Screen production enquiry: a study of five Australian doctorates

Abstract

Within Australian universities, doctoral research in screen production is growing significantly. Two recent studies have documented both the scale of this research and inconsistencies in the requirements of the degree. These institutional variations, combined with a lack of clarity around appropriate methodologies for academic research through film and television practice, create challenges for students, supervisors, examiners and the overall development of the discipline. This paper will examine five recent doctorates in screen production practice at five different Australian universities. It will look at the nature of the films made, the research questions the candidates were investigating, the new knowledge claims that were produced and the subsequent impact of the research. The various methodologies used will be given particular attention because they help define the nature of the research where film production is a primary research method.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Susan Kerrigan is a screen production scholar who specialises in creative screen practice through practice-led research techniques for screen production. Susan is a current recipient of an ARC Linkage Grant entitled ‘Creativity and Cultural Production: An Applied Ethnographic Study of New Entrepreneurial Systems in the Creative Industries’. Susan's research is closely aligned with her past employment at ABC Television Sydney (1987–2003), where she worked across a variety of productions using multi-camera and single camera approaches. Susan has professionally produced and directed Australian television programs including Play School. Other highlights include ‘continuity’ on Australian Drama TV productions (including Wildside, GP, Big Sky).

Dr Leo Berkeley is a senior lecturer within the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He also has considerable experience as an independent filmmaker, having written and directed the feature film, Holidays on the River Yarra, which was an official selection for the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. More recently he has developed an interest in a new media form called ‘machinima’. A machinima work he produced, Ending With Andre, screened at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in New York. In 2008 he also made a micro-budget feature film called How To Change The World. His current research interests are in the practice of screen production, low and micro-budget filmmaking, improvisation, essay films, community media and machinima.

Dr Sean Maher is a senior lecturer in Film, Screen & Animation in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He has written, directed and produced films selected into the Brisbane International Film Festival, and distributed across Fairfax Media. He has previously worked on music videos, lectured at AFTRS, been a policy researcher at the Communications Law Centre (UNSW) and been a festival organiser for New York Anthology Archives. Current research areas are cinema and its intersections with urban theory.

Associate Professor Michael Sergi is the Director of Film and Television at Bond University. Michael has directed over 100 hours of television drama in Australia and New Zealand, including Home & Away, Neighbours, Pacific Drive, Breakers and Shortland Street. He co-wrote and produced the feature film 10 Days to Die in 2009, and associate produced the feature film The Fear of Darkness in 2014. In 1995 Michael co-founded the Canberra International Film Festival, and was its artistic director for 13 years. He is currently the senior programmer for the Darwin International Film Festival, and is a regular judge for the Australian Directors Guild Awards and the TV WEEK Logie Awards.

Dr Alison Wotherspoon graduated from UNSW (BA. Dip.Ed. Hons) and went on to work at the BBC, Film Australia, ABC, SBS and as an independent producer, before taking up an academic post at Flinders University where she is now Head of the Department of Screen and Media. In her PhD, ‘From Evidence To Screen: A Model for Producing Educational Content in the Twenty First Century’, Alison presented an innovative model for producing evidence-based educational content through creative collaborations between academics, policymakers, practitioners and screen practitioners. Alison continues to use this model and is currently producing and directing a series of short documentaries on bullying research in India.

Notes

1. See http://www.aspera.org.au for more details.

2. The AQF states that a doctoral degree ‘qualifies individuals who apply a substantial body of knowledge to research, investigate and develop new knowledge, in one or more fields of investigation, scholarship or professional practice’ (AQF 2013, 64)

3. Of the 86 Screen Production PhDs, there were 64 full-time and 22 part-time candidates. With the DCAs there were 19 fulltime and 17 part-time candidates.

4. At the Masters level, there were 63 full time and 18 part-time candidates.