Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason and writer Benjamin Law take stock a year on from Miranda Tapsell’s rousing call for more diversity at the Logies. By Caris Bizzaca.

A year ago to the day Miranda Tapsell stood on the Logies stage to accept her award for Love Child and called for “more beautiful people of colour on TV”.

It struck a nerve in the room, causing the cheering crowd to rise to their feet, and became one of a series of signs that the demand for onscreen diversity is gaining more and more momentum, particularly in 2016.

In January #OscarsSoWhite went viral, the same month SBS series The Family Law hit screens with a 90% Asian-Australian cast.

After premiering in February, Channel Nine’s multicultural comedy Here Come the Habibs averaged 1.4 million people (metro + regional)* and was greenlit for season two.

Then in March, Screen Australia launched a comprehensive research project not just into the representation of cultural diversity, but of disability and LGBTQI as well, to gauge how much our TV drama reflects our incredibly diverse country.

By April, the new batch of Logie nominees was released, including, for the first time, two Gold Logie contenders who weren’t white – SBS presenter Lee Lin Chin and The Project’s Waleed Aly – which became a ‘controversy’ widely debated online.

And in early May, ABC’s first female managing director Michelle Guthrie wrote to staff the day she officially started in the job, saying that the public broadcaster needed “more diversity in both our staff and content” to become more relevant and extend its reach.

Ahead of the 58^th TV Week Logie Awards on May 8, Benjamin Law, who wrote the biographical series The Family Law, says this momentum is part of the wider, more global conversation that Australians are engaging with.

“We’re even more connected and tapped into discussions as they are happening, so we’re having the same discussions with America when Beyonce’s Lemonade lands, or when #OscarsSoWhite happens,” he says.

“And then we relay that back to the Australian context and talk about things like the Logies diversity.”

For Law, to see culturally diverse Gold Logie nominees was really heartening – and yet telling.

“Australians I think are very good at patting themselves on the back about not being racist, being very egalitarian and I think to an extent, rightly so. In comparison to a lot of western European nations we do multiculturalism really, really well, but the fact that we’re celebrating this in 2016 is really telling of our media landscape.”

There’s a lot that needs to be done. While the Gold Logies recognises TV presenters, and while diversity is commonplace in reality TV and better in factual programming, there is a problem.

“We are lagging behind when it comes to diversity in scripted content in comedy and drama,” Law says.

How much of a problem, is what Screen Australia is trying to find out.

The research project is analysing Australian TV drama and comedy broadcast between 2011 and 2015 to identify characters that are culturally diverse, LGBTQI or have a disability. Surveys have also been sent out to the actors, agents, casting directors, credited writers, directors and producers involved on those titles to explore views, experiences and ideas for the best way forward.

Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason says the research has been met with wonderful support from all parts of the sector – from industry bodies, to the guilds, the unions, the casting directors, the networks and the producers.

“We all have a view of what it’s like, but what we need is hard empirical evidence,” Mr Mason says.

From that evidence, set to be released in the coming months, it can then be determined what steps can be made and how we can achieve lasting onscreen diversity.

It isn’t about political correctness, Mr Mason says. It is about truthfully reflecting the world we live in.

“If you catch the bus or the train home tonight from work, look around on a train carriage, or if you’re driving, look around at all the people in the cars next to you. They’re not all blonde with blue eyes, looking like they’ve come straight from the beach,” Mr Mason says.

“They are a mix of people and we need to show that.”

Aside from that cultural imperative, Mr Mason says it also makes moral, creative and commercial sense to tell a wide variety of stories that appeal to a huge segment of the population.

“As a sector we are missing an opportunity, creatively and commercially, and we are underestimating what an audience wants to see,” he says.

“It’s essential for television networks and filmmakers to embrace diversity if they want to stay relevant.”

The commercial networks have been taking notice.

Channel 7 is currently filming The Secret Daughter, a show they built around The Sapphires star Jessica Mauboy. Earlier this year, Channel Nine launched Here Come the Habibs and have committed to season two.

And the aforementioned The Family Law was groundbreaking by default – a family comedy about divorce, the characters’ Asian-Australian culture made up just part of the fabric of the story, rather than being the whole story.

Law says the feedback both SBS and he personally have received from audiences has been thrilling, and surprising.

“We got a lot of obviously Asian Australians saying that they felt recognised, which we were expecting, which we were really gratified by, but also a lot of non-Asian Australians who said they could see themselves onscreen in the family story as well.”

On that, Law isn’t entirely convinced Australians, as an audience, have been “allergic to diversity” in the past.

“I do wonder whether it’s a myth that Australians have been traditionally resistant to diversity. I know that Australia hasn’t had diversity on screen for a really long time but I do wonder whether that branches out and means that the audience was resistant to it as well,” he says.

Instead he believes it’s because people in production, direction, casting and writing have been predominantly white. These people created what they felt confident in making – and that was really strong white characters on television.

“I’m not sure it’s an audience problem, I think it’s a production and broadcasting problem,” Law says.

But it’s a problem that needs to be addressed, and particularly in television.

“I think television is in some ways more important because that is what’s in our living room, so that’s what we have dinner over – that’s our intimate engagement with the media.”

Although The Family Law is a good step forward, Law acknowledges it isn’t a revolution. It is just that – a step. Concrete change has not yet happened.

Mr Mason says what it clear, is that feeling of change is in the air.

“This is a moment,” Mr Mason says. “It’s time to seize it.”

A year on and Tapsell’s words are still reverberating.

“Put more beautiful people of colour on TV and connect viewers in ways which transcend race and unite us,” she said.

“That’s the real Team Australia.”

The 58th TV Week Logie Awards are broadcast live on Channel Nine on Sunday, May 8 at 7.30pm.

*Source: OzTAM and RegionalTAM, 5-city-metro, combined markets, total people, 28 day consolidated. Metro viewers totalled 1.058 million. Metropolitan data is copyright to OzTAM and Regional data is copyright to RegionalTAM and may not be reproduced, published or communicated in whole or part without the prior consent of OzTAM or RegionalTAM.

With the freedom to take risks and be able to tap into mass audiences, online storytelling is becoming a key player in the battle for eyeballs – a trend only set to continue with the announcement of Skip Ahead #3. By Caris Bizzaca.

Once upon a time, the pathway to a filmmaking career was relatively structured. But the internet and streaming platforms have thrown out the traditional manual and a new renegade group of filmmakers are coming through the ranks.

These filmmakers already have thousands of fans, having cut their teeth on YouTube where they continue to hone and polish their storytelling.

Screen Australia saw the potential in this space years ago, creating a Multiplatform Drama Program, which meant series such as The Katering Show and How to Talk Australians could be made.

It also caught the attention of Google, who were keen to help develop some of the Australian talent tapping into audiences across the globe.

Together Google and Screen Australia developed the Skip Ahead program, designed to help YouTube content creators such as Aunty Donna and Axis of Awesome advance their careers.

After two successful roll-outs of the program, the third instalment of that collaboration has been announced, with applications now open.

Skip Ahead #3 funding is for successful YouTubers to make the leap to longer, narrative-driven stories that run for at least half an hour, whether that be a standalone film or series pilot.

“Online is producing incredible, premium content,” Screen Australia Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron says.

“There’s no doubt our online creatives are pushing the boundaries, in everything from documentary, to comedy, to drama.

“But it is also a training ground. We’re helping these filmmakers grow and refine their craft so they can make it a feasible career rather than a hobby.”

Investment Manager Mike Cowap says Screen Australia’s role in all of this is to do whatever we can to help these YouTubers realise and fulfil their full potential.

“They are the next wave of great Australian filmmakers,” Mr Cowap says.

“The grand plan is to arm these guys to be the filmmakers that we believe they can be.”

Skip Ahead #3 follows two workshops by Screen Australia and Google in March, which taught successful applicants (who were “some of the biggest and best” YouTubers, Mr Cowap says) the basic building blocks to make longer works.

“These people are already highly creative, with great storytelling instincts. The workshop just gave them the tools to take that further,” Cowap says.

Because the films will go directly online, filmmakers can push ideas and try new things. With no traditional gatekeepers, the rule book is being rewritten.

“They are breaking new ground,” Screen Australia Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron says. “This is untrodden territory.”

Click here to view the Skip Ahead guidelines and to apply for the third round of funding.

Successful projects developed by previous Skip Ahead recipients

Axis All Areas by Axis of Awesome

Lend Us a Ride by Mighty Car Mods

Neighbours Vs. Zombies by Neighbours Official and Louna Maroun

Fernando by SexuaLobster

1999 by Aunty Donna

The Sweetest Thing by How to Cook That

For Hunter Page-Lochard, working on his father’s feature directorial debut Spear was like a rite of passage. By Caris Bizzaca.

Hunter Page-Lochard’s first encounter with Spear was around the age of seven, performing the piece with Bangarra Dance Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. The choreographer was his dad and Artistic Director of Bangarra, Stephen Page.

Flash forward sixteen years later and Hunter is again performing in Spear, with his father at the helm.

But this time it’s a feature film, his dad is the director and co-writer, and Hunter is now an adult in the lead role.

“I was crossing over into the adult stage of my life (and Dad) was crossing over into a medium (film) I was really into and that he had never done before, so it was quite a special moment,” Hunter says.

It also marked the third time they had worked together on a film, as Hunter had acting roles in The Sapphires and Bran Nue Dae, which his father choreographed.

“Spear was a great experience and for Dad to do it as a film was even better because it’s like a personal trilogy that me and him have,” he says.

“I took it as the final initiation, the final film step in our creative process and to me becoming a man, creatively.”

Hunter’s career is now poised to enter new heights. The 23 year old not only stars in Spear, but the highly-anticipated ABC series Cleverman, which premiered at Berlin International Film Festival and is set to air this year.

“I’m in this kind of limbo of just waiting for things to come out so people can watch it,” he says. “I’m crazy excited.”

Both productions were shot last year, with Cleverman wrapping its three month shoot in July, while Spear was shot over an intense three weeks in January.

Hunter says Spear was a quite a gruelling set, but also had a wonderful family feel, as the Bangarra ‘family’ (its dancers, as well as creative, productions and administration teams) were involved.

“The Bangarra crew and the film crew really merged together quite beautifully and the set was quite a spiritual place,” he says.

In Spear, Hunter plays a young man who is trying to understand what it means to be a man with ancient traditions, living in modern society.

Made up mostly of movement and gesture, with minimal dialogue, it meant Spear didn’t have a traditional screenplay.

Hunter says his dad and co-writer Justin Monjo whipped up a 30-40 page document they called a ‘scriptment’, that detailed the action and parts where dialogue was required.

“We kind of just went off that and Dad’s vision on set,” he says.

“It’s so bold for Dad to do something like this, especially for his first time (directing a feature).”

Spear was always seen by Stephen Page as the piece in his repertoire that would best fit the screen, but the challenge was turning a 40-minute dance theatre work into a feature film.

A pivotal point was the announcement of Adelaide Film Festival’s HIVE initiative in 2013.

The partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, Screen Australia and ABC Arts was designed to support projects that merge arts and film and piqued the interest of Spear producer John Harvey and executive producer Robert Connolly.

Both producers had wanted to get Page behind the camera again, following his filmmaking debut with the short Sand – one of 17 chapters in the 2011 Tim Winton adaptation The Turning.

This was their chance and they ran with it.

Hunter says it’s been a privilege to watch the development of Spear, as it is seeing all of his father’s works come to life.

“He’s definitely a mentor of mine.”

As for what he hopes audiences might take away from Spear, Hunter says they just need to “let go and… open themselves up to whatever they want to feel”.

“It’s definitely a history lesson about our culture and the struggles that we face,” he says.

“There are some confronting things within it, so I really think that’s a positive thing to take out of it because knowledge is power.”

Spear is playing in select cinemas now.

The Daughter director Simon Stone talks through the challenges of adapting Ibsen’s The Wild Duck for his feature film debut and trying to remain creative on an intense 30-day shoot. By Caris Bizzaca.

On a sparse stage in a Sydney theatre, six actors held their audiences captivated from within a glass-walled room. Short scenes were ended with sudden blackouts. The actor’s voices were at times so unusually quiet they had to be miked-up to deliver the dialogue as the tale of family drama was woven each night.

The play was Simon Stone’s acclaimed reimaging of Henrik Ibsen’s classic The Wild Duck, and for producers Jan Chapman (The Piano) and Nicole O’Donohue (Griff the Invisible), watching it was so cinematic, they immediately saw its potential for film.

The pair tasked Stone with transporting the story to screen for The Daughter.

However, instead of keeping the same characters and dialogue, Stone reinvented The Wild Duck as he once did for the stage, retooling it this time for film.

“(The Wild Duck) was written for an empty stage,” Stone says – not for film, a world of landscapes and careful post-production sound and editing.

So he had to let that version go.

“I had to forget that I did the play,” he says. “And getting to the point where you let yourself forget that you know anything about this story is quite hard.”

Over one and a half years Stone developed the screenplay, injecting the plot with new dialogue and different characters.

For Stone, The Daughter needed to work irrespective of if you were familiar with Ibsen’s Norwegian classic or not.

“The average audience member just wants to have an experience,” he says. “They don’t care what the CliffsNotes are.”

Set in a dying logging town, The Daughter follows Christian (Paul Schneider), the estranged, troubled son of Henry (Geoffrey Rush), who returns home for his father’s wedding.

When Christian runs into his childhood friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie) and gets to know his close-knit family – including wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto), daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young) and father (Sam Neill) – he uncovers a secret that could rip them apart.

Leslie, who plays affable devoted father Oliver, worked with Stone in The Wild Duck and The Daughter.

But while he plays the same “archetype” in both, onstage he was a middle-class photographer living in Sydney, and this time around he’s a labourer at a timber mill who finds himself out of work.

Like Stone, it involved having to forget everything from the play.

“I thought going into the film I was going to be a step ahead of everyone,” Leslie says. “And as it turned out I was back at square one, but I just had all this baggage now from the play.”

Leslie and Stone’s working relationship harks back to more than a decade ago, when the pair first met as actors on the set of Kokoda.

Stone remarked how he hoped to direct Leslie one day – which of course happened with the 2011 production of The Wild Duck with Stone the then resident director at Belvoir Theatre. And now, Leslie and Stone have continued their collaboration with The Daughter, the former’s feature film directorial debut.

Filmed on a tight 30-day schedule, the main mental hurdle for Stone as a first-time director was the pressure of making snap decisions that could have huge impact later on.

“The challenge of working on a film is just finding a way to free your mind when there are people saying, ‘you’ve now got 12 minutes to make a decision’,” he says.

“And you have to get (the shot) now because this is permanently going to be the way this scene is encapsulated in your edit… There’s no second version of doing this scene.”

On top of that, was allowing himself the time to be creative and come up with out-of-the-box ideas.

“In some situations, it’s like this film is only going to be unique if you don’t listen to the people and (instead of deciding between two versions) allow yourself the possibility that there’s a third or a fourth or an eighth version in your mind,” he says.

“All when there are 100 people waiting for your decision.”

With The Daughter receiving acclaim both in Australia and internationally (where it has played at seven film festivals, including Venice, Toronto, London and Busan), Stone obviously was right in trusting his instincts.

But he’s looking forward to his next film and the moment where all the lessons learned the first time around pay off.

When he first directed a play, Stone says he felt like he was pretending he knew what he was doing until it was finished.

“Then at a certain point, there’s this beautiful moment where for the first time in your career you do know what you’re doing and you can really enjoy yourself,” he says.

“So I’m really looking forward to the next phase.”

The Daughter is in cinemas now.

Video on Demand (VOD) is providing documentaries with a global platform to get their films noticed and experts are calling it a “no-brainer” for Australian filmmakers. By Caris Bizzaca.

For Australian documentary makers, Video on Demand (VOD) is an exciting new frontier – a “game-changer” whose potential is only just beginning to be realised.

This according to producer Roger Jackson: a co-founder of the cloud-based VOD distribution platform Kinonation, who was recently invited to speak at the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Why? Because he thinks every Australian documentary filmmaker should be looking at VOD.

Jackson says with VOD, it’s not just Australians or festival-goers that will see your documentary, but people in China, Germany, the US, Canada and more.

“The audience is always going to be bigger on VOD,” he says.

“A typical social impact doco that we would get might have been seen by a few hundred or maybe a couple of thousand people at festivals and grassroots screenings.

“We’ll put it onto Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, Google Play, iTunes, Presto, Stan and within 24 hours it’s been watched by 50,000 people.”

Data from Screen Australia showed at least seven Australian documentaries have been picked up by Netflix for its services in various countries, including:

1. Cane Toads
2. Not Quite Hollywood
3. Aim High in Creation
4. All this Mayhem
5. Australia: The Time Traveller’s Guide
6. Mrs Carey’s Concert
7. Tyke: Elephant Outlaw

But according to data from Gyde, once you factor in all the other international VOD services, that number is much higher.

Gyde data shows there are 40 Australian documentaries available on seven overseas VOD services, such as Amazon, Indieflix, iTunes and Netflix**.

That’s only five less that the number of Australian documentaries on local VOD services, which have 45 available*.

“(VOD is) a game-changer in the documentary space more than any other space,” Jackson says.

In the Kinonation catalogue, around a third of their 6,000 films are documentaries.

“Docos are great for VOD because docos always have a very clear affinity group, meaning a clear core group of people who are interested in that subject. And you can reach those people much more effectively via VOD than via a theatrical release, because it’s available anywhere,” he says.

With cinemas, he estimates one out of 100 films shown is a doco (seven Aussie docos were released in local cinemas last year) and even then, the reach is limited.

“A cinema release for a doco might be in Melbourne, but if you’re 200 miles north of Melbourne you’re not going to be able to access it,” he says.

“VOD changes that game because it’s global access. It’s genuinely access potential from seven billion on the planet.”

And it’s still evolving.

“VOD is just globally overtaking DVD in terms of sales and VOD is massively eating into the audience of broadcast TV networks. We are definitely heading toward a world where every movie ever made will be available in every language to everybody on the planet.”

For Australian documentary filmmakers, Jackson has a few words of advice.

The first is to begin thinking about global distribution as soon as possible, even in pre-production.

“There will be people in every country on the planet interested in your subject matter. You should think about how that translates and about investing in subtitles for at least the major language groups.”

The second is to just go for it.

“It’s such a new world for most doco producers, the only way for them to find out how well they can do on VOD… is to dive in and do it,” he says.

At Kinonation, they have tried to eliminate any of the risk involved in signing with a distributor – getting rid of fixed term contracts, making it non-exclusive – for that very reason.

“Because if they don’t go for it, they’ll never know,” he says.

“It’s absolutely a no-brainer.”

Source: Gyde; compiled by Screen Australia
Titles may be counted twice where they are available on both Australian and overseas VOD services
*BigPond Movies, Dendy Direct, FetchTV, Indieflix, iTunes, Netflix, Quickflix, SBS On Demand, Snagfilms, Stan
** Amazon, Indieflix, iTunes, Netflix, Snagfilms, Starz On Demand, Xfinity On Demand

Step inside the gated home of Sydney’s new millionaires and see what all the fuss is about with Here Come the Habibs. By Caris Bizzaca.

Waves lap against a private beach as we pass an outdoor pool and the carefully manicured hedges of a sprawling beige mansion.

Not a bad first impression, thanks Here Come the Habibs.

It’s November and the social media storm of January has yet to hit (more on that later). Instead, production is chugging along nicely at the idyllic waterside location for Channel 9’s new comedy, about an Australian-Lebanese family who move from Sydney’s west to an exclusive Eastern suburbs mansion, much to the horror of their neighbours. Think Beverly Hillbillies in modern Australia.

For production company Jungle, who made ABC TV’s A Moody Christmas and Stan’s No Activity, this series presents something different to their past efforts.

“It’s an ensemble cast show. It’s much bigger in terms of its scale and the locations,” says producer Chloe Rickard.

“We’re shooting mostly on location with two houses side by side, so basically we’ve had to take over two properties for an extended period of time.”

Here Come the Habibs has not only taken over the two houses, but transformed them. We’re told how the interior of the Habib’s home was completely changed from the owner’s design. Walls were painted, and colourful (sometimes garish) decorations added, along with various mirrors and artwork.

Sitting on a couch in the Habib loungeroom, Camilla Ah Kin, who plays the house-proud Habib matriarch Mariam, gestures around. A zebra print chair sits nearby, heavy curtains drape the room, and there’s a lot of gold and purple to be spotted, along with an enormous big-screen TV.

“This is very Mariam. She didn’t get a stylist when they got all the money. Everything that you see in this house, she has chosen and bought and placed herself,” she says.

“These people are robust, and you can see it in the choices they made in the house, in the food that they eat. There’s movement, there’s colour, there’s sex, there’s love, there’s fighting. There are all of those things in huge amounts in the Habib household, which is really fun to be in.”

The set is relatively quiet at the moment after a buzz of activity just an hour earlier. The crew have moved next door, where they’re shooting a scene at the smaller (but still enormous) house, owned in the series by the posh O’Neill’s (played by Helen Dallimore and Darren Gilshenan).

Ah Kin is mulling over her first reaction Here Come the Habibs, recalling how funny and unique even those early scripts were.

“There were a couple of pages I turned that I thought, ‘oh my god I can’t believe you just did that’,” she says. “The comedy is subversive, black, smart and accessible and that just rang out at me as soon as I read it, so actually I couldn’t wait to get on board .”

Fast-forward to January and not everyone agrees. Some people who have yet to see the series have been offended by its advertisements, calling it ‘racist’ in social media and publications.

Co-creator and actor Rob Shehadie, who is of Lebanese background himself, has since come out and told people to watch the show before they make any judgment.

During filming, Shehadie told Screen Australia how he and Tahir Bilgic of Fat Pizza fame wanted to tap into Australia’s multicultural audience with Here Come the Habibs.

“There’s no religion or politics in this show, but it allows people to come inside the house of a Lebanese family and just see how we are and how to laugh with us,” he says, likening it to one of his favourite shows growing up, Greek comedy Acropolis Now.

During the casting process, Rickard says they tried to be as authentic as possible, making sure the actors playing the Habibs had Lebanese heritage.

For Ah Kin, Mariam was based on half a dozen Lebanese women she knew, including her grandmother. However while there are lots of nods to Lebanese culture, this family will be recognisable to many Australians, she says.

“They’re a modern Australian family and I use the term knowing that there’s a Modern Family reference there, because there are elements of that comedy in this,” she says.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a Lebanese family on television before and I rarely play a Lebanese character without hijab. It’s just a refreshment of what we think we understand about Lebanese culture in Australian-Lebanese people.”

Over and above these issues, Ah Kin hopes that it just broadens people’s idea of what is ‘Australian’.

“The Australians we see walking down the street up until now have a much more diverse flavour than we’ve been seeing on television. That’s why this is so exciting,” she says.

“I think it’s the exact moment for the lives of these people to be on Australian television.”

Here Come the Habibs premieres on Channel 9 at 8.30pm on 9 February.