TV industry ‘running out of famous Australians to make series about’
The TV industry is in danger of running out of famous Australians to make mini-series about, one of the country’s leading producers has warned.
The comments came from Posie Graeme-Evans at the Screen Forever conference in Melbourne. Graeme-Evans, who created long-running Nine drama series McLeod’s daughters, made the comments as she delivered the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture.
Graeme-Evans: Have we reached peak ‘famous Australians’ yet?
She told delegates to the Screen Producers Australia event that while local audiences are showing appetites for biopics, they have often failed to sell in the international market.
“running out of famous Australians to make series about”
Thank. F**k.
Put those TV shows up against Westworld and it’s like living in a parallel universe.
Why is Australian T.V seeing this tired formula as something to be milked ad nauseum? Where is the support for original programming? We have industry talent that is world class, and some of the best creative minds not being afforded the opportunity to develop and implement ideas due to conservative thinking in commercial television. If HBO, Showtime, and the rise of Netflix has shown us anything, if you create original, compelling programming the audience will follow. Commercial television is now largely a cultural wasteland.
Bio pics are just another way of writing a drama without having to tell a story from scratch, without having to invent a world and characters and events. In other words, it is easier; easier than doing what far too many Australians hate to do, which is to get in touch with their creative side, and to allow such seemingly terrifying things as love, romanticism, or other deeply human feelings (the most feared of which is Sentimentality) to flow and abound.
“Oh its a true story, great we don’t have to do anything, just sit and watch.” Drama demands the suspension of disbelief, the surrender of at least part of your comfort zone, and an opening of your mind and even a bit of your soul. Many film and television producers and directors (far too many) generally avoid theatrical demands, rules and other practices, oh they love making pictures, but apart from the necessary inclusion of certain artifice, they fear the visceral process of drama, and the hot centre of human emotions and desires.I can almost hear them laughing and/or heading for the door right now. You think I am joking? I have worked closely with them for over 45 years.
It is a shame that Posie Graeme Evans suggested producer training when the most glaringly obvious problem with Australian film and television is the quality of the script writing and the lack of any meaningful path for writers. There are very very few who are able to make the transition from soap operas to top end quality dramas. Take for example a succession of dull, monotonous ABC dramas or prosaic mini-series like House of Hancock or Hide and Seek. The emergence and huge popularity of Netflix and Stan has given the Australian audience a chance to see just how much better written so much of the foreign material is. And it isn’t just about money. The Scandinavians public broadcasters have proven how small broadcasters can produce fantastic dramas just as good as HBO or Netflix. It is about the calibre of the network script executives and the progression and training of the writers and the quality of their teachers and mentors. Is this an elephant in the room that nobody is addressing or is the industry so lacking in self reflection it can’t see a problem?
Hi Victor. In the speech I did talk a fair bit about writers and writing – and a whole lot more about taking risks and how to do that…
What a crazy industry model we have.
We rightly impose local content obligations on networks; but now we have reduced their license fees and continue to use taxpayer dollars to fund Screen Australia’s subsidy of those same local content costs.
Go figure.
@Victor.
I think I understand what you mean and I agree about the writing qualities and the lack of a meaningful path, but I take exception to your comparison of Soap opera and what you refer to as [quote] “top end quality dramas”[unquote]
Soap opera is drama of a specific type, and is in no way inferior to any other form of drama. Grand Opera, for instance, is not high end music, it is music of a specific type; Jazz, pop, rock, country, and folk, require musicianship and interpretive qualities just as Opera does.
The production of drama requires theatrical skills, and these skills, writing may well be at the head of the list, are not nurtured, or in many cases not even considered, in our country.
Reads like an Onion headline…