Pushing the boundaries: creativity and constraint in Australian screen production

ABSTRACT

Screen production is risky business. Significant sums of money are invested in a process that is subject to myriad precarious variables. Effective completion of a screen project is achieved through the instigation and monitoring of strict parameters which bound its creative process. However, filmmaker David Lynch states that ‘any restriction is a sadness and can kill creativity’ (Stratton 2015. David Lynch in Conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGd6lnYTTY8). The tension between flow and constraint in creative practice negotiates a delicate balance between efficiency and futility. At its most productive, limitations can provide a catalyst for innovation, whereas restrictions that are not sympathetic to the project’s creative intention can cause unproductive conflict and power struggles. Examination of this inherent tension deepens our understanding of the screen production process and offers broader insight into the nature of practice in the creative arts. Anecdotal evidence is drawn from interviews with screen practitioners and the author’s own experience working in various Australian film and television productions between 1994 and 2018. Findings are then examined alongside theories of creative work.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity research
• creative process
• Australian screen production
• screen production research
• director
• cinematographer
• production designer
• costume designer
• Justin Kurzel
• Kriv Stenders

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Juliet John is a graduate researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, where she is completing her PhD thesis on the nature of creative process in contemporary Australian screen production. She is a graduate of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and has lectured in filmmaking at Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. Juliet has a background in film, television and music production, having worked mainly as an art director and as a contemporary music assistant over the past 25 years.

Hester Joyce combines creative practice (with expertise in screenwriting, performance and screen biography) and research into screen cultures. She completed a Harry Ransom Fellowship, University of Texas, Austin in 2015. She is the co-editor of Journal of Screenwriting, and the co- author of New Zealand Film & Television: Institution, Industry & Cultural Change (Intellect, 2012) as well as articles and book chapters on screenwriting, screen aesthetics and New Zealand cinema. Hester is Associate Professor in Creative Arts and English, Humanities and Social Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences College, La Trobe University, Melbourne Australia.

Notes

1 Please note that the term flow does not necessarily refer to the Csikszentmihalyi or Sawyer usage.