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.
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Fremantle Australia has named Greg Woods as CEO while outlining a new company structure that will bring its entertainment, reality, and gameshows under Eureka Productions.
The restructure means Chris Culvenor and Paul Franklin’s Eureka Productions, which Fremantle increased its majority stake in last year, will take over production on titles such as Australia’s Got Talent, Australian Idol and Farmer Wants A Wife.
Prior to taking the top job, Woods served as Fremantle’s chief financial officer for nearly 14 years.
He said he was “incredibly excited” to be taking the reins at the company.
“I am so very proud to be working with the most talented and passionate people who will shape the irresistible content of the future,” he said.
Fremantle CEO Jennifer Mullin said he was well suited to the top job.
“Greg has been a key part of the Fremantle Australia leadership team for 13 years, this is a natural progression at an exciting time for the business,” she said.
“And I have known and worked with Chris and Paul for many years and have no doubt that our entertainment catalogue in Australia will continue to thrive in their hands.”
Once upon a time, a young writer looking to cut their teeth might have started out in an entry-level role on a series like A Country Practice, McLeod’s Daughters or All Saints.
Those long-running dramas provided a training ground for aspiring scribes, offering long-term employment in large teams where they could build skills and networks.
Today, with the exception of flagship serials Home & Away and Neighbours, long-running drama has all but disappeared from our screens (and as is well documented, Neighbours‘ future is uncertain). With it, the traditional training opportunities for new writers and directors have been reduced; the trend towards higher budget, shorter-run premium drama means there is often less capacity for producers and broadcasters to take a risk on a new face.
Over the past five years, the Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) has observed the demand for competent note-takers and script co-ordinators has often exceeded supply, while at the same time, aspiring writers with limited networks are unsure as to how to get a foot in the door.
“There is no formal tertiary training for note-takers and script coordinators,” AWG professional development manager Susie Hamilton tells IF.
“It’s the sort of thing that people learn on the job. The problem is, how do you get that job without first gaining the skills? And when you do get the chance to be a note-taker in a writers’ room, how do you know what’s expected of you and how to deliver what is required?”
To redress the conundrum, with the support of Screen NSW, AWG has opened applications today for First Break – a three-day workshop program that will cover note-taking, script coordinating and the basics of a writers’ room.
While only open to NSW residents at this time, the guild hopes to roll the program out across Australia over the next year.
First Break builds upon previous note-taker and script coordinating workshops run by the AWG, while also combining them with “vital training in writers’ room etiquette and process”. First Break is designed to be practical, and lead to paid work.
“The role of the note-taker is a crucial one in a writers’ room. Creating a perfect set of notes requires a specific set of skills, and nailing it requires a completely different approach from screenwriting,” says Hamilton.
“The first workshop will guide participants in how to create detailed and accurate notes. The second workshop will explain what a script coordinator does and how they operate within a production office. Finally, they will learn the etiquette, expectations and hierarchy of a writers’ room. This is a vital element of First Break, ensuring that participants are well placed to take full advantage of the opportunity to work in a writers’ room and to build on it.”
The program will be facilitated by Chris Corbett (Halifax: Retribution, My Life is Murder, Newton’s Law, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) and SBS development executive Catherine Kelleher, who has worked as a script coordinator, producers assistant and note-taker on series such as The Letdown, Glitch, A Place to Call Home, The Heights, The Secret She Keeps and Little J & Big Cuz.
Following the successful completion of these three workshops, each writer will be added to the AWG’s Pathways website on the new ‘First Break’ tab.
The cohort will then be promoted to industry using the AWG’s databases including its 9,700 subscribers to the AWG newsletter, the 500+ registered users of the Pathways portal (producers, directors, writers and industry professionals) and the 1,000 subscribers to the Pathways Newsletter.
The need for programs like First Break seems highlighted as Neighbours‘ future hangs in doubt.
“Neighbours is jokingly referred to as Neighbours University for a reason,” Hamilton says.
“It’s been a place where, for decades, emerging talent have been able to learn necessary skills and hone their talent.
“If we lose Neighbours from our screens, there will be even fewer opportunities for new writers and that will be to the detriment of the Australian film and TV industry now and well into the future.
“The AWG is constantly evolving its approach to developing professional development opportunities for writers. The industry landscape is changing, and we are adapting our offering to complement it. The idea behind First Break was to fill that ‘training ground’ gap left by the absence of long-running series.”
Applications close for First Break at 5pm, March 25, with the successful 12 applicants to be announced May 4. First Break will be held via Zoom over the first three Saturdays in June 2022 and applicants must be able to attend each of the workshops on the set dates. Apply here.
Facebook is struggling to retain users, fending off regulation, trying to pivot to VR, and paying a massive wage premium to attract the workers it needs to make any of this happen. The company is on the ropes
‘After years of slowing US growth, Facebook just experienced its first-ever US shrinkage, which precipitated a $230bn stock crash, the largest in global corporate history.’ Photograph: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
I’ve been praying for Facebook’s collapse ever since it attained liftoff. In a 2007 article, I predicted that “your creepy ex-co-workers will kill Facebook” by demanding to know why you won’t “friend” them, prompting an exodus to the next platform. That was the social network cycle back then: a new network opens, and you and the people you genuinely like enjoy a rollicking group chat until all the people you have to pretend to like show up.
That’s the double-edged sword of products that rely on “network effects” – the economists’ term for a product that gets better when more people use it. Sure, you might join Facebook because your friends are all there (and more people might sign up because you’re there), but that also means that every time your friends leave Facebook, it’s a reason for you to leave, too.Advertisementhttps://c0100bfd1eb1c7da3e61c5a2da581cac.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
My prediction failed. For a decade and a half, Facebook resisted the fate of all the social networks that preceded it. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why: it cheated. The company used investor cash to buy and neutralize competitors (“Kids are leaving Facebook for Insta? Fine, we’ll buy Insta. We know you value choice!”). It allegedly spied on users through the deceptive use of apps such as Onavo and exploited the intelligence to defeat rivals. More than anything, it ratcheted up “switching costs.”
“Switching costs” is another economic term: it means “the price you pay when you switch from one service to another.” Switching from Facebook to a rival means saying goodbye to the communities, friends and customers you hang out with on the platform. Normally, tech has really low switching costs: want to change from T-Mobile to Verizon? Just port your number. Your friends don’t even have to know you did; they can still call you and you them.
Tech’s rock-bottom switching costs are what kept the industry so dynamic in its early days. Microsoft could deploy an army of corporate salespeople to turn Microsoft Office into an industry standard, then Apple could come along and reverse-engineer the Office formats and make the interoperable iWork office suite. That means that Windows users could switch to the Mac and open their Word docs in Pages, their Excel spreadsheets in Numbers and their PowerPoints in Keynote.
It’s different for Facebook. The company’s ascendancy coincided with an overall concentration in the tech sector, and, with it, laws that protected winners of the latest round of the interoperability wars from new challengers. Apple was able to reverse-engineer its way out of the Microsoft Office trap, but woe betide a company that tries the same trick on Apple – try to make a program that lets you run iPhone apps on an Android device, or read the media files you buy in Apple’s book, movie or music stores, and you will quickly discover that the law is now on the sides of the giants, not the upstarts.
That same legal shift is how Facebook has kept its switching costs high. Fifteen years ago, it was safe to make a Facebook-MySpace bridge that would let you leave MySpace but stay in touch with your friends there by scraping your MySpace inbox and moving the waiting messages to your Facebook inbox. Try to build one of those bridges today – blasting an escape tunnel through Facebook’s walled garden – and Facebook will sue you until the rubble bounces.
But high switching costs have their limits. If you make your service terrible enough, a certain number of users will find the cost of switching preferable to the pain of staying. And as users leave, network effects start to work in reverse: though every user that joins makes your service more valuable, every user that leaves makes the service less valuable. If you’re only on Facebook to stay in touch with a small group of friends, each one of those friends who departs makes it easier for you to make the jump, too. And once you go, it’s even easier for the rest of the group to bail.
This is very bad news for Facebook. After years of slowing US growth, Facebook just experienced its first-ever US shrinkage, which precipitated a $230bn stock crash, the largest in global corporate history.
Though most of Facebook’s users are global, its US users generate far more profit than users in the rest of the world. Losing a US user is expensive. Even more important: the US is Facebook’s home base, and its US user base is its main bargaining chip in resisting US regulation, and in securing US support in its regulatory battles abroad.
Speaking of regulatory battles abroad: Facebook is on the brink of having its business model declared illegal under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Fending off that scenario will depend on vast capital expenditures and friendly European regulators, and Facebook’s running short on both. Oh, and Europeans are Facebook’s second most valuable users.
Admittedly, when a company’s shares decline, it’s not like the company itself has lost any money – those losses hit shareholders, not the business itself. However, Facebook’s costs and share-price are intimately bound together, thanks to tech firms’ reliance on stock grants as a way of scoring a discount on their wage-bills. Engineers, lawyers, and other high-paid, in-demand professionals are glad to take much of their compensation in stock, betting that the company’s share price will balloon and that they can cash out their shares and keep their winnings, thanks to the tax-preferred status of capital gains – in most of the world, the wages you earn for doing useful work are taxed at a much higher rate than the winnings you get from lucky bets on stocks.
Even before its stock fell off a cliff, Facebook was mired in a multi-year hiring crisis. Nobody wanted to work for Facebook because it’s a terrible company that makes terrible products that everyone hates and only use because the company has rigged the system to punish users for switching.
Facebook was already paying a wage premium, offering sweeteners to in-demand workers in exchange for checking their consciences at the door. Those sweeteners mostly took the form of shares, which means that all those morally flexible “Metamates” got a hefty pay-cut when the company’s stock price fell off a cliff. Expect a lot of them to leave – and expect the company to have to pay even more to replace them. Companies with falling share prices can’t use share grants to attract workers.
Facebook is now famously trying to pivot (ugh) to virtual reality to save itself. It’s an expensive gambit. It’s going to alienate a lot of its users. It’s going to alienate a lot of its in-demand workers. It’s going to freak out a lot of regulators.
Meanwhile, the switching costs for people who want to jump ship keep getting lower. It’s not merely that fewer and fewer of the people you want to talk with are still on Facebook. Even if there’s someone whose virtual company you can’t bear to part with, lawmakers in the US and Europe are working on legislation that would force Facebook to allow third parties to “federate” new services with it. That would mean that you could quit Facebook and join an upstart rival – say, one by a privacy-respecting nonprofit or even a user-owned co-op – and still exchange messages with the communities, customers and family you left behind on Facebook’s sinking ship.
For 15 years, I’ve been waiting for Facebook to suffer the fate of every network-effects-driven success story – to experience the precipitous decline that is triggered by people leaving the service and taking the value they brought to it with them. Facebook now has to somehow retain users who are fed up to the eyeballs with its never-ending failures and scandals, while funding a pivot to VR, while fending off overlapping salvoes of global regulatory challenges to its business model, while paying a massive wage premium to attract and retain the workers that it needs to make any of this happen. All that, amid an exodus of its most valuable users and a frontal regulatory assault on its ability to extract revenues from those users’ online activities.
Stein’s Law holds that “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Facebook can’t go on forever.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, including the forthcoming book Chokepoint Capitalism, with Rebecca Giblin, about monopoly and fairness in the creative arts labor market. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
Melanie Killingsworth outlines the top skills needed for directors working between commercials, shorts and longer narrative projects.
by Melanie Killingsworth. ScreenHub. 22 February 2022
A while back, I was on set directing a commercial product spot. At lunch everything was going smoothly. Three hours later, a bolt from the blue hit in the form of a snap lockdown. Not with a day or two notice, but five hours. Instead of finishing the day’s shotlist, ‘Hollywood wrapping’ our set overnight, and coming back the next day to finish shooting the rest, we had a few short hours to shoot everything we could, and pack down and bump out and get home.
Because we were working with a child as well as adults, much of the day had been structured around child legal requirements for limited hours and long breaks at regular intervals. Shots had been scheduled accordingly, so the footage we had was certainly not enough to form a complete piece. While my producer talked to the DP and crew about what time and assistance they’d need to get packed up, I talked to the client liaison about what sections of the final video they MOST wanted and needed. We decided we had about two hours to roll, and would shoot the rest of the adult’s parts and ‘cheat’ a few scenes with an adult instead of the planned child.
I picked a half dozen shots from my existing shotlist, came up with a few new ones, then presented it all to my DP and asked what order was best for set-up efficiency. We flew through the work as fast as could be safely done, packed up, and got out, everyone a bit in shock but working like the consummate professionals they are.
As we worked through the edit remotely (which included me trying to read notes more chickenscratch-y than usual), we were able to put together about 85% of the planned content, including all the most crucial parts, from only 50% of the shoot. I was happy, but most importantly the client was thrilled.
While execution is absolutely down to having a great team around me, if my skills hadn’t been up to par, we could have floundered more, or not had a coherent end product. Much of what enabled me to pivot quickly was my experience in the creative space, from directing narrative fiction to story producing reality TV.
In the last year I’ve been doing more corporate and commercial directing work than before, including work with bigger, international companies. I’m not about to dump narrative fiction for commercial directing; they are different worlds, and my heart and skills are best in the former. But many of the skills overlap, and we can learn a lot from one which carries over to the other. I want to look at three of the biggest crossover skills: turning on a dime, holding on not-too-tightly to your vision, and valuing your team.
(For the sake of this post we’ll take budget out of the equation. Of course, you can sometimes solve by ‘throwing money at the problem’ but sometimes you can avoid money loss if you’re good enough at the above skills, which are required on anything from student shoots to Marvel movies. Plenty of big narrative/fiction shoots have money piles as big as corporate or commercial work, but most of us work our way up through both worlds, and the learning curve at comparable levels is the same. The three skills are useful at every budget level in both worlds.)
1. Turning on a Dime
It’s broad generalisation to say ‘creative filmmaking faces more unique roadblocks than corporate or commercial filmmaking’ but it’s often true. Roadblocks pop up more in creative spaces because filming duration and conditions are drastically different.
Corporate spots and commercials usually run for days, not months. They are often in controlled environments or studio spaces. The team is usually a handful of people instead of dozens to hundreds. If an actor falls ill, they are replaced. If a location is unavailable, you can use a similar one nearby which doesn’t need to ‘match’ anything. People work to the shoot’s strict schedule and needs or they aren’t hired for the project.
On long TV fiction shoots and films such as documentaries, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, anything the elder Coppola makes, etc., you shoot in blocks spread over years. During that time, the DP needs a week off for their daughter’s wedding; the 1AD lands in the hospital; an actor’s family member passes away; catering gives half the crew a nasty case of norovirus; some producer in a swanky office 1,000 miles away very wrongly decides to fire half your PA team to save money; a script rewrite or wardrobe disaster necessitates reshooting a scene from weeks ago; a freak accident wipes multiple SD cards. All this and more has happened on shoots I’ve worked. (The footage wipe was ascribed to ‘super powerful magnets’ and ‘a haunted location’ – your theory may vary.) All these required rejiggering everything from schedule to budget to contracts to the script itself, sometimes all of the above.
While many logistics are handled by wonderful ADs and producers, a director must shift gears, too. What does it mean for your shotlist and blocking rehearsal if you’re filming in a backup location? How do you engage with actors if you’re shooting a scene which was meant to be two weeks from now, the dialogue has changed, or they need emotional preparation before shooting heavy material? What do you do when the lensing looks nothing like what pre-vis promised? How do you react if you’re halfway through scene coverage and realise you screwed up, and the shot you’ve spent 40 minutes setting up crosses a line and will cause problems in editing? What if halfway through a scene you’re out of time and must drop three of your remaining four shots: which shot is more important for the edit? the emotional beats? the character arc? What do you do if the answer to those questions are all different shots?
You have to think fast, send a quick prayer to all gods you do or don’t believe in, and commit to your choices. Then, however you feel about it, confidently, clearly communicate your choices to all parties.
Depending on the situation, you or your AD may make an announcement: ‘OK folks, we are going to [insert overview here], so let’s start with [specific actionable items your AD can facilitate]’. EG ‘We are going to drop the wides and concentrate on a medium two-shot. After that we’ll pick up one closeup of Actor A’s hand stubbing out her cigarette. IF we have time we will do one of the two planned closeups on Actor B. While camera and lights get set for the two-shot, the director will chat to the actors. Everyone else see department heads for information about bumping out anything we don’t need.’ Ask if anyone has questions, then light a fire under it.
Which is exactly what we did when lockdown fell like a hammer smashing all our beautiful preparation to bits. Two minutes of hand-wringing and double checking that we couldn’t, in fact, finish the shoot as planned. Then deep breath, massive pivot, decisions and communication flying through the air.
When you’re moving that quickly, you’ve got to be pragmatic and let go of things including shots you really wanted, emotional beats your actor would have nailed, lighting setups you had painstakingly studied. The better you know your creative vision and your processes, the better you’ll be able to jettison shots and scenes as needed. It won’t be painless, but it will get you through.
‘Know what you want’ applies to all aspects of directing. I once worked on a short film with a director who had a firm grasp on what performance he wanted from the actors … and nothing else. He didn’t know what angles or framing he preferred, he didn’t care about makeup and wardrobe, he had no strong opinions on lighting and colour. He thought he would ‘leave that up to those departments.’
Perhaps he even congratulated himself on being generous or ‘collaborative,’ but all he did was cause confusion. It created a power vacuum which led to the DP essentially directing all shots, the gaffer trying to direct the lighting, makeup being done wrong for the lighting, etc. (It finally climaxed in one of the single biggest fuckups I have ever seen on a film set, which would have turned full-on fistfight had not a crew member intervened. But that’s a story for a different time.) Point is: know something about every department, and care about all of it.
Know and care, and be willing to hold out for what matters. Lulu Wang was given offers to make The Farewellwith a few key changes, including casting a Big Name White Guy. She stuck to her guns, passing on Netflix to eventually sign with A24 because they let her keep the core of her vision.
Absolutely know what you want and be willing to fight for it in this industry, so long as you retain willingness and ability to drop the fight when it becomes harmful or counter-productive. The tricky part is being careful a firm grip doesn’t become a stranglehold.
2. Hold On (not too tightly) To Your Creative Vision
Every week filmmakers see KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND GO FOR IT AND ACCEPT NO COMPROMISE! messages, especially around our careers, double especially around ‘directorial vision.’ Tales of Fincher’s insistence on not rolling until every spec of dust is exactly where he demands, and Kubrick’s perfectionism, are held up as aspirational. But remember:
Film is compromise, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling their bad producer services.
Compromise is inherent in filmmaking. Some compromise is forced by budget or circumstances, while some is solely creative. If Coppola compromised a dozen different ways (probably 100 fewer than he should have) to make Apocalypse Now, you can compromise on your shoot.
Holding on to your vision can be the right choice, even if it is more expensive, postpones your projects for years, makes you despair, or isn’t understood by anyone around you. But lack of compromise can also result in your project never getting made, being so much worse than if you had let experienced voices make changes, or missing when something better presents itself particularly when it comes to casting someone who wasn’t what you originally envisioned.
So, how do you know when to change and when to stand firm? Lean in close … closer …
FUCK UP. A lot. Make a mistake in accepting feedback when you should have held your original idea. Reject someone’s suggestion and spend the rest of your life looking at that short film and knowing “that scene would have been perfect had I just done what they said.” Learn by doing.
Compromise takes practice, and corporate and commercial sets are great places to get that practice. You’ll have ample opportunities to compromise, and you have other masters to answer to. Whether you’re hired to direct because the client likes your vision, your pitch, or your former work, you’re not really there to direct YOUR VISION (TM). You’re there to best shape a thousand disparate elements into their vision, hopefully while still holding your artistic choices. Their vision is shaped by everything from market research, to what their boss wants, to the latest video dropped by their competitor last Friday, to technical specs from their web designer. You must be malleable, letting go of what you really super duper want even if it is truly more brilliant, or you just ‘feel it in your heart,’ or it drives an actual story while they’re keen for ‘cool clips randomly strung together.’ In this way you can learn when to compromise, and how to do it effectively and gracefully.
On corporate sets you get input from 18 directions and mostly have to concede, but on a creative set where the buck stops with YOU, who do you accept the input from? The answer is: anybody! Does your grip have an idea how to give your lighting a sharper edge? Does your PA think a line of dialogue would be more authentic if you swap a word for a different slang term? Maybe your grip recently did something similar, your PA is from a similar background to your character, or perhaps they simply have good ideas of their own accord. Take those ideas on board. If your vision is strong enough, it will stand up to the ideas which won’t work, and if you’ve put a good team around you they will have ideas and vision which will add value merely by being considered, even if not enacted.
Which brings us to:
3. Valuing Your Team
This is, sadly, something the creative side often doesn’t do as well as most corporate and commercial gigs. Many times a commercial client won’t have a strong grasp of every department’s job, so they’re more likely to let professionals exercise their skills, an appreciation sometimes missing in film directors. I believe a director must know a good deal about every department, and a lot about at least one key department (acting, editing, cinematography, art design, etc) but it’s equally as important we realise we are not the editor, DP, or actor.
We work with them, not above them. When working with them, we must value them. I don’t mean “pick a team who are very good at their jobs,” a lot of creatives of course want that. We must truly consider their input, treat them with respect, express our gratitude, and be professional.
Treating cast and crew with respect and working with-not-above them are inextricable. It should go without saying never to yell at or be inappropriate with cast and crew, but I’ve been on sets so I’ll say it again: never yell at or be inappropriate with your cast and crew.
Express your gratitude. Do this at the end of a shoot, when someone goes above and beyond (if you don’t notice some of these moments, you’re not a good director), and do it on the regular. If you can’t say thank you to craft services accomodating your allergies and making your coffee, the AC staying late to wrangle data, or the film student or teamster driving you around, if you don’t appreciate what your producer is doing behind the scenes, look harder and practice. No excuses.
Corporate environments can be as toxic or thoughtless as any other, but most short corporate gigs at the least send a ‘thank you’ for a job well done, in-person recognition, bottle of wine, etc. Perhaps because it’s more out of their wheelhouse they’re more conscious of noting the appreciation for ‘outside’ talent, but it’s a gesture which should be extended to all sets. It’s nice to have your talent and hard work appreciated!
Last, the biggest one: it’s not just about considering everyone’s input and saying and meaning thank you, but running your set like a professional space, WHICH IT IS. Corporate shoots often stay up to the standards of the company which is hiring a team for the shoot, but I’ve been on a lot of creative sets with horrible practices: emotional abuse; wanton fire hazards; asking crew to endanger themselves; expectations of working 16-18 hour days while logging 12 on the time card. Often this is covered with a guise of ‘creativity’ and ‘doing it because you love it.’ Sincerely: fuck all that.
Now, I’ve worked for free in my career (as almost anyone in the arts has and must, unfortunately), and some of those sets have been wonderful experiences for learning, networking, friendship, creativity, or all of the above. If you are asking people to work for free or no pay, you have the exact same responsibility – I argue even higher – to keep your crew safe, well fed, and within reasonable working hours. This topic could be an entire book, but I’ll lay out a few things under the umbrella of ‘be damn professional’ and wrap up.
If a crew member isn’t performing up to scratch, give them a chance to change along with actionable ways to do so. If they won’t or can’t, improve, let them go. It’s neither fair nor safe to everyone else to keep them on.
When you’re wrong, say sorry. We all have bad days, say thoughtless things, are distracted or dismissive. Don’t fall into the trap of ‘it’s a high pressure environment’ or ‘they probably didn’t notice’ or ‘that boom op is only on set today.’ Good leadership is never above apologising, publicly if necessary. You’re the director. Learn to lead, or get out of the way.
Keep to your plans within reason-ish. Your crew prepare based on your shotlist, your schedule, your script. If you change on every whim, your team can’t work to their potential. That said, film sets are spaces for creativity and spontaneity, and if you can’t accept better options when presented; reread the section about about not holding on TOO tight. Magic happens, and is wonderful, but don’t mistake “making it all up on the go” for “magic.” Accept things will go wildly wrong and require you to ditch your plans or go wildly right and require drawing new blueprints on the spot.
If you say ‘thank you’ every five minutes, get a taco truck for series wrap, buy every PA a ticket for Friday raffle, and never scream at anyone, BUT don’t think grips deserve a living wage, don’t intervene when the producer throws a tantrum at the scripty, demand a boom op do something unsafe, or insist on 16 hour days knowing crew have to get themselves home: you don’t value your team, and you shouldn’t work in this industry til you can.
More than most industries, filmmaking is ‘learn on the job,’ and the high attrition rate is partly because you don’t know whether it’s for you until you’re already in the deep end. Directing is something you can learn about in the classroom and through film study, but can’t truly learn until you’re doing, doing regularly, and failing at sometimes. But if you’re looking for ways to develop your directing skills (as well as, let’s be real, making enough money to live on) the best thing you can do is work across different spaces, and take the best lessons from both the creative shoots and those corporate paycheck jobs.
Melanie Killingsworth is a director and showrunner with more than a decade’s experience in American and Australian productions, including short films, feature documentaries, reality TV, and narrative fiction films and series. She wrote and directed her first short – a 26-minute black-and-white neo noir – in 2013.
Husband and wife team Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer are the creators, writers and stars of rom-com Colin From Accounts, the latest project to be commissioned by Binge.
Now shooting in Sydney, the eight-episode series centres on Ashley (Dyer) and Gordon (Brammall), two single(ish), complex humans who are brought together by a car accident and an injured dog.
Trent O’Donnell, Matt Moore, and Madeleine Dyer direct the Easy Tiger Productions and CBS Studios project. Rob Gibson and Ian Collie produce for Easy Tiger with executive producers Brammall, Harriet Dyer, O’Donnell, Alison Hurbert-Burns and Brian Walsh.
IF understands Emma Paine is the cinematographer, though Binge declined to share details of other heads of department at this stage.
Colin From Accounts has been in train at Binge for two years, brought to executive director Hurbert-Burns by Gibson – the pair having previously worked together at Stan.
It marks the Foxtel-owned service’s second original commission since its launch in May 2020, the first being romantic drama Love Me, which started streaming Boxing Day last year.
While there are undoubtedly pressures in determining a service’s first originals, Hurbert-Burns tells IF it didn’t take a lot to get Binge on board here.
From early Zoom meetings with Brammall and Dyer, she and Foxtel executive director of television Walsh could see it would be funny. When the first script came through, she found herself laughing out loud.
“Life‘s complicated. Relationships aren’t straightforward. Both these characters are doing the best that they can – maybe yet to reach full stride and hit their potential. A little bit of needing to get out of the way of themselves in order to connect fully with another person. I liked how that was done through humour… It’s grounded. It’s realistic,” Hurbert-Burns tells IF.
“These are characters that you could imagine living in Newtown or Newcastle on King Street. I think that’s a really good way in, because it’s not glossy or too distant; you can imagine who these people are. You’ve met people like these characters. And the path to love is not straightforward. This one includes a dog, a car crash and a bit of a hot mess.“
Easy Tiger’s Gibson and Collie said: “Dyer, Brammall, rom-com, cute dog: what’s not to love? It’s a delight to be working on this hilarious and big-hearted show with Harriet, Patrick, Trent, Matt and Maddy, which is a ridiculous amount of talent all in the one place.
“We’re very grateful to our partners at BINGE and CBS Studios, who immediately saw the appeal of Colin from Accounts for their audiences in Australia and around the world, and also of course to Screen Australia and Screen NSW for their wonderful support.”
As for what is next for Binge, which recently reached 1 million subscribers, Hurbert-Burns says it is currently “working out what is next for Love Me“, hinting that there may be a second instalment. Beyond this, she is looking for pitches that stop her in her tracks, particularly great drama. She notes her previous advice to IF still stands: “beautiful dramas and comedies that are broad in their appeal.”
Colin From Accounts distributed outside Australia and New Zealand by ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group. Major production funding comes via Screen Australia with support from Screen NSW.
“This ‘white’ paper must look like a white flag to the streamers happily sucking $2bn out of our economy with still no obligation to give back,” said ADG Executive Director Alaric McAusland. “After a year of government hearings, where very evidently there was not much listening going on, this is a slap in the face for the local production industry and more than a missed opportunity for the Minister – it’s a cop out!”
“The industry (obviously streamers excepted) was united in its call to oblige streamers to commit to spending 20% of what they make here on Australian content. The legislative measures we called for have historically proven to be the only effective measures that ensure Australians continue to see themselves reflected on Australian screens – not ‘graduated’ threshold monitoring with shed-loads of ministerial discretion,” said McAusland.
“This soft approach will only see us marching back to the deregulated wastelands of the 70s where only 1% of drama on our screens was Australian,” said McAusland. “And Fletcher’s deregulatory Christmas gift to the commercial networks in 2020 is already severely damaging our industry with 20/21 data from Screen Australia and ACMA evidencing a 50% decline in drama production by the commercial broadcasters,” said McAusland. “There remains an urgent need to implement repairs and complete the job of reform before our local TV production industry slides further backwards towards a precipice from which it will not return. With the government stating it’s working with our broadcasters ‘on a future regulatory structure that is optimised for the technology changes the sector faces’ we shudder to think what’s on the commercial networks’ and streamers’ Christmas lists this year.”
“Our 20% ask is in line with other forward thinking international jurisdictions similarly being overrun by cheaper US and UK content. The white paper cites other international jurisdictions like Germany with lower local content obligations, but these have the added barrier of language as protection. It’s like comparing apples to bratwurst. 5% would require a measly $100m local spend, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the $37bn the major international streamers reportedly have to spend on new content each year. This tepid and tiered reporting scheme would mean Australian content continuing to dwell in the fringes on these platforms for years to come,” said McAusland.
“Whilst we welcome the stated changes to ABC and SBS funding that bring back indexation, as all the money goes to designated programs it’s not growing these critical public broadcasters. It’s necessary and long overdue repair work but it’s doing nothing to set them up for future opportunities,” said McAusland. “Of particular concern, once again, is that there’s absolutely no consideration in the discussion paper for quotas for Australian kids’ content; there still remains absolutely no obligation for Australian broadcasters to produce and show it. Does the minister really want our kids growing up with American accents?”
The government is seeking submissions on its discussion paper by 24 April 2022, you can have your say here. We’d also encourage you to join the Make it Australian campaign here.To download the article in PDF format please click here.
Clockwise from top left: Dune, Belfast, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story.
Jane Campion’s repressed western up for 12 prizes at 94th Academy Awards, with Dune scoring 10 nominations and Belfast and West Side Story both bagging seven
The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s Montana-set drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a threatening rancher, has swept the board at the Oscar nominations.
The film is up for a dozen prizes, including best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best actor for Cumberbatch, best supporting actress for Kirsten Dunst and best supporting actor for both Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons.
Campion last won an Oscar in 1994 for The Piano, which began its journey in Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or. That film was nominated for best director and best picture but lost out to Schindler’s List, with Campion making do with best adapted screenplay. She now becomes the first female film-maker to have two best director nominations.
Jane Campion with her Oscar in 1994. Photograph: Lee Celano/Reuters
If The Power of the Dog triumphs, it will be the second consecutive year a woman has won best picture and best director, following Chloé Zhao’s run with Nomadland. The only other female director to have taken either prize is Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010.
The film’s dominance this season is a significant victory for Netflix, the streamer behind the film, as well as titles such as Adam McKay’s polarising satire Don’t Look Up (in the running for four awards) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (three nominations).
Up for 10 awards is Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic set in the distant future. Steven Spielberg’s take on West Side Story took seven nominations, as did Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white autobiographical coming-of-age tale.
One of these was for Judi Dench, whose nod in the best supporting actress category makes her the second oldest acting Oscar nominee ever (following Christopher Plummer’s nod for All the Money in the World, when he was 88).
Dench’s Belfast co-star, Ciarán Hinds, is also nominated for best supporting actor; Branagh is up for best director and best original screenplay.
Branagh becomes the first person to secure Oscar nominations in seven different categories, having previously been up for live action short, best adapted screenplay, best supporting actor and best actor (for Henry V). Speaking on Tuesday, Branagh, who has yet to win an Academy Award, said he was thinking of “my mother and father, and my grandparents – how proud they were to be Irish, how much this city meant to them.
Kenneth Branagh on the set of Belfast. Photograph: Rob Youngson/AP
“They would have been overwhelmed by this incredible honour – as am I. Given a story as personal as this one, it’s a hell of a day for my family, and the family of our film.”Advertisement
Olivia Colman, who won best actress in 2019 for The Favourite, is in contention in the same category this year for her role as a depressed author holidaying on a Greek island in The Lost Daughter. Jessie Buckley, who plays her character’s younger self, is also in the running for best supporting actress.
Colman was snubbed in the equivalent Bafta shortlist last week, as was Kristen Stewart for her turn as Princess Diana in Spencer. Both women feature on the Oscars list, alongside Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos, Jessica Chastain in televangelist biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Penélope Cruz for her latest collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers. It is a first nomination for Stewart, 31.
Lady Gaga has been nominated for her role in Ridley Scott’s true crime drama House of Gucci in almost every preceding awards lineup, but was absent here. Other surprise omissions include last year’s best actress winner, Frances McDormand, for best supporting actress in The Tragedy of Macbeth and Passing, Rebecca Hall’s acclaimed directorial debut, which was overlooked entirely.
Will Smith moves into pole position for his first ever Oscar win for his performance as the ambitious father and tennis coach to a young Venus and Serena Williams in King Richard, which also picked up a nomination for his young co-star, Aunjanue Ellis, as best supporting actress.
Olivia Colman and Maggie Gyllenhaal at the Venice film festival. Photograph: Yara Nardi/Reuters
The best actor shortlist is rounded out by Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, who plays Rent creator Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick … BOOM!, Denzel Washington for The Tragedy of Macbeth and Javier Bardem for Being the Ricardos.
All five men are repeat nominees, and taken as a whole, the 2022 shortlist was light on new talent. Yet a few surprises did emerge, in particular the three nominations for Coda, a Sundance hit featuring a predominantly deaf cast.
Troy Kotsur’s best supporting actor nomination makes him only the second ever deaf actor up for an Oscar, following his Coda co-star Marlee Matlin’s win in 1986 for Children of a Lesser God.
Coda joins an eclectic best picture shortlist – the only category which at this stage all 9,500 Oscar members vote for – alongside The Power of the Dog, Dune, Belfast, West Side Story, Drive My Car, Don’t Look Up, King Richard, Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi with his best screenplay award for Drive My Car in Cannes. Photograph: Catarina+Perusseau/Rex/Shutterstock
Drive My Car’s director, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, is also nominated for best director, best adapted screenplay and best international feature – a breakthrough for a film not in the English language which would have felt more striking before the success in February 2020 of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.
The nominations were announced by black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross and comedian Leslie Jordan, a healthcare worker, a basketball-loving high schooler, a teacher and a New York firefighter. Voting closes in more than a month, before the ceremony itself on 27 March 2022. The Bafta awards take place a fortnight beforehand.
Last year’s mid-pandemic ceremony was an experimental, socially distanced affair held at Los Angeles’s Union Station, which saw record-breakingly low TV audiences tuning in.
Details of this year’s event are still to be confirmed, but the Academy has indicated that it will again feature a host. Names rumoured to be taking on the post include Conan O’Brien, Pete Davidson and Spider-Man star Tom Holland.
President Tracey Vieira and Vice President Suzanne Ryan, on behalf of the SPA Council, are pleased to announce the two participants selected for the SPA Council Leadership Diversity Mentorship.
Tsu Shan Chambers (Wise Goat Productions) and Hayley Johnson (Noble Savage Pictures) will be mentored by SPA councillors, participate in Council meetings and bespoke activities to develop skills and experiences, with the goal of generating pathways to formally become members of Council as well as pursue other leadership roles in the sector in the future.
“We welcome Hayley and Tsu Shan as the inaugural participants in our leadership diversity mentorship. Our hope is that from this mentorship both will gain insight into leadership styles and aid in the development of their existing skill sets. The SPA Council contains some of Australia’s most prolific and revered industry professionals and they, along with SPA want to foster new growth within the industry, paving the way for the next generation of leaders in our industry.” said SPA CEO Matthew Deaner.
Hayley and Tsu Shan both expressed strong interest in developing the types of leadership skills and knowledge that are sought from the SPA Council given its wide-ranging functions including: governance responsibilities; strategic expertise; finance and legal skills; risk management; industrial and government relations; as well as events, marketing and communications.
Tracy Vieira said “Screen Producers Australia is striving to increase diversity and inclusion at every level of our organisation which includes at the highest level in Council. I am absolutely thrilled that we actively supporting the next generation of leading producers and providing mentorship to support their success. Hayley and Tsu Shan are both incredible producers and I look forward to working with them both as they expand their leadership for the the wider industry.”
Suzanne Ryan added “The SPA Leadership Diversity Mentorship is an incredible step for the SPA Council and the organisation in supporting and elevating new producers who wish to grow their skills. It’s wonderful to have Hayley and Tsu Shan be the first producers to be mentored by Council and I look forward to working with them and support them in their new roles.”
Hayley and Tsu Shan’s biographies can be viewed on the SPA Council listings, found on the ‘About’ page on the SPA website.
The Council were also extremely impressed by the quality and range of the applicants across the board and have undertaken to implement a broader program to assist them strengthening their applications for future intakes.
Evan Rachel Wood (Photo: Gage Skidmore) and Eliza Scanlen (Photo: Lisa Maree Williams)
Eliza Scanlen, Evan Rachel Wood, Vanessa Redgrave and Rufus Sewell are attached to star in Kate Dennis’ debut feature All That I Am.
An adaptation of Anna Funder’s Miles Franklin-winning novel of the same name, the film follows four German-Jewish pacifists forced to flee to London as Hitler comes to power.
Sixty years later, the sole survivor of the group, Ruth Wesemann, is living in Sydney. One day she receives a package containing the memoirs of her old friend Ernst Toller that bring back memories of how they smuggled classified documents from Nazi Hermann Goering’s office into Britain.
Funder’s novel is based on real people. Scanlen will play the young Ruth, and Redgrave her older self. Wood will play Dora Fabian and Sewell is Ernst.
Set to shoot across Sydney and Berlin in winter this year, All That I Am will be Kate Dennis’ first feature after an extensive TV career across Australia and the US, including The Handmaid’s Tale, for which she was nominated for an Emmy.
The film is fully financed by AGC Studios, who is shopping it at the European Film Market next week.
It will likely be one of the first projects to enter production for Troy Lum, Andrew Mason and Gabrielle Tana’s new outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, who have partnered here with German producers Jorgo Narjes (Babylon Berlin) and Uwe Schott (The Queen’s Gambit), of X Filme Creative Pool.
The project has been in development for around six to seven years as the producers navigated the pandemic and iterations of script and cast.
Despite the journey, Lum tells IF that the team is pleased to have secured actors of the calibre of Scanlen and Wood, noting they “best suit the parts”.
Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet are writing the screenplay, with Funder also having having had involvement in the scripting process.
Lum describes the film as a faithful adaptation, though they have worked to imbue the story with a cinematic quality.
“While we’ve kept all the beats around friendship and the historical storylines, we’ve infused it with a bit more more of an espionage quality and also more suspense.”
Further, since the world has changed since they began development, from the #MeToo movement, the rise of Trump and the pandemic, they have tried to emphasise different elements of the script so that it speaks to the times.
“This is a very prescient movie in terms of its themes,” Lum says.
“We now have a script that, whilst it’s set in the 1930s, there’s a certain currency around those events and how we look at the world through the lens of this story.”
In terms of Dennis, Lum is excited to see her bring her experience in television to cinema.
“I think film allows allows her to have more freedom in terms of the choices that she can make, and I’m really excited about that because just in the journey of working with her, I feel she’s got a fantastic filmmaking instinct.”
Next month’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival will feature a bumper line-up of Australian projects.
Set to make their world premiere at the Austin, Texas event are feature films Seriously Red and Sissy, featurette Shadow, feature documentary Clean and virtual reality series Lustration VR.
Directed by Gracie Otto and written by and starring Krew Boylan, musical comedy Seriously Red will premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition.
In the Dollhouse Pictures film, Boylan plays Red, a vivacious but occasionally misguided red-head who trades her job in real estate for a new career as a Dolly Parton impersonator.
Starring alongside are Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale and Daniel Webber, with music from Parton, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond and David Bowie.
For Otto it is a return to the festival, with her documentary Under the Volcanomaking its world premiere at SXSW last year. Jessica Carrera produces for Dollhouse, alongside Robyn Kershaw for Robyn Kershaw Productions, alongside Sonia Borella and Timothy White. Seriously Red will be distributed locally by Roadshow Films, release date TBC.
Carrera said: “SXSW is a cultural happening – the festival has a great synergy across film and music so it’s the perfect home for the world premiere of Seriously Red.”
‘Sissy’.
Horror satire Sissy, co-written and co-directed by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes, will play in the Midnighters strand on the opening night of the festival.
The film is led by The Bold Type star Aisha Dee as Cecilia (aka Sissy), a successful social media influencer living the dream, until she runs into her ex-teenage best friend on a bachelorette weekend.
Barlow, Emily De Margheriti, Daniel Monks, Yerin Ha and Lucy Barrett also star in the film, produced by John De Margheriti, Lisa Shaunessy, Jason Taylor and Bec Janek.
Shaunessy described SXSW as the “perfect festival home” for Sissy, noting its inclusion was a testament to Canberra’s screen community.
“The film is a thrill-a-minute and Arcadia distribution look forward to opening the film for Australian audiences in cinemas later this year.”.
‘Shadow’. (Photo: Jeff Busby)
Also making its world premiere at SXSW is Shadow, from Geelong-based theatre company Back to Back Theatre – a 56 minute film based on its award-winning ‘The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes’.
Screening in the Visions section, the film follows a trio of activists with intellectual disabilities who hold a town hall meeting about the future impacts of artificial intelligence. What begins as a polite discussion quickly descends into bickering and chaos.
It is directed by Bruce Gladwin, produced by Alice Fleming and co-conceived and co-authored by Back to Back’s core performing artists Michael Chan, Mark Deans, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price, Simon Laherty and Sonia Teuben.
Almost all the actors on screen are people with disabilities, and the majority of the crew roles were fulfilled by interns who identify as people with disabilities supported by professional mentors.
Back to Back made the project in December 2020, pivoting to film after live performances were shut down. It builds on Back to Back’s previous short Oddlands, and was designed to create as many opportunities for people to get experience in the screen industry as possible.
Gladwin and Price told IF it was exciting as just to have finished the film, let alone to have it seen in a festival like SXSW that can expand its scope and audience.
“We had a strong agenda for this project to bring in a number of interns to work across the crew – people with disabilities that may not necessarily get an opportunity to work on a film crew and to give them mentorship and training,” Gladwin said.
Premiering in the Documentary Feature Competition is Clean, from writer/director Lachlan McLeod and producers David Elliot-Jones and Charlotte Wheaton. It provides a fly-on-the-wall insight into the world of trauma cleaning through the journey of larger-than-life business owner, the late Sandra Pankhurst, and the workers at Melbourne’s Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services.
McLeod said: “To have Clean premiere at SXSW is a huge honour and means so much to me and the production team involved. This documentary has been three years in the making, and we can’t thank Sandra and the team at STC Services enough for inviting us into their lives during this time. SXSW is a dream launch for our film, and we are absolutely thrilled to be able to participate in the 2022 festival.”
Created for Meta Quest and produced by New Canvas, the project boasts a voice cast that includes Batman‘s Kevin Conroy and Shakira Clanton and follows two protectors of the afterlife, upholding good against evil by removing those who do not belong.
Nayuka Gorrie wrote the project with Griffen, while Taryne Laffar and Carolina Sorensen produced.
Griffen said: “I was always taught that culturally, our stories were earned and not just given. I’ve been trying to apply this to our modern structures of storytelling for a while and VR is the perfect home for it. With Screen Australia’s support, we were able to assemble a world-class team and cast to bring this story to the world. Being given the opportunity to launch Lustration at SXSW, a festival that doesn’t shy away from innovation in storytelling and technology, feels like the perfect fit.”
After screening at major festivals around Australia, Danny Cohen’s portrait of singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, Film Camp’s Anonymous Club makes its international debut at SXSW.
Writer/director Cohen said: “I’m still pinching myself to have our international premiere at the incredible music and film festival that is SXSW. I’m thrilled for US audiences to experience our film on the big screen there, ahead of the theatrical releases here in Australia and then the US.”
24-hour VR documentary Gondwana, directed by Ben Joseph Andrews and produced by Emma Roberts will screen in the XR Experience Spotlight. The project features a constantly-evolving virtual ecosystem and chronicles the possible futures of the Daintree Rainforest.
Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason congratulated all films on their selection.
“To have a group of seven such distinct stories premiering at a festival renowned for launching ground-breaking work is a fantastic achievement and evidence of the wealth of unique and compelling stories coming out of Australia that are connecting with global audiences,” he said.
Every film on the SXSW line-up this year will have an in-person premiere, and films that have opted-in will also have an online screening.
