In the early 1990's I helped launch a public TV station in South Australia for the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It was a wonderful and transformational experience which was full of love and joy. I moved to London and through luck and a good showreel I got a job at MTV Europe News. That eventually led to a Channel 4 documentary which led to an MA in screenwriting and screen research. I loved writing and the excitement of workshopping ideas with a team, and although I also loved my camera and editing - I hated working with assholes.
When I moved to Melbourne I facilitated a screenwriting group at Open Channel which led to coordinating their members production group. As a learning activity for the group, I directed a music video - a dream I'd secretly been nursing since 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. Parts of it were fun but there were just too many crazy personalities to please and the DoP the band chose turned out to be a pig on set. I swore never again and poured that energy back into my art practice. Important research has been conducted since then and found the Australian Screen Industry to be very pale, male and stale with participation of women, Queer, ND, non-white and disabled people to account for a depressingly low percentage of the workforce. These studies also show a shockingly high incidence of physical and emotional abuse - all reasons why the Australian Screen Industry is in crisis. Good people don't want to spend their lives in toxic workplaces.
At my father's wake I was abused by an affluent, angry, old, cis, white, heterosexual man who called me a failure because I didn't try hard enough. At 54, this criticism gnawed at me. I have achieved so many amazing things in my life - why not this? Therefore when the opportunity arose to be an attachment on a TV series close to home I was intrigued. I'd never worked on a big-budget production - but mostly I wanted to do it because the role was about helping the Screen Industry go green. Sustainability is very important to me and I hoped this project would help me address the troublesome dissonance of my environmental activism using screens for my art practice.
I had no idea the concept of Sustainability could inspire relentless abuse and threats of violence. Most people were lovely and wanted to do the right thing but after 10 weeks I observed that one group of people on this production just want the world and everyone in it to burn. That group was 'the angry old men with power' - confirmed by research, men like the horrible one at my Dad's wake. It turns out I still hate spending time with assholes and I look forward to their extinction. Hopefully that happens before mine.
Thankfully I also got to do some Albert courses and gained an insight into the system the rest of the world is embracing. I am very grateful for all of the lessons I received :D