Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 07 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
We ‘binge’ watch. We re-watch. We consume everything from cheap DIY to luxurious premium productions. We dip in and out of series, live-tweet our reactions and ache between seasons.
Streaming and on-demand services have rebuilt our small-screen attentions and affections – and, arguably, done more to dismantle ideas of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art than any other popular media form. The way we watch TV is changing and writers are responding accordingly.
In this discussion, we’ll examine the relationships between viewers, writers and networks. How do screenwriters deal with the heightened attention of on-demand viewing? How do networks and platforms test new shows and talent? What’s the difference between a network and a platform … and will appointment TV endure in any form?
Hosted by Elise McCredie, we’ll look contemporary small-screen culture square in the eye – and ask what’s changed, who’s doing its best work and what’s in it for writers.
Presented in partnership with Victorian College of the Arts.
Featuring
Andrew Knight
Andrew Knight is considered the busiest man in film and television. He is currently writing series four of Rake, producing and writing a six-part series of Jack Irish and has written four feature films in four different countries. He is the winner of the 2014 Longford Lyell Award, the Australian Film Industry’s highest honour.
Vicki Madden
Vicki Madden is a producer, writer and show-runner with over 20 years experience in the television industry. She has extensive experience both in Australia and overseas, working as writer and show-runner on such shows as Halifax fp, The Bill (UK), Trial & Retribution (UK), The Clinic (Ireland), Water Rats and Sea Patrol, to name a few. She has written a true crime telemovie, Blood Brothers, for the Nine Network and Playmaker Media.
Vicki has just completed her own series, The Kettering Incident – an eight-part supernatural thriller series for Foxtel, shot entirely in Tasmania with a budget of $14 million dollars. The series was produced by Vicki’s production company, Sweet Potato Films, in association with Porchlight Films, and is enjoying great critical and ratings success.
Vicki is currently developing another series – a high-end crime drama set in Hobart, with Mushroom Pictures as a partner.
Elise McCredie
Elise McCredie is an award-winning film director and screenwriter.
Her first feature Strange Fits Of Passion (writer/director) was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, and went on to be released world wide to critical acclaim. She has also written and directed extensively for TV; she has won an AWGIE for her TV writing, and has written for seasons one and two of the AACTA and Emmy winning ABC/Matchbox series Nowhere Boys, for which she was also nominated for an AWGIE. She has written the novelisation of Nowhere Boys for Hardie Grant Egmont Publishers.
Elise is also co-creator on the new Matchbox TV series Stateless, with Tony Ayres and Cate Blanchett (for which she has written the first two episodes). She is currently working on her original crime mystery series Overflow, produced by Claudia Karvan, and the new season of Jack Irish.
Strange Fits of Passion received 3 AFI nominations, an IF nomination, an AWGIE nomination and was nominated for the Bronze Horse at Stockholm Film Festival. She currently has two features in development: Ride Like a Girl (co-written with Andrew Knight, to be directed by Rachel Griffiths) and Dysmorphia, produced by Andrew Knight. For the past twenty years Elise has worked as an actor, most recently appearing in The Broken Shore, Nowhere Boys and Tim Winton’s The Turning.
Michael Shanks
Michael’s first ever foray into filmmaking took the grand prize at the 2008 Escapist Film Festival. In the fallout, he got a job with the company directing the largely forgotten American-produced web series Doomsday Arcade.
Since then, he’s curated the popular YouTube channel Timtimfed which features a variety of high concept film and comedy content, and has over 35 million views. A multi-faceted filmmaker, he is an award-winning writer, director, musician and visual effects artist. He’s won various awards for his work in music videos, from directing clips of his own band to more recent work with artists such as Guy Pearce on his sophomore musical release, Storm. He is yet to win awards for acting.
Most recently, he created the SBS2 series The Wizards of Aus, which he directed/co-wrote/acted/composed and produced visual effects for. He is deeply unhappy and this bio is a cry for help.