All posts by Mark

About Mark

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.

Tim Ferguson talks funny

Screenwriting

Last year, prominent comedian and comic genius Tim Ferguson talked to the Australian Writers’ Guild about how to write narrative comedy.

Tim Ferguson, comedy legend and writing guru, spoke to the Victorian branch of the AWG last night. He said he felt privileged to have the eye of the screenwriting storm that was before him, and told us the rules for writing comedy that we ignore to our peril.

Tim Ferguson is a legend of television and comedy performance since the days of the Doug Anthony All Stars, and a veteran performer and writer on shows like the DAAS Kapital, the Big Gig, Good News Week and lately WTF – With Tim Ferguson, in both Australia and the UK. Tim has recently penned a definitive manual on comedy, The Cheeky Monkey – Writing Narrative Comedy. The volume covers everything Tim knows about comedy writing for performance, which is obviously a lot.

Continue reading Tim Ferguson talks funny →

Best Adapted Screenplay vanishes from AACTA broadcast?

Film, Latest News, Screenwriting, , , ,

I’ve recently heard that the entire Best Adapted Screenplay category of the new AACTA Awards, formerly the AFI Awards, never made it to air via Channel 9’s broadcast. Apparently Stephan Elliott’s introduction to the award, during which he came out, was so long and controversial that audiences never got to see Shaun Grant receiving his gong for Snowtown.

True or false?

Any Questions For Ben?

Film

Working Dog, who of course made the hugely successful films The Castle and The Dish, have come up with a new film after a 12 year break, (from film, that is). Any Questions For Ben? is being released on February 9 in Australia.

There is a scathing review of the film on Crikey. Here’s the link:  http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2012/01/30/any-questions-for-ben-movie-review-none-for-ben-plenty-for-working-dog/

Personally, I have huge respect for Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and Michael Hirsch at Working Dog, so I’m willing to head down to the cinema to check it out. And I love the way the film apparently features Melbourne as it has evolved over the past ten years.

However it remains to be seen whether Luke Buckmaster’s review is on target or not. Jim Schembri’s review of Stephan Elliott’s A Few Best Men seems out of kilter with it’s opening weekend takings of $1.9 million.

Snowtown wins Best Adaptation Screenplay at AACTAs

Film, Screenwriting

Shaun Grant’s screenplay Snowtown has won the first Best Adaptation Screenplay in the first ever AACTA Awards this week.

It’s significant as it’s the first feature Shaun has written. Also Shaun was a driving force in getting the film made, optioning the book on which the film was based and finding a producer in Warp Films.

Justin Kurzel also took the AACTA gong for best direction for Snowtown. And some believe the film might have taken out Best Film if it wasn’t such a gruelling viewing experience, as it had to be to tell the story of the barrel murders.

Mark