things she’s been holding onto. Addition will be distributed in Australia by Roadshow Films, with WME managing international sales.
Went up the Hill: A psychological three-handed thriller played out between only two actors. The story follows Jack as he travels to a remote region in New Zealand to attend the funeral of Elizabeth, the mother who abandoned him as a child. There he meets Jill, Elizabeth’s widow. Both are searching for answers; Jack about why she deserted him and Jill about why she killed herself. But Elizabeth’s spirit lingers and soon finds a way to possess both Jack and Jill’s bodies at night. Caught in a life-threatening nocturnal dance, Jack and Jill must find a way to let go of Elizabeth’s toxic hold, before she pushes them to the edge. This film is a New Zealand/Australian co-production from writer/director Samuel Van Grinsven and writer Jory Anast, who previously collaborated on their debut feature Sequin in a Blue Room. Causeway Films’ Samantha Jennings and Kristina Ceyton are producing alongside Vicky Pope. Went up the Hill has been offered production investment from the New Zealand Film Commission and is financed with support from Spectrum Films, Stage 23, RB Sound, and Screen Canterbury. Vendetta Films is handling local distribution while Bankside Films is on board for international distribution.
Little Bird: A romantic comedy from Northern Pictures about a poor but spirited young woman, who teams up with a burnt-out legend to become one of Australia’s most extraordinary flying teams. Set in the glamorous world of 1930s aviation and based on pilot Nancy Bird Walton, Little Bird is about defying expectations and letting your spirit soar as high as the sky. The creative team features director Darren Ashton, writers Harry Cripps and Hannah Reilly, and producers Joe Weatherstone and Catherine Nebauer. It is financed with support from Screen NSW, with local distribution by Maslow Umbrella 387 Entertainment and Parkland Pictures managing international sales.
Television Drama
While the Men are Away: A queer, revisionist historical dramedy for SBS set in 1940s rural Australia. While the men are off fighting in WWII, the people who have been excluded from power suddenly find themselves running the show. Two Women’s Land Army recruits from Sydney arrive in the country and undergo a heady course in race relations, rural politics, spirituality, sex, and personal growth- oh, and farming. While the Men are Away is created by Alexandra Burke, Kim Wilson, and Monica Zanetti, and written by Wilson, Zanetti, Jada Alberts, Magda Wozniak, Enoch Mailangi, and Sam Icklow. It is produced by Lisa Shaunessy of Arcadia. The series is financed with support from Screen NSW with Red Arrow Studios International managing international sales. The title is the first 8 x 30 drama from SBS Scripted Originals.
North Shore: A six-part crime thriller for Paramount ANZ created by Mike Bullen and directed by Gregor Jordan with writing from Marcia Gardner. Set on and around Sydney Harbour, this series follows the clash of cultures when British and Australian detectives team up to solve a complex murder mystery, and uncover a conspiracy with international political consequences. Produced by Beach Road Pictures, North Shore is financed with support from Screen NSW. It is also produced in association with ITV Studios, which will handle international distribution.
Children’s Projects
Rock Island Mysteries (season two): A 20-episode second series for Network 10, detailing the adventures of Aussie teen Taylor Young and her gang of friends. The group continue their adventurous search for Taylor’s missing Uncle Charlie now that they know he is still alive somewhere within the increasingly mysterious Rock Island. Season two sees the return of directors Jovita O’Shaughnessy and Evan Clarry, and writers Alix Beane, Marisa Nathar, Jessica Brookman, and Trent Roberts. They are joined by writers Matthew Bon, Chloe Wong, Rachel Laverty, and Dave Cartel. Rock Island Mysteries is produced by Timothy Powell and Jonah Klein of Fremantle Australia. The series is financed with support from Screen Queensland, with international sales by ViacomCBS.
The Strange Chores (season three) : A 26-part third season for ABC of Ludo Studio and Media World Pictures’ series about two teenage wannabe monster warrior heroes, Charlie and Pierce, and a spirited ghost girl Que, who master their skills from the ageing monster hunter Helsing by doing his strange supernatural chores. Director Scott Vanden Bosch returns with writers John McGeachin and Luke Tierney, and executive producers Daley Pearson, Charlie Aspinwall and Colin South. They are joined by writers Alix Beane and Magda Wozniak, and producer Carmel McAloon. The series is financed in association with VicScreen and with support from Screen Queensland. It is distributed globally by Boat Rocker.
DOP Bonnie Elliott and director Rachel Ward on the set of ‘Palm Beach’.
Directors working in the streaming landscape and alongside showrunners must take a “humility pill” or “move to the exit”, according to Rachel Ward.
The director of films such as Beautiful Kate and Palm Beach, opened the Australian Directors’ Guild conference, Director’s Cut, on Saturday in a keynote address.
In her speech, she referenced a controversial article she penned for the Nine papers in 2019, where she declared the director “dead” and wrote that today’s “Leans and Hitchcocks and Weirs” aren’t making film, but TV, where they have been “sadly neutered”.
“Producers and showrunners are the new brands, not the directors. They cast, they develop the scripts, they set the tone, they have final cut,” she wrote then.
Ward quipped on Saturday the piece did not win her many industry friends. However, she said she wrote it from her own experience.
Her own dose of “humility” came via a TV series where she “was not permitted to change one word of the script without prior consent”.
“I had to respond to eight pages of notes for a set-up episode from some invisible exec, deep in the streamer’s bowels. My editor was removed. Eventually I was too. And as small as our industry is here, I did not work again for many years,” she told the conference.
However, Ward said her most recent experience on a series “could not have been more fruitful, respectful and collaborative”.
“I am tempted to take back everything I said about our imminent death.
“But the truth is, the ground is shifting. And while we have enjoyed incredible autonomy and an unbridled voice in cinemas for decades, that platform, for most genres, is waning fast.
“Whether we like it or not, streaming – and with it our diminished voices – is the delivery service and the workplace for most directors of the future.
“It won’t be the same. We’ll have to conform to the streamer’s niche markets. We must do coverage execs may want, even if we don’t. We’ll get notes we have no option but to attend to. We won’t get the usual six to eight weeks to play in our edit; I have three days for a 35 minute episode in my latest.
“Of course there is no keeping good talent down. The best will rise. Their pilots will get picked up. Their set-up eps will rate the highest. They will be afforded the classiest fare; or they will develop, write and sell their own shows to streamers, and retain exec power. Either way, these director voices will increasingly be re-centred.”
Rachel Ward addressing the ADG conference.
Indeed, the role of the directors’ voice in a changing creative landscape – and their industrial rights – was among Director’s Cut’s key discussions.
In the “golden age of TV”, it’s not unusual to see six, eight or 10-episode series entirely shot by just one director, and to hear directors speak of how that creative opportunity presents to them like a “long film”.
But on that kind of project, whose voice is at the centre? Is it the director or the creative producer? What happens when you add a showrunner into the mix? Does a director get a say in major production decisions, like casting? Who gets final cut? Should a writer-director be able to be fired off their own project?
The role of the director continued in a panel session following Ward’s address, ‘Director at the Centre’. Moderated by ADG president Rowan Woods, it featured the Emmy-nominated Daina Reid, Bus Stop Films co-founder Genevieve Clay-Smith, Adrian Russell Wills and Partho Sen-Gupta.
Woods began the session by positing that throughout the history of screen storytelling, authorship has been shared in a “jostle-like manner” by directors, writers and producers.
“This movement, or this jostle at the centre is often rooted in a belief that a singularity of vision brings originality and coherence to screen storytelling.”
While collaborative practice was paramount, he added the director leads the interpretation of a text and the process of creating screen language – mise en scene – stating: “We must stand up for what that voice is worth to the screen project and to what it’s worth to the audience.”
There was an emphasis on a directors’ singularity of vision in the TV landscape like never before, Reid said.
However, if she was to have put on the ADG’s conference, she would have called it “Episode 8”, referring to some of her frustrations working under the showrunner model. She noted that often a showrunner’s attention is pulled in multiple directions, leading to script delays.
“I have been in the position where I’ve finished a few series. I never have that script. I wait and I wait and I wait and it doesn’t come.
“It all breaks apart at that point, because a director can’t direct, a producer can’t produce, and the actors can’t act if there’s no script. So if that showrunner has had their focus split so much they can’t deliver it to you, then where are we?”
In terms of how she sees the director’s role, Reid compared herself to a conductor, arguing the role is collaborative.
On that point, Clay-Smith agreed, noting her directorial style was that of “servant leadership”, as opposed to others serving her vision. That is, the creative vision is worked out as a team, with the director’s role then to get the best out of said team.
This idea of allowing others authorship in the creative process has informed her work with the disability community via Bus Stop Films. The concept of the auteur was not something that sat right with her.
“There is a way to have a creative vision and to lead with empathetic leadership; to be able listen to people, to give other people the space and to see them as valued members of the team, not just servants for the machine. That’s where inclusive filmmaking for me really came from; it was the idea of a shoulder-to-shoulder model, not a hierarchical model,” she said.
Contrastingly, Sen-Gupta argued the idea of the auteur needed to be reclaimed and revisited. They encouraged delegates to remember where the idea of the ‘auteur’ came from; a reaction against the studio industrial model in France in the ’50s where directors were seen as craftspeople – they believe we are at similar juncture now.
“I’d like to like to take that word back and own it. Yes, I do call myself an author-director because I am the author of the story and the film. As I go along, I work with different collaborators, all contributing to my vision in their own way. But they come and they go, and I continue to work on that project for a long time,” they said.
Wills added at times, strain on time and money on Australian productions – particularly in episodic TV – can mean a director is made to feel they are just there to “shoot a call sheet”.
“That’s when I start to feel my mental health declines, because I’m after the art; I’m after the performance, the storytelling…I think that’s getting further and further out of reach in this country.”
Adrian Russell Wills, Daina Reid, Genevieve Clay-Smith, Partho Sen-Gupta and Rowan Woods.
In another session, ‘Rights, Representation and Residuals’, RGM’s Jennifer Naughton and Frankel Lawyers’ Greg Duffy spoke to negotiating directors’ rights within the changing landscape.
Duffy said that over the last decade, he had increasingly observed directors getting siloed out of key decisions, though noted that was changing somewhat. Within that, he flagged concerns around showrunners ‘cutting behind’ directors across the US, Australia and the UK.
“You’ve got to be really clear about your vision, how you’re going to present it and what process, contractually, that means. So for instance… What period do you have to exclusively work with the editor to do the director’s cut? Then, who do you deliver to? Who do you take notes from? Do you get a chance to go back and interpret those notes and do another cut, and then who does it go to? That last jump is the bit that’s creating tension.”
Another growing trend was the early termination of directors. Naughton noted examples of clauses in contracts that would allow a director – shooting all episodes of a series – to be fired after the first episode if a platform didn’t like their approach.
Duffy cautioned termination provisions should be careful negotiated, particularly when the director was also the creator of the project. He noted that in feature film, there was a typically process before a director could be terminated: consultation, back and forth and then arbitration. He encouraged directors working in other mediums to also include an arbitration clause in their contracts, allowing a neutral party to resolve decisions quickly.
In terms of residuals, Naughton said that directors rarely see more than upfront fees on streaming projects. Both she and Duffy noted it is very hard for representatives, whether agent, manager or legal, to argue against the global might of streamers in contracting, with the argument often: “It’s been signed and used in 190 countries worldwide.”
In that sense, Duffy said there was a need for industrial action. “Writers, composers and producers around the world have been dealt into that particular pie for a long time. It’s only just started with directors in a small way.”
Further, Duffy noted that most countries around the world, except the US, have moral rights for directors, which involves the right to be credited and the right of integrity. He has started pushing this on contracts with global streamers as Australian directors are afforded these productions under the Copyright Act.
“We don’t want [directors] to be cut behind or pushed out of the of the consultation, collaboration process in the final delivery,” he said. “If the production company wants the director enough, there’s a discussion.”
Naughton said if a director waived the attribution of authorship in their moral rights, it was actually in conflict with their credit clause. “We keep raising this with the various legal teams that represent these companies, and it’s like bashing your head against a brick wall.
“These companies, most of them are coming out of the US. They have an understanding of working with the guilds there. Those guilds have such strong memberships, such strong powers. It very difficult for us to rely on that in this market without that industrial instrument in place. If we’re relying on the guild to step in and say, ‘Well, no, the director needs to be credited, and you can’t cut up their work’, that’s what the ADG should be doing.”
The ADG is finalising a TV director’s agreement with Screen Producers Australia.
The experts weigh in on why, in 2022, we love a rom-com more than ever. By Shona Hendley, Harper’s Bazaar August 2022
Father of the Bride | HBO
IF YOU READ that this was the ‘year of the rom-com,’ you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d hopped in a time machine and travelled back to the 90s.
But alongside the claw clip, bucket hats and denim overalls, all that fashionable from 30 years ago is cool again, including romantic comedies.
With films like The Lost City, Ticket to Paradise, Marry Me, Shotgun Wedding, Fire Island and even a modern remake of Father of the Bride, there is no shortage of rom-coms making it to the silver screen or to streaming platforms this year.
So, what’s behind this rise in popularity? It has a lot to do with the intrinsic feel-good nature of the genre at a time when audiences are needing it says writer and director Mark Poole.
“Especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, audience have been interested in ‘feel-good’ films.”
Ticket to Paradise | UNIVERSAL
While we are still bingeing on true crime and horror — with the likes of Servant, All of Us Are Dead, The Girl from Plainville and The Staircase dominating downloads, the balance is offered and taken up with rom coms such as Bridgerton and Uncoupled proving just as popular by streaming audiences.
But as well as offering a welcome reprieve from the ongoing challenges associated with the pandemic, the uplifting mood and comedic factor generated from rom coms offer both a physical and psychological benefit to the audience says relationship therapist and director of Love Therapy Australia, Lauren Bradley.
“Viewing something positive and enjoyable can boost dopamine levels … Laughter sends a powerful message to our body and brain to relax, through lowering blood pressure, increasing endorphins and decreasing stress hormones.”
They also provide a sense of comfort.
Fire Island | JEONG PARK
“Rom coms reassure an audience that the world remains the same, that the boy will always get the girl (or vice versa) and that a dream wedding is the solution to everyone’s problems. In an uncertain world, audiences seeking certainty can watch a rom com and know that the movie will end on a high note,” says Poole.
And this offers a sense of safety, stability and familiarity which can be comforting and reassuring, especially when our real life isn’t this way believes Bradley.
“Feel-good shows take us back to a time when things were simple and positive, with clean, happy-ending plot lines, and rounded resolution, often exactly what’s missing in our real life.”
LAUGHTER sends a POWERFUL message to our BODY and brain to RELAX
Like pop superstar Kat (Jennifer Lopez) and school teacher Charlie (Owen Wilson) overcoming enormous differences in their careers and lifestyles to find their happy ending in Marry Me.
And while rom coms definitely offer their audience a reliable, happy ending, modern films and tv shows in this genre are also often heavily reliant on nostalgia and this, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Sydney, Bruce Isaacs says can’t be underestimated.
“Nostalgia is one of the strongest impulses we’ve got, and modern rom coms are tapping into this.”
The return of rom com royalty, the actors who starred in 90s rom com blockbusters are just one way the genre is giving a big nod to this.https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ebv9_rNb5Ig
Because alongside the return of Sandra Bullock in The Lost City, JLo in Marry Me and Shotgun Wedding, is none other than Rom Com Queen, Julia Roberts who is starring with George Clooney in a Ticket to Paradise — hello 90s romantic comedy vibes!
“For many people born in the 90s and 2000s echoing back to old favourites takes us back to childhood, which for the fortunate and privileged, was a time of ease and carefree freedom.
We may gravitate toward shows that draw from positive experiences and memories, seeking to replicate that feeling in our lives,” says Bradley.
And while nostalgia is in demand, Poole says that modern rom coms are also becoming more inclusive, another element that the audience is responding to.
NOSTALGIA is one of the strongest IMPULSES we’ve got
“There is an increased demand for movies with a number of strong females in the lead roles. Bridesmaids (2011) arguably began this trend which reflected the increasing power and status of women in the current political, business and domestic environment,” he says.
There are also more examples of rom coms representing different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and the class system, which had often been overlooked in earlier rom coms.
Wedding season | KEN WORONER / NETFLIX
“More recent rom-coms often feature at least one lead character from a non-white background. A contemporary example is Netflix’s Wedding Season (2022), a rom-com set in the context of Indian families living in New York,” Poole says.
While the rom com of the 90s may have had its moment, the rom com of 2022 is definitely here and is firmly in the spotlight.
“This is the only project I’ve ever done which Closer isn’t producer of,” Sophie Hyde tells us during the promotional junket for her latest directorial effort Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an entirely UK production.
Closer Productions is the Adelaide based company that has brought us formally and thematically progressive works such as feature films 52 Tuesdays and Animals, documentaries In My Blood it Runs, Life in Movement, Sam Klemke’s Time Machine and The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone, and series Fucking Adelaide and Aftertaste.
Hyde is co-owner and one of the directors at Closer, and says that it’s “sometimes nice to go and do something else,” with regards to Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack.
“Australia should be producing things like this. This is the only film I’ve ever done that I’m not a producer of… Silly me,” Hyde says about the film, which is getting a big push around the world.
“I think this is exactly the kind of thing we can be producing out of Australia. As producers, we don’t look at the international world. It’s a real tight balance because Australian audiences in the cinema for Australian films are not necessarily the same… We seem to have films that are successful in Australia in cinema, and then not as successful overseas. Or they’re successful overseas and not as successful in the cinema here. I don’t know why. I don’t know how to grapple with that. I just know that I make films that feel like they’re international, but they feel Australian to me too. I hope that we open up and want to see more kinds of stories. That’s always the thing, more different stories … for everybody.”
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is certainly a different kind of story. Essentially a two-hander set in a hotel room, the film stars Emma Thompson as a former schoolteacher of religion, a recent widow who hires an escort, played by Daryl McCormack, so that she can experience delights of the body that she has repressed for so long.
Written by comedic performer Katy Brand, and with Emma Thompson attached, Hyde was sent the script off the back of her work on Animals.
“It was a very early draft of the script, a very short draft. I had a meeting with them and said what I wanted to do with it. Then we worked on the script for 11 drafts quite quickly.
“Katy had sat down and written a story about these two characters. She’d written a script where they met three times, and she knew it was an early draft. She knew she wanted to go further with it, but it was short at 70 pages. It was dialogue. And then we expanded it to be the fourth meeting and changed a bunch of the story.”
When we bring up the fact that the story could have equally lent itself to the stage, Hyde is quick to point out her reasoning for the cinematic approach.
“For me, we’re looking at intimacy between two people and two bodies,” says Hyde. “That never feels like a play because that’s not my art form. All I see is movie, especially when it’s as intimate as this. I think that’s much more the pleasure of a movie where you can be close to someone, you can feel with them as opposed to looking at a distance. These kinds of films are the ones that I think of as the most cinematic in some ways. I never felt like I wanted to make it bigger. There was always a sense of emotional terrain, and the landscapes of their faces and their bodies was enough.”
Speaking of intimacy, did Hyde work with an intimacy coordinator on the film? No, though I think that it’s such a good advent in film. There’s been so many instances where actors have been really mistreated. I think as a director, in the most part, it means you can push harder for what you want because you know you are safe in the boundaries.
“With this though, Emma and Daryl and I talked about it a lot, and we were just really comfortable with the idea that we had each other. And another voice felt like too much for this. I think I work in some of the same ways that an intimacy coordinator does, which is very much about continual, constant, enthusiastic consent. That’s something that is present all the time in the shoot, and in the way that I work with actors. But on something bigger, where I’m not just dealing with two people, I would bring someone in.”
Working on such a contained project, shot in 19 days with a minimal crew, also allowed Hyde to work at her best. “I had a monitor, and I was offset a lot, just outside the hotel room. As a director, I have to have direct line to my actors, even if I’m a long way from them, because I go to them a lot. If anyone stands in front of me and the actors, I get really annoyed. It’s one of the only things that annoys me on a set, actually. That’s really important to me, that direct line to them and the sense that I can get to them fast, as soon as they cut.”
Even though this was not technically a Closer production, Sophie Hyde certainly had the support of her team, including her partner Bryan Mason [above, with Sophie on set], who was cinematographer and editor on Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. “We spend so much time together developing, and he’s there from the very start,” Hyde says. “I had really strong ideas about this film, about the way that light would be in each shot and the way that it would look, the neutrality of the space. And so we just had to build the set with the production designer, and to make sure that we could get those kind of shots. It wasn’t storyboarded, but we knew exactly how we wanted it to look all the time.
“A lot of our [Closer] team helped in the development of the script too. And post is a lot of the same team, so you still have the same DNA in a project like this.”
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is in cinemas August 18, 2022
From a unique and authentic voice comes the highly anticipated feature debut Shayda, by writer and director Noora Niasari, starring Iranian actress Zar Amir-Ebrahimi (Tehran Taboo, Morgen sind wir frei) with major production investment from Screen Australia.
Melbourne-based Niasari is well known for her award-winning short films including Waterfall which screened at the 66th Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) where it was nominated for best short film, Tâm and feature documentary Casa Antúnez. HanWay Films has come on board to handle international sales and distribution, UTA Independent Film Group is representing the U.S. sale.
Shayda is produced by Vincent Sheehan (The Hunter, Jasper Jones, Animal Kingdom, Lore) through his new production venture Origma 45. Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini at Dirty Films (Apples, Carol, Little Fish) are executive producers. Shayda received major production investment from Screen Australia in association with The 51 Fund and financed with support from VicScreen and the MIFF Premiere Fund, while local distribution in Australia and New Zealand will be handled by Madman Entertainment. The 51 Fund (Cusp and the upcoming Shari & Lamb Chop) provides financing to feature films of any genre that are directed by women, with the goal of providing support to the most exciting female voices within the creative industry. Caitlin Gold, Lindsay Lanzillotta, Naomi McDougall Jones, Lois Scott, and Nivedita Kulkarni also serve as executive producers on behalf of 51.
Heads of production will include Cinematographer and Niasari’s closest collaborator Sherwin Akbarzadeh (Stories From Oz). Osamah Sami (Ali’s Wedding), Leah Purcell (The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson), Mojean Aria (The Enforcer), Jillian Nguyen (Expired) and Rina Mousavi (Alexander) will star alongside Amir-Ebrahimi. Production will commence on 11 July in Australia.
A young Iranian mother (Amir-Ebrahimi) and her six-year-old daughter find refuge in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowrooz) which is celebrated as a time of renewal and re-birth. Aided by the strong community of women at the refuge they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities, only to find themselves facing the violence they tried so hard to escape.
Vincent Sheehan commented, “Shayda is a powerful, timely and important story to be telling and Noora’s unique Iranian/Australian voice as a director will be a potent combination. I am thrilled to be working with such a quality stable of producers and market partners with a shared passion and commitment to backing Noora and her story.”
Screen Australia’s Head of Content Grainne Brunsdon said, “Rising talent Noora Niasari has created a well-crafted script, vibrant characters and an authentic world and Screen Australia is delighted to support her debut feature through development and into production. Shayda offers a unique perspective on a story with universal themes of survival and the cost of freedom.”
Dirty Films also noted, “We first encountered Noora’s talent watching her short films, The Phoenix and Tâm. We were blown away by her precise, emotionally-driven filmmaking and her capacity to draw out gripping performances. We are excited to be working alongside Vincent again to help Noora fulfil her bold and distinct vision for Shayda.”
HanWay Films MD Gabrielle Stewart said, “We are delighted to be part of an incredible team supporting Noora Niasari’s feature debut. Noora has written a beautiful piece that reflects much of her own experience of moving to Australia as a child. There is an intimacy to her storytelling that brings to life what it is to honour the traditions of the culture you have left behind as a mother raising her young child, whilst together bravely embracing a whole new one.”
The Australian Director’s Guild (ADG) will hold a one-day conference in Sydney next month for directors and industry members.
Carrying the theme of Cutting Through The Noise, Director’s Cut will feature panels exploring the director’s role in a changed streaming landscape and how emerging directors can bridge the gap to paid work.
Delegates will also hear from internationally successful directors about opportunities outside Australia and have the opportunity to discuss the value of impact strategies for both unscripted and scripted productions, while also getting updates on their rights and representation.
Other topics for the event range from looking at how sets can be made more sustainable and ensuring that they are a safe space for diverse cast and crew to how directors can work with funding agencies, networks, and streamers.
Leading Australian director, Cate Shortland (Black Widow) is the ADG’s guest for First-Hand, an in-depth conversation that will delve into her work in Australia and overseas.
Other speakers include ADG president Rowan Woods, Matt Moore, Shawn Seet, Partho Sen-Gupta, Katrina Irawati Graham, Monica Zanetti, and Tin Pang with more to be confirmed over the coming weeks.
ADG executive director Alaric McAusland said the event was aimed at “recentering the director’s voice and underscoring their leadership and significant creative contributions to today’s screen industry”.
“It’s been several years since we staged a conference and post-covid there is an enormous appetite for our members to connect with each other and across the industry, this was recently evidenced with our 2021 annual awards oversubscribed three times over last December,” he said.
“Our reimagined conference will be a truly unique opportunity for Australian directors to hear directly from key industry stakeholder and their director colleagues as they deep dive into the current trends and issues facing directors working in Australia and internationally.”
Included in the ticket prices will be a webinar, to be held later in the year, which is a collaboration with Screen Well. The webinar will look at the ways in which a director can assist with the wellbeing of their crew/cast and how to manage work/life balance.
Director’s Cut will be held in-person at SUNSTUDIOS in Alexandria on August 20 with an accompanying live stream.
The conference program will head to Western Sydney before touring nationally over the next 12 months.
