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Making stories with Australia [Video]

Working with world class Australian talent – Cate Blanchett, Dr. George Miller, Emile Sherman, Alex Proyas, and Joel Edgerton talk about the benefits of making stories with Australia.

  1. Acting is a universal occupation, there are fine actors in eastern Europe, France, Italy, the UK etc. even the USA continues to produce the odd one or two.

    Most of the chest beating in the video is supportable, and Australia is certainly an excellent place to make films, in spite of the late Geoffrey Unsworth’s early discovery that the entire country is two stops overexposed.

    The question is, why do we continue to stumble along? Why do we make so few films? Why does the overwhelming bulk of our film, television, and general entertainment consist of imported product?

    I believe that a good part of the problem is in the title Australia’s World Class Talent. We keep on looking for an accolade from the world to assure us that we are doing it right, we look to the US as the benchmark of excellence in television and film (it is not)we also tend to “corporatise” the industry, that is to say, we attempt to crush it into a business model, when it is a theatrical model, a model separate from the business model, and one that requires a collaborative approach from all departments and from each member.

    Writing is accepted if it has proven itself as a novel, or if it provides the film-maker with the components necessary for making great scenes and pictures. Writing for theatre(film is theatre)must do much more than this, it must live and breath on behalf of the characters and the story line, and it must do much more than satisfy the requirements of individual software packages such as Final Draft.

    We have come, not a long way, but a little way in the past 48 years that I have been involved in the theatre world, but we need to take a giant step,if we mean to make the mark that many seem to be happy to delude themselves that we already have.

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