Rachael Turk

Samantha Lang
Her Place

Having recently completed a stint on Penny Chapman’s innovative children’s series My Place, director Samantha Lang (The Well, Monkey’s Mask, L’Idole) talks about carving a niche for one’s self and evolving a personal visual style.

Time: 5-6pm
Date: Friday, October 30
Venue: AFTRS Theatre, Fox Entertainment Quarter

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

Free entry. Free 2-hr parking. All welcome.

Whether it be shooting micro-budget or marketing to the masses, the message of the moment is to just bloody do it!

If that doesn’t rouse you, get a load of this fabulous letter faxed by Hunter S. Thompson to the then production exec Holly Sorensen re progress on adapting The Rum Diary here.

That should get you going.

The Chauvel possibly hadn’t seen so such a big audience in a long while. And that was precisely the problem. Which is why it was packed to the rafters for Metro Screen‘s industry event ‘OZ FILMS Vs. OZ AUDIENCE‘, a panel based discussion a few hours ago led by Andrew Urban.

The findings were varied, so much so that aspirations for a 10-point plan at the beginning resulted in only two by the end – and one of those divided opinion.

But the resounding message, proposed by AFTRS’ Dr Karen Pearlman and discussed at length in the December issue of the film school’s journal Lumina, was that Australia needs to “stop telling its own stories” and start “making more myths”. Stories of scale, dynamism and, above all, inspiration.

In other words, it needs less slit-your-wrists a’capella style films and more anthems to rouse the masses. (Or, more’s the point, both. And everything in between.) Where is the We Will Rock You of Australian film? The Wonderwall? The FIFA World Cup playlist?

Then we might hear the stomp of many happy feet into our cinemas when the next Australian film is screening.

Other highlights of the night included:

• “It’s a fallacy that [Australia] has poor creativity. I read five scripts a week and most of them are crap. A good script is really, really difficult and we churn out about as many of them as you’d expect.” – Troy Lum, Hopscotch Entertainment

• “Remember what Hitchcock said: Film is life with the boring bits cut out.’ Well, we don’t cut the boring bits out!” – Tony Ginnane, http://www.spaa.org.au/

• “We need to get some perspective: these people [who don’t watch Australian films] wouldn’t have seen Half Nelson either, or La Vie En Rose – and that was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film!” – Rachel Ward, director of Beautiful Kate

• “Think of the last ride in The Man From Snowy River. Australian audiences want that moment! They don’t mind the tough trip but they want that payoff.” – Margaret Pomeranz, At The Movies

• “Most of our successful films – Crocodile Dundee, Happy Feet, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert – have been hero stories… films that tell them we can endure things” – Garry Maddox, SMH

• “We need to invest in the foundation – time, money – not just in the infrastructure [of development process]” – Louisa Carlin, Australian Writers’ Guild

• “I disagree with paying ‘writers in rooms’.” – Dr Ruth Harley, Screen Australia

• “It’s not the number of drafts, it’s the idea behind it. Every writer should have 20 ideas. If one’s not right, stop peddling it around! Move on to another one… This is the business of ideas.” – Troy Lum

and…

• “These are good films. If Australian don’t want to see them, STUFF THEM! They’re bloody lazy!” – Margaret Pomeranz

To hear Troy Lum talk more about “the business of ideas” and his place in it, come to Friday On My Mind tonight, Friday Oct 23, at AFTRS.

The Business of Ideas
Hopscotch MD Troy Lum

Armed with $1m in new Enterprise funding and business developments from distribution and DVD to Hopscotch Features and a joint venture with Three Drunk Monkeys, Hopscotch Entertainment MD Troy Lum talks about how his company is maximising the current local playing field.

Time: 5-6pm
Date: Today! Friday, October 23
Venue: AFTRS Theatre, Fox Entertainment Quarter

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

Free entry. Free 2-hr parking. All welcome.

Window of opportunity: Mia Bays in Sydney

From small budgets, great things can come.

It worked for Kieslowski, who believed that technical and budgetary constraints always forced a simple and often more ingenious type of creativity.

Mia Bays, the marketing consultant for micro-studio Film London Microwave, agrees, giving here an anecdote about how budgetary limitations on the £100,000 Shifty forced even better solutions:

“There’s a great scene where Shifty is doing a regular drop to an older woman. As written, the woman has lots of cats. In pre-production, the production designer and producers said ‘we can’t afford real cats, and there’s a risk they won’t behave and you won’t get the shot.’ They pushed the director Eran Creevy to think about stuffed cats instead, to show her obsession. Soon, the flat became filled with cat trinkets; it followed right through the production design. Then one of the lead actors reacted spontaneously to the stuffed cat. Now it’s now a really, really funny scene.

“That’s happened several times on Shifty and on Freestyle, which is coming out in UK cinemas in February.”

Mia Bays will present the keynote address at 9.30am this Saturday at SPAA Fringe. Curious Film’s Michael Wrenn will talk about the Australian release strategy on Friday, 5-6pm at Friday On My Mind.

Shooting Micro-budget
The Curious Case of Shifty

In the tradition of Dogme, Warp, Advance Party and our own former IndiVision, we look at the ‘just do it’ culture of micro-budget filmmaking and Curious Film’s boutique distribution arm. In particular, we discuss their distribution strategy for five times BIFA nominated Shifty, the first film to be made by Film London Microwave, a unique 
scheme set up with BBC Films to make features for under £100,000.

Time: 5-6pm
Date: Friday, October 16
Venue: AFTRS Theatre, Fox Entertainment Quarter
* with special advance screening of Shifty

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

Free entry. Free 2-hr parking. All welcome.

Ron Cobb is an American cartoonist and concept artist based in Sydney whose credits include Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Last Starfighter (1984), Back to the Future (1985), The Abyss (1989) and Total Recall (1990).

In this outtake from my interview with him yesterday, we glean an anecdote about his friend Douglas Adams, the author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and renowned Apple advocate:

“Douglas was a great enthusiast about science and humour and satire. I was asked to design an early TV version of Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy that was never made. Douglas didn’t like the BBC version – though I liked it. Douglas and I hit it off immediately. But ultimately the ABC [American Broadcasting network] wanted to Americanise it too much. That was ultimately a disastrous idea and much to my relief it was cancelled.

“I can say I brought Douglas into the world of computers, which he satirized so much in Hitchhiker’s Guide. I said ‘they really are going to be marvelous, extraordinary things!’ I eventually talked him into getting a little Macintosh. He later traveled the world advocating Apple computers and knew far more about computers than I ever did! In his apartment in London he had a whole room stacked with old Macintoshes!”

– Douglas Adams was an Apple user until his death in 2001. Adams was made an “Apple Master”, one of several celebrities (including included John Cleese and Gregory Hines) whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products.

A full interview with Ron Cobb will be published in the December issue of Lumina.

Which Australian films are considered a must-see by Australian audiences and why (or why not) is on everyone’s mind.

And the Chauvel is bound to be full on October 22 when an industry forum is presented by Metro Screen (6.30pm–8.30pm) to discuss just this.

Why don’t the majority of Australian films attract Australian audiences? Why did Australian films represent only 3.8% of the total box office last year? What can be done about it?

All this and more at ‘OZ FILM VS. OZ AUDIENCE’. And only $5 a seat.

Moderator: Andrew Urban
Panelists:
Dr Ruth Harley – CEO Screen Australia
Troy Lum – managing director of Hopscotch Films
Margaret Pomeranz – At The Movies ABC
Garry Maddox – journalist, Sydney Morning Herald
Susan Hoerlein – publicity & promotions manager, Tsuki Marketing
Rachel Ward – actor/writer/director
Anthony I. Ginnane – SPAA

Book online here at Metro Screen.

Time to Shine
Jan Sardi, Mao’s Last Dancer

From the Oscar nominated Shine to The Notebook, Love’s Brother to Mao’s Last Dancer, screenwriter Jan Sardi talks about finding the emotional core of a story and making it resonate on an international level.

Time: 5-6pm
Date: Friday, October 9
Venue: AFTRS Theatre, Fox Entertainment Quarter

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

Free entry. Free 2-hr parking. All welcome.

Mi Culture, Su Culture
SBS’s Caterina de Nave

With hits such as East West 101 and The Circuit in second series and the AWGIE-winning Saved, we talk to SBS’s EP of Commissioned Content (Drama & Comedy) Caterina de Nave about how she is navigating film/TV trends in multicultural content – and how the production community can best engage with that.

Time: 5-6pm
Date: Friday, October 2
Venue: AFTRS Theatre, Fox Entertainment Quarter

Friday On My Mind is AFTRS‘ weekly event bringing you face to face with the industry’s brightest thinkers.

Free entry. Free 2-hr parking. All welcome.