At high school, drama unfolds every single day. So imagine the challenge facing Revolution School series producer Alex West as he tried to fit the ups and downs of an entire school year into just four episodes. By Caris Bizzaca.

In 2015, the centenary of Gallipoli was commemorated, Malcom Turnbull became prime minister, and in Melbourne, a typical high school was trying to lift their bar under the watchful lenses of a group of documentary-makers.

The result is Revolution School: a four-part ABC documentary series that investigates how to improve high school education in Australia by focusing on Melbourne’s Kambrya College over the course of one year.

Alex West was brought on as series producer by production company CJZ – who won the pitching bid from ABC – to bring the project from page to screen.

The first challenge he faced was how.

“How on earth do you begin to capture events in a very dynamic ever-changing school environment where there’s over 1000 people, and you have no idea who will end up being key characters or what might happen to them?” West says.

The second main challenge was finding a way of incorporating the cutting-edge research and work of academics, such as Professor John Hattie from University of Melbourne, into the series.

But having this work cohesively alongside the stories of students, parents and teachers presented an additional problem.

“It’s kind of two genres in a program-making sense, which could fight against each other,” West says.

“Strictly observational documentary making and specialist factual television production had to be somehow aligned into a way that would work.”

To solve these issues, West first needed to capture the stories.

From the outset, he decided two fixed rigs, each with two cameras would need to be installed in the school, so they would never miss an opportunity. They monitored these cameras from an office onsite, so they could selectively record only what was necessary. On top of that were two roving cameras, helmed by shooter-directors Naomi Elkin-Jones and Nick McInerney, and four to six cameras installed on the school’s own CCTV system.

A blanket agreement was made with the school and every child was sent home with a release form. If those weren’t signed, there was an extensive process involved in making sure the filmmakers didn’t include a child who wasn’t cleared.

The amount of footage they accumulated was immense.

“More footage than I’ve ever created and I struggled to think how we could have shot less,” West says.

The management of that was a huge logistical task, involving constant logging and monitoring of storylines, so as to create a kind of map through the mountain of data.

“You’ve got multiple open storylines. And you don’t know how they’re going to resolve, you don’t know how they’re going to fit into the big picture,” he says.

“We knew the story we wanted but to manage that material I think was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done professionally.”

On top of that, they were trying to understand if this was actually even arresting television.

“At that point nobody knew if this was really boring.”

But dramatic storylines began to emerge, and the academics rose to the task of becoming deeply engaged with the teachers and school.

The stories were bundled into a long, unruly timeline, which West and the team began to hammer into shape with the work of “fantastic” editors.

Together they built a super structure across the four episodes, but also individual structures that allowed each episode to essentially stand alone, weaving between the stories of the students, teachers and academics.

“It’s one of the most complex editorial jobs I’ve ever undertaken… It was really challenging and creatively stimulating and I’m really proud of the result,” West says.

“When you watch it as a viewer you’ve got this double layer. You’re learning from the academic side, but also getting attached to characters and following a narrative.”

Revolution School starts on ABC Tuesday 31 May at 8.30pm.

Rob Connolly explains his multipronged approach to tackling the worldwide decline in independent cinema. By Don Groves.

The theatrical market for middle ground independent movies around the world has virtually disappeared. So how should Australian filmmakers respond?

According to seasoned producer, director and distributor Rob Connolly, there are several solutions.

“We’re seeing a polarisation of movies,” Connolly says. “They either have to be big and bold or small, innovative and adventurous. You can’t make middle-ground dramas for theatrical release. TV is now a better place for that kind of drama.”

The founder of Arenamedia is pursuing all three avenues as well as continuing to mentor emerging talent and pursue alternative release strategies.

Arenamedia’s development slate consists of film projects both big and small and the firm is readying its first TV drama, an eight-parter, which will be announced soon.

Meanwhile, Connolly’s latest effort is directing Barracuda, the four-part Matchbox Pictures drama for the ABC based on the Christos Tsiolkas novel. This is Connolly’s second time directing a Tsiolkas adaptation, following The Slap.

Connolly says he is delighted with the performances of newcomers Elias Anton and Ben Kindon in Barracuda. Both actors were discovered by Mullinars’ Jane Norris (Rob’s wife).  Elias plays Danny Kelly, a Melbourne teenager who yearns for a gold medal in swimming at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Matt Nable plays his coach and Kindon his teammate and rival. Rachel Griffiths and Victoria Haralabidou play the boys’ mothers and Tilda Cobham-Hervey is Kindon’s character’s sister.

Tsiolkas was involved in the script development but trusted the screenwriters, Blake Ayshford and Belinda Chayko to adapt his novel. Connolly is a fan of the four x one hour format, figuring most people prefer to watch TV in one hour chunks (although plenty also binge on entire series).

It’s not the only adaptation Connolly has tackled – after producing Tim Winton’s The Turning in 2013, which comprised 18 short films each helmed by a different filmmaker.

Connolly proudly points to The Turning as a springboard for some people to get their first crack at feature directing. Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director Stephen Page went on to direct Spear for Arenamedia, Simon Stone shot The Daughter for producers Jan Chapman and Nicole O’Donohue, David Wenham has just written and directed a film and Jub Clerc is in advanced development on a feature.

Arenamedia and Andrew Myer (who executive produced Last Cab to Darwin, Paper Planes and The Turning) invested in Wenham’s film, which was shot under the radar. Connolly expects to release the film under his event screenings banner, CinemaPlus. CinemaPlus debuted with Connolly’s Underground: The Julian Assange Story, followed by The Turning (co-distributed with Madman Entertainment), Michael Kantor’s The Boy Castaways and Paul Cox’s Force of Destiny. Screen Australia has supported the CinemaPlus initiative.

CinemaPlus will next release Chasing Asylum, Eva Orner’s documentary which chronicles the raw personal stories of asylum seekers who were sent to live indefinitely on Manus Island and Nauru, and the impact on people who worked at the detention centres.

Connolly says these event screenings enable films to run much longer than would be possible in a conventional cinema release and are serving as effective platforms for ancillary markets. Spear, for example, is having a theatrical life stretching over six months, including outdoor screenings in remote communities using an inflatable cinema provided by Bangarra.

It’s a different cinema landscape to when Connolly started his filmmaking career.

Connolly produced his first film, the Rowan Woods-directed The Boys, in 1998 when he was 27, after serving as associate producer with producer John Maynard on writer and director Gerard Lee’s All Men Are Liars. Ever since, Connolly has been keen to give emerging producers and directors opportunities.

John Harvey, who produced Spear and one of the short films in The Turning, joined Arenamedia under Screen Australia’s Indigenous internship program. Harvey is now collaborating with Arenamedia via his firm Brown Cabs. And Liz Kearney came on board after producing These Final Hours, thanks to Screen Australia’s Enterprise People program.

Ernie Dingo, Ian Thorpe and Julia Zemiro trace their roots back 200,000 years in the new SBS series DNA Nation.

“Welcome home.”

For Ernie Dingo, home is with the Yamatji people of Western Australia, but in that moment, as paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey gripped his hand in the Rift Valley in Kenya, those two unexpected words really struck a chord.

“That was a defining moment for me,” he says.

“Here is this man, welcoming me back to where my family originated from. It meant a lot.”

It was one of a number of extraordinary moments within the three-part SBS series DNA Nation that follows three Australian personalities – Dingo, Olympian Ian Thorpe, and Eurovision presenter Julia Zemiro – as they use genetic testing to find out where their ancestors came from and their journey Down Under.

It was an opportunity that presented itself to Dingo through production company Blackfella Films, who contacted a number of people to gauge their interest in the series.

Dingo threw his hat in the ring and was picked.

“I wanted to do it also because of my ancestral background and to discover how long Aboriginals have been in Australia,” he says.

“One of the things going on in my head was to get an answer to that before I fall off the perch.”

But that answer was much more specific and personal. By tracking his mitochondrial DNA, geneticist John Mitchell was able to pinpoint how long Dingo’s mother’s line has lived in the Murchison region of WA, where he was born nearly six decades ago.

The answer? Some 40,000 years.

“Being there for over 43,000 years or so in the one spot, something must be good,” Dingo says.

But another surprise comes from tracking Dingo’s father’s side – a reveal you’ll have to tune in to find out.

As Dingo, Thorpe and Zemiro tracked their mother’s and father’s DNA across the world, a kind of genetic census was also being carried out back home. Marking the first survey of its kind, DNA was collected from 220 people representing six distinct ethic groups – Greek, Chinese, Indian, Aboriginal, Lebanese and Anglo-Celtic – to figure out the ancestry of Australians.

In the end, what Dingo believes it revealed, is just how multicultural Australia is.

“The traditional full-blood are an elite group and all the rest of us are mixes. The rest of us have got ingredients from all over the world,” he says.

But it makes him feel even stronger about the traditional owners of our land – and wonder if something will soon be lost forever.

“Everytime I go bush with the traditional people who have no outside blood in them, I have a strong sense of pride and respect because this basically is the last line,” he says.

“There’s a bit of sadness in that… you’re looking at some very, very ancient people.”

The similarities between Indigenous Australians and the African Hazabe tribe in Tanzania, where Thorpe, Zemiro and Dingo’s mother’s lines could be traced back some 200,000 years, was another eye-opener.

Dingo got his hands dirty helping to light a fire the same way he was taught by his own people by rubbing sticks together.

“For the Hazabe people to be making fire like that and I’ve done that in Arnhem Land in the Kimberley with my mob, it’s like we haven’t lost a thing,” he says.

It was one of a mosaic of moments in DNA Nation that together highlight the common thread that exists between all humans, regardless of race or age or gender.

It’s a point Dingo has long believed.

“Everyone’s connected in so many different ways. Every time we see an Aboriginal we call them ‘cousin’, cause although we’re a few years apart, maybe we are.”  

DNA Nation starts on SBS on Sunday 22 March at 8.30pm.

Shine director Scott Hicks reflects on his return to the world of music for the documentary Highly Strung. By Caris Bizzaca.

As a teenager, you were just as likely to find Scott Hicks watching classical music concerts as rock’n’roll gigs.

It was how he met pianist David Helfgott – the man who would inspire his 1996 biopic Shine, which won Geoffrey Rush an Oscar and saw Hicks nominated for both directing and screenwriting.

But Shine did not satisfy Hicks’ fascination with classical music. A decade later he returned to the hypnotic world of woodwind and brass for the documentary on composer Philip Glass.

Now, his new documentary Highly Strung marks what he jokingly refers to as the third in his ‘trilogy’ of music films.

“I’ve always been drawn to that world,” Hicks says, reflecting on his life.

“Music and classical music have always been a big element in my life.”

But he says it’s more than just music. He finds he’s drawn toward creative people and how they devote their lives to their work. In Highly Strung, a man spends more than four months carefully hand carving a single cello and musicians take out mortgage-size loans to buy million dollar centuries-old instruments.

Through media interviews, Hicks has actually noticed common themes amongst his works he was never conscious about at the time of filming.

“You look at Highly Strung and reflect back on what happened in Glass and it goes right back to Shine – I feel as though there’s something about the whole balance of life that seems to be a common thread,” he says.

“How do you balance work and art and family and a social life? I think it’s a question that preoccupies a lot of us, not just artists.”

For Hicks, it was a question that came up in the making of Highly Strung.

The filmmaker’s career has encompassed everything from big-budget studio films such as Snow Falling on Cedars, Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis and No Reservations, to large documentary series for the Discovery Channel and more intimate Australian stories like Shine. Many of these, including Highly Strung, were made with producer Kerry Heysen-Hicks.

Hicks says he enjoys the process of creating big budget movies just as much as independent films – it’s all about striving for that balance.

“In a sense it’s like creating a sort of patchwork, between ‘Hollywood’ for want of a better word, and things that are more immediately personal in their appeal for me,” he says.

Highly Strung was most certainly in the latter.

Hicks had just come off the back of directing a major studio movie, The Lucky One with Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling, and all the red carpets and mayhem that come with it, when he discovered something extraordinary was occurring close to home.

Philanthropist Ulrike Klein was gifting the four members of the Australian String Quartet (ASQ) with (incredibly expensive) instruments crafted by the G. B. Guadagnini in the 18^th century.

“I was intrigued by the whole idea of these ancient instruments and the people that play, work with and collect them,” he says.

Because while Highly Strung revolves, in part, around the ASQ and the clashing personalities of its members, it also looks at the people who invest millions in Stradivari and Guadagninis, and even those commissioned to recreate the instruments.

In Highly Strung, what is clear is how these creative people are all being driven by a kind of obsession to achieve something greater than perfection.

“It’s a prerequisite for high artistic achievement… to be sort of possessed by what you’re doing,” Hicks says, adding that it’s people like this that also make fascinating subjects for documentaries.

“Certainly that’s what I’ve tried to do in Highly Strung, because everybody’s obsessed, not just the musicians… and that’s what I think made it so rich.”

Hicks can also relate. With Shine, it was ten years before he was able to get the film off the ground – four of which were spent trying to convince people Geoffrey Rush was the only person to play David Helfgott.

“You sort of have to be obsessed to make a film – to put the amount of energy into every frame you create to make it as good as you feel it can be,” he admits.

“It does require a certain amount of obsessiveness.”

Highly Strung is playing in select cinemas from Thursday, May 19.

Mick Taylor is back. John Jarratt talks bringing his iconic sociopath back to screens in the new Stan TV series, and what SVOD is doing for Australian storytelling. By Caris Bizzaca.

Filmed in and around Adelaide for a little over two months, this new iteration of the Wolf Creek world flips the familiar story.

Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) goes from being the hunter to the hunted when he murders an American family and unknowingly lets their daughter Eve (Lucy Fry) escape with her life – and a newfound thirst for vengeance.

Jarratt says while this marks the third time he’s played the tattooed outback serial killer since 2005, he wasn’t about to say ‘no’ to creator Greg McLean (who co-wrote and co-directed on the series).

“It’s not every day you come up with an iconic character I suppose and this is mine in my career,” he says, assuring fans that Wolf Creek the series delivers.

“With this one I start out in a big way and give all my horror fans everything they want. Then we kind of hand it over the amazing Lucy Fry, who goes on a vengeful rampage trying to find the bastard who did over her family.”

For Fry, who was last seen in Now Add Honey, playing Eve not only brought her back home to Australia for a stretch, but also marks her first lead role.

The 24-year-old Brisbane actor says reading the six episodes from Los Angeles, she was immediately captivated by how Eve’s story plays out as a psychological thriller more so than a horror series.

“When I read how Eve transforms from a victim of Mick to someone who’s trying to take him on, that was really exciting to me,” she says.

Wolf Creek marks the second original series commissioned by Stan, after Jungle’s No Activity, a move which Jarratt says is extraordinary.

“Stan is… very proud and very vocal about being an Australian company supporting Australian stuff,” he says.

Speaking on the cusp of the six episodes launching on Stan, he says the future of this kind of commitment will be in the hands of audiences.

“If the Australian public backs them as they’re backing us, it’ll be a wonderful thing,” he says.

Jarratt, who has long been vocal in the battle against illegal downloading, says it’s thanks to SVOD services like Stan that there has been a decline in online piracy.

This is evident in a report released Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) last year, where executive director Lori Flekser acknowledged the contribution of video-on-demand services in the decline.

Jarratt says while he worries piracy will never fully go away without further action, this is a positive step.

“There definitely are figures to prove that they are (making a difference),” he says.

“I was talking to my son Charlie this morning about it actually. How it’s probably easier to turn on Stan or Netflix and find the movie you want for a lousy 10 bucks a month, rather than to go trying to illegally download it. So I think finally we might have a panacea to this full-on theft.”

While television grapples with changes with everything streaming services, to series length, it’s also being presented with the ever-present issue of the need for diversity – something that Screen Australia is currently researching.

While Fry believes Wolf Creek has done a great job in casting actors like Miranda Tapsell and Deborah Mailman, she acknowledges there is still a way to go.

“I’d love to get to a place where… you have a great story and automatically anyone of any nationality can be cast,” she says.

“Where (you don’t have to say) ‘we want Hispanic for this role, we want African-American for this role, we want to Asian for this role’… it’s just ‘this girl is great for this role, she’s a really great actress and she happens to be from a certain culture’.”

Wolf Creek is available on Stan from Thursday 12 May.

Whether it’s film, TV, comedies or drama, Matthew Saville’s directing career encompasses an enviable list that ranges from adaptations The Slap and Cloudstreet, to features Felony and Noise and comedies such as Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me and Chris Lilley’s We Can Be Heroes.

Here Matthew takes a break from filming the drama series Seven Types of Ambiguity in Melbourne to talk to Screen Australia about his new film A Month of Sundays.

Saville also wrote the film, about a divorced real estate agent Frank (Anthony LaPaglia), who is trudging through life when he gets a phone call from a wrong number and mistakes the elderly women on the end of the line (Julia Blake) as his recently deceased mum.

Screen Australia: How long had you been sitting on this idea for A Month of Sundays before you put pen to paper?

Matthew Saville: These characters had been in my head since I made a short film in 2002 called Sweetheart, in which a lonely office prole gets an unexpected phone call from a kindly soul. I often wondered what happened to them. A Month of Sundays also draws heavily on distant memories from my childhood. So, maybe, it’s been in me, somewhere, since the late 70s, and it’s taken me this long to actually confront it with pan and paper.

SA: It’s been nine years since the last feature you penned Noise. Was the process of writing A Month of Sundays easier or more difficult in comparison?

MS: Writing is always difficult for me. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I depend on the muse. Sometimes she descends, sometimes she doesn’t. My only quality as a writer is patience. I can wait. But thank you for reminding me that it’s been nine years. I’ll pass that on to the muse, next time I see her.

SA: What made you decide to make Frank a real estate agent for this particular story?

MS: That came from my Dad, Bill. Bill Saville was a land rat in Radelaide until the mid-80s. His approach to the profession was quite different to how real estate agents are generally perceived. He never bought or sold a property for anything except a fair price. He traded those properties with a deep understanding that they were, actually, a “home”. He took that seriously. And he brought that idea home every night. He and Mum taught that great lesson to me and all of my siblings. Good parents. I was lucky.

SA: What is a memory that stands out to you from the shoot?

MS: There isn’t one in particular. It was a quick shoot, so much of it remains a blur. I remember how much I enjoyed working with the cast and the crew, and how committed they were to the film. I remember shooting in streets that were the whole world to me in my childhood. I remember feeling grateful that people were working so hard to make something they decided to believe in. Maybe they wanted to honour their own parents. I sometimes got that sense.

SA: Anthony LaPaglia has said ageism is a problem in the film industry. Thinking about the ages of your central cast (who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s), do you think A Month of Sundays is a rarity in that way? Or do you think it’s not as much of an issue in Australian cinema compared to Hollywood?

MS: So many “isms” are terribly problematic, not only in film and television. It’s great that Anthony has brought that up. And what he says is very true. Equally, there’s a gender imbalance (Scroz is working hard toward redressing that) and an ethnic one (again, hopefully, that’s being addressed). I’m not interested in comparing Hollywood to Australian cinema. They are two very separate things, I hope. Every part of Oz culture – film, TV, theater, visual art, music, whatever – should reflect our population and, indeed, feed off how it is a diverse thing. A whole thing. With men, women, youth, the elderly, gay, straight, Caucasian, or not Caucasian, rich, middle class, poor. First Australians, or more recent arrivals.  We should all try to enrich each others’ lives with our own stories. But Anthony is quite right. It’d be a terrible shame if we let one narrative dominate the others. Maybe Hollywood’s doing that. I wouldn’t know.

SA: You’re working on another adaptation with Seven Types of Ambiguity – when making adaptations whether it’s Cloudstreet or The Slap do you view it as a new interpretation, or prefer to stay close to the source material?

MS: The obvious answer to that question is “yes”. Both. Obviously, you want to make something that reflects the intentions of the author of the original text. Having said that, Tim (Winton) and Christos (Tsiolkas) and Elliot (Perlman) are smart guys who understand the vagaries of storytelling, and that it evolves as the story is told. I think they are excited by the possibility that their remarkable books can become something new, in another medium. Not a frame of a TV series will ever change a word of their novels. They know that.

SA: Television in recent years has become more about six-part series or 2-part miniseries, as opposed to the 22 episode seasons of something like The Secret Life of Us. What do you think are some of the pros and cons of this change?

MS: Those types of drama are interesting. Certainly I’ve enjoyed engaging in it, meeting its challenges. That has been fun. I recently had the pleasure of working with a crew in Adelaide. Quite often, at lunch, we discussed this very conundrum. The six part series or two part telemovie, or feature film is a fine thing and they are grateful for the work, but crews depend on a longer form to make ends meet. They want six months of guaranteed work, which I don’t think is too much to ask. What would be great – and these people would do this – is if we could get them long seasons, some surety of work, so they could then apply their skills and acumen to the occasional gig on a feature or telemovie. In South Australia, the SAFC and local producers are working very hard toward this aim. There’s a world class studio sitting there. There’s an incredible body of talent there. An ongoing series would nurture that, and feed into other forms of storytelling, even shorts and docos. That’s what I hope for, for crews in every state; a fair paycheque from consistent, ongoing work, and the opportunity to work on the occasional “passion project”.

Producer Dan Goldberg reveals how Mint Pictures was given unprecedented access inside a reclusive ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect in Melbourne for Strictly Jewish.

For many people, living without television, internet or mobile phones is an impossibility, but for a community in Melbourne’s south-east, it’s a part of everyday life.

That community is Adass Israel, the most ultra-Orthodox sect in Australia, who despite living amongst the trendy restaurants and cafes of Ripponlea, near St Kilda, are entirely self-sufficient, with their own shops, cemeteries and even ambulance services.

“They really are a world unto their themselves,” producer Dan Goldberg from Mint Pictures says.

“The fact that they’ve managed to construct a cradle-to-grave society in the modern era and maintain 5,000-year-old traditions is something I find very special.”

Goldberg says the Adass Israel community is so reclusive and separate from contemporary Australia, they are almost akin to a secret society.

Not anymore.

In the new SBS documentary, Strictly Jewish, audiences are taken inside the lives and homes of three Adass members – Rabbi Aryeh Goldman, elder Shlomo Abelesz, and matriarch Raizel Fogel.

Through rituals and their experiences over the course of a Jewish calendar year (which also includes a trip to Israel), they shed new light on the strict Adass lifestyle and tight-knit community, from monitoring mobile phone activity to the distinctive attire of furry black hats and long coats.

Although not everyone in the 2,000-strong community approved.

“We had to walk a very tight diplomatic tightrope to just get in and out unscathed,” Goldberg says.

“There was never any suggestion of anything untoward other than some people made it clear that they didn’t want us pointing cameras in their direction, which we respected.”

This was a challenge when capturing moments such as the baking of the crackers (known as matzah) for Passover, which involves an enormous assembly line, as the men have just 18 minutes to knead the dough, roll it, bake it and get it out of the oven.

“You just don’t see that ever, anywhere. It’s the only place in Australia, certainly in Melbourne, that does it to that degree,” Goldberg says of the sequence – his favourite in Strictly Jewish.

“The sense of community and belief in that room is powerful. The whole thing is just so antiquated, but beautiful.”

Goldberg, who used to be the National Editor of the Australian Jewish News, says during his time at the newspaper they would write about Adass Israel from time to time. When he first started making Strictly Jewish he just assumed Adass Israel was the equivalent to the Amish, living as they did hundreds of years ago, with no contact to the outside world.

“But what I discovered was they’re not the Amish because they actually embrace modernity as long as it’s on their terms, and as long as it’s been deemed Kosher,” he says.

“So they do have phones but they have to have a filter and they’ve actually got an organisation called the Technological Awareness Group, who come around to all the houses and make sure the phones are kosher.”

And while most young Australians can’t get enough of email and selfies, Goldberg says a lot of the younger generation of Adass Israel were actually the ones who didn’t want to be filmed and seem to be becoming even stauncher in their beliefs.

“I think the older generation had more exposure to the outside because they arrived here as young children and were still establishing the community,” Goldberg says.

“But to think that in 2016 children can grow up in Australia living cheek-by-jowl with the latte society, but yet barely having to engage with them, is staggering.

“That still surprised me the degree to which they can actually live their lives virtually without having contact with the outside world.”

Strictly Jewish is the third documentary in the three part series Untold Australia and airs Wednesday April 27 on SBS.

Audiences will have the power to get their favourite Comedy Showroom pilot off the ground in this Australian television first.

In late April, six comedy pilots will air on ABC TV from the likes of Lawrence Mooney, Eddie Perfect, and the Kates (McLennan and McCartney), with the weight of their futures in the hands of viewers.

Through Comedy Showroom, audiences will have the opportunity to click through on ABC iview after the broadcast and say which ones should come back as full series and provide feedback.

For Matt Lovkis from Mad Kids, it’s been the chance to take what began as a web series – The Legend of Gavin Tanner – and make a half hour pilot.

“With iview and online, it’s a very exciting time to be making comedy,” Lovkis, who also wrote and directed ABC iview series DAFUQ?, says.

“There’s a lot of really cool comic talent coming out and finding an audience these days in different ways.”

With so many screens – from mobiles, to television, to computers – vying for people’s attention, he says (particularly online) comedy seems to be breaking new ground.

“There has been a need to be bigger and bolder to compete with everything,” he says.

“Every phone is a TV… so people in the comedy world are pushing the boundaries to engage audiences even more.”

See for yourself when ABC’s Comedy Showroom premieres on April 27 at 9pm. Following the broadcast head to iview to watch all six pilots and give feedback on your favourites.

Here’s a taster of what’s in store:

The six Comedy Showroom series

The Letdown

Created by Sarah Scheller with Alison Bell

Alison Bell plays new mum Audrey, who’s struggling – her first appearance at Mother’s Group was a disaster, as was her attempt to reconnect with her old pre-baby life in a bid not to be defined by her new role. Audrey might need a support team after all.

Ronny Chieng: International Student

Created by Ronny Chieng and Declan Fay.

Ronny Chieng stars as a smart and competitive Malaysian student who moved to Australia to study law – even though he has no aspirations to be a lawyer. With his sharp wit, he soon finds himself torn between his two worlds as he navigates life as an international student.

The Legend of Gavin Tanner

Created by Matt Lovkis

Gavin Tanner (Matt Lovkis) would never know he was the worst weed dealer in Western Australia. Convinced that he’s a total legend, when the new neighbour (Adam Zwar) moves in, he just knows they were meant to be best mates, whether they have anything in common or not.

Bleak

Created by Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney (The Katering Show)

McLennan stars as the self-obsessed Anna O’Brien, who finds herself with no friends, money, job, house – ok, she loses pretty much everything. And her well-to-do family are no help either. Which is when the unhinged Anna happens upon an Open for Inspection and decides this empty townhouse is just the place to reinvent herself and change her luck.

Moonman

Created by Scott Taylor

Loosely based on Lawrence Mooney’s life, he stars as a fictional version of himself. His job as a DJ is perfect for his party-hard lifestyle – that is, until his girlfriend drops some massive news on him that will mean this forty-something-year-old might finally need to grow up.

The Future is Expensive

Created by Eddie Perfect

Never sure if the absurdity that is life as a modern middle-class father and husband is actually a surreal joke or not, Eddie Perfect navigates the highs and lows, from dealing with mummy-Nazi’s to DIY challenges at home.

Six years after the movie hit screens, a television adaption of John Marsden’s beloved Tomorrow When the War Began is preparing to invade ABC3. Producer Michael Boughen walks us through the book, to film, to TV adaption and what fans can expect. By Caris Bizzaca.

Tomorrow When the War Began was an interesting balancing act for filmmaker Michael Boughen.

After producing the 2010 movie, steps were taken to make a sequel until Boughen realised John Marsden’s Tomorrow novels were perfectly suited to television.

Boughen was well aware of the importance of the books’ large fan-base and says it’s one of the most interesting challenges for anyone adapting such well-known works.

“At the end of the day, yes a lot of people have grown up reading the books and loved them (but) there a lot of people are out there that haven’t and want to engage with this on a purely entertainment level,” he says.

“You’ve got to balance the two.”

It required a lot of listening to fans, who he thinks will find the Tomorrow When the War Began TV series opens up the world to include much more detail within the book.

“I really felt it was an exciting journey to begin because we had so much more opportunity to really show a lot more character development, which you get in a book but you often don’t get on a 100-minute film,” he says.

There’s also a lot that’s completely fresh and new.

The story is familiar – about a group of teenage friends who find themselves some of the few last free citizens able to stand up to the “Asian Coalition” after they invade Australia – but it’s no longer told just from point-of-view of Ellie (played by Molly Daniels).

“We were therefore able to spend a lot more time with the various characters,” Boughen says, including even looking at what was going on with the teens’ captured parents.

“So we could also look at how being wrenched away from your parents initially seems like a really good idea because you can do whatever you want, but then it becomes really horrendous because you really do need that support, both moral and emotional.”

Even though it’s been updated and modernised, Boughen says the series still holds very true to the DNA of Marsden’s books. The author himself was kept informed of their plans, although he was happy to leave the screenwriting to the screenwriters.

“John is a fantastic author to have on side. He simply says, ‘I write books, I don’t do TV and film’ and he was pleased we were doing it,” Boughen says.

The casting of the teens – another challenge – was a lengthy process of around five months, but resulted in six newcomers who are actually, many of them, playing their onscreen ages.

With casting done, the shoot began in September, followed by a fast turnaround to get the six episodes done for the April 23 premiere. Not that you can tell watching it, Boughen says.

“From day one it was meant to be a cinematic experience… but at the same time get down into the real nitty gritty of character and story,” he says, assuring that they also “haven’t skimped on the explosions”.

Being a PG series about war also presented some unique obstacles for the potentially younger audience. While there are guns, chases, and “lots of bangs”, Boughen said a lot was implied or seen to convey the danger the teens were in.

The demographic also meant Tomorrow When the War Began became the first of four projects to receive funding from a partnership between Screen Australia and Twitter – to tap into the social media savvy audience.

And depending on how successful the series is, there’s always scope for more seasons.

“That’s something we can do for sure,” Boughen says. It depends on how it all travels of course, both locally and internationally, but there are seven books in the series and we’ve still got a lot of material that’s open to us to deal with.”

Tomorrow When the War Began premieres on ABC3 on April 23 at 7.30pm. Remember to tweet or post using the hashtag #TWTWB

Producer Jennifer Cummins felt the ground shifting while filming in A Modern Mutiny, as what was a character-driven story quickly took on a political edge. By Caris Bizzaca.

The first time A Modern Mutiny producer Jennifer Cummins visited Norfolk Island, it felt similar to stepping into a time capsule.

It was years ago and Cummins, from Heiress Pictures, was on a reccy there for an entirely different project.

“Along with most Australians I knew almost nothing about Norfolk Island,” she says.

“But about half an hour after we landed I thought ‘this is the most intriguing place, why don’t I know more about it?’”

Situated between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia, this small island is just 34.6km² and has roughly 1,600 citizens. There’s no public transport, locals wave to all passing vehicles (called a “Norfolk wave” and although everyone speaks English they have their own language, called Norfolk.

“It’s hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia and romance when you’re on Norfolk Island, because they are in some ways in a bubble, which can also be kind of gorgeous,” Cummins says.

“Kids ride around in the back of utes without seatbelts. There is a sense of freedom and a more relaxed environment than we experience on the mainland.”

But that freedom is in the midst of being challenged. Against this romanticised view of Norfolk Island is the fact that they have been struggling.

“There is also the reality of people needing to economically survive and not having a tax system or Medicare, or a fully functioning hospital system is challenging in the 21^st century,” Cummins says.

With these recent tough times, the self-governed territory has had to reach out to the Australian government for help, but with that comes certain rules and reforms.

“(So) we knew that some sort of change to the way they were governed was imminent or likely because they were broke, basically.”

When Cummins was there, a palpable sense of trepidation was in the air, as if the storms of change were brewing. Cummins wanted to capture Norfolk and its inhabitants before this arrived and so A Modern Mutiny was born.

The second part of SBS’s Untold Australia series shines a spotlight on this rich culture and people on the precipice of change. Directed by Martin Taylor, it follows a number of Norfolk’s inhabitants over the course of about a year – from descendants of the Bounty mutineers, to the island’s new administrator Gary Hardgrave, who was appointed during filming.

The edit was (unsurprisingly) long, as Cummins and the team worked hard to get the balance right between a character-driven film and what became a very political story.

“We never set out to make a political film. We set out to make a film that was about the characters of Norfolk Island and to really unveil a culture that mainland Australia didn’t know anything about,” Cummins says.

“Also we wanted to be true to the nature of the Norfolk lifestyle and the wonderful people we spent time with there. There are quite quirky and charming, so we didn’t want to make a film that was just an angry political film because they’re more than that.”

The ground and mood was shifting as the team filmed A Modern Mutiny. Comprehensive reforms were announced by the Australian government, to the utter dismay of some locals, and relief from others.

“It was met with a lot of anxiety on the island,” Cummins says, and the team felt they couldn’t go to air without acknowledging these significant responses to the new governance.

So they decided to return to Norfolk in early 2016 to shoot a post-script, so the audience could get a clearer picture of how the island is handling it all.

“We wanted this to be a film that would stand the test of time for the Norfolkers and for Australians as an audience – that we have this lovely record of where they were at,” Cummins says.

“Hopefully we have managed that.”

A Modern Mutiny is the second part in the SBS series Untold Australia and will air on Wednesday April 20 on SBS.