Image: this cute creature is the totemic animal for Australian producers. The Antechinus is actually the single most ferocious warm blooded hunter in the entire biosphere, eating two and a half times its body weight every day.
ScreenHub will close until January 15th, so we can recover from an intense year of reviews, gender matters, declining audiences, new players and the battle to protect our Australian voices.
AFTRS is launching a new course strand in February 2018 about change, business, new practices, creativity and self reflection. It is a huge territory, covered through examples, shaped to accomodate obsessed creatives, delivered online when practical.
RE:FRAME brings together the most adventurous and honest strands of thought on which the school has experimented for a number of years, often in a small way through the Open Program, with the huge engine of the Screen Business department.
The course is still being developed and you can register your interest here. I reckon you should go for it if you don’t live in Sydney – any push helps national thinking.
RE:FRAME was launched at the end of November and the school has put the two session online. They are pretty fascinating. Who would have thought CSIRO could be used to teach screen professionals?
This is a big story and we will cover it properly in January.
I have taken some of our favourite recent stories out from behind the paywall so you can read them over Christmas. You can always check our Facebook page to find anything new.
Here is the list:
Romper Stomper – an unfinished moral tale
The ten most loved arthouse films for 2017
Screen Australia – has the enterprise scheme gone political?
Develop the Developer Mark 2 launched – lives could be changed
Disney sics Mousketeers onto world as Murdoch retreats to Fox den
Screen’s Toughest Guy mans up for honorary doctorate
Let’s try again – another awards system to claim indy space
House of Representatives report finds way to screw Offset pooch
Culture, Truth and Power – Asian cinema and the West
Pixar CFO gives lunatics keys to asylum, creates financial triumph
Key UK campaigner on the raw truths of diversity in the creative industries
2018 promises to be an exciting year, and I can’t believe I just used that cliche. In the industry we face an even faster pace of change with more at stake. The May budget may strip us of our regulatory protection, while the ABC discovers its new Guthrie’d self, CBS puts its boots on the desk at Ten and burns the slippers in the building, the Murdochs continue to retreat as Disney advances, the film industry focuses even more on China, the mainstream cinemas are clogged by a combo of tentpoles and Palace festivals..
Internally, we are now delighted that we have a pricing structure that offers great value for money, and we continue to believe that subscriptions will ultimately be the only stable model in online publishing. Our venerable website will be rethought and rebuilt. We now have a paywall policy which keeps new stories available to anyone for free for the first week, though all the other services come with the subscription.
We are also evolving our relationship with ArtsHub. At times we have tried to link the two halves of the business closely but the cultures are really different. However, we are slowly putting more culture into ScreenHub and more business into ArtsHub, and they seem be organically finding common topics. Expect to see more varied material on our side of the digital fence.
I would like to finish by saying that the loss of RealTime is a tragedy. Much as we all compete over scarce resources, the sector needs diversity of opinion, and the voices in our sector are committed and feisty. The marketplace keeps all of us on our toes and we need to find ways to publish and pay the excellent voices of new communities and generations who need access to the mainstream. And Facebook communities are not enough to create a dynamic national conversation.
Let’s see what we can all do over the next year. In the meantime, get away from screens, drive safely, hug your family. Thank you for supporting us and paying attention. You are our life blood.
