News

‘Microworlds: Reef.’

Director/producer Nick Robinson is filming the creatures that underpin the ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef in Microworlds: Reef, the first Netflix Original Australian documentary.

Robinson and producer/Dop Pete West developed super-macro camera techniques for the film, designed to immerse viewers in the world of the reef’s tiny inhabitants.

The feature doc is a co-production between Wild Pacific Media’s Robinson, Electra Manikakis and Peta Ayers and Port Douglas-based BioQuest Studios’ West, Louise Polain and Daniel Stoupin.

Screen Australia and Screen Queensland are co-funding the production, which complies with an approved Covid-safe industry plan, with Netflix.

Bernadine Lim, Screen Australia head of documentary, said: “Wild Pacific Media and BioQuest Studios have joined forces to create an incredibly innovative project.

“The techniques that have been developed specifically for this project are ground-breaking and demonstrate the creativity and ingenuity of Australian filmmaking teams. Microworlds: Reef will allow...

Josie Mason-Campbell.

Josie Mason-Campbell is departing the ABC after three years as head of entertainment and factual amid a management restructure of the content divisions.

Responsibility for entertainment and factual, the genres which are bearing the brunt of the $5 million a year reduction in local commissioning, is being split as part of the measures announced today by ABC MD David Anderson.

The specialist division is being renamed factual and education headed by Aidan Laverty, currently head of specialist.

The drama, comedy and Indigenous unit headed by Sally Riley becomes drama, entertainment and Indigenous, uniting the comedy and entertainment teams.

Michael Carrington, director entertainment and specialist, told If: “Josie has led our entertainment and factual team to great acclaim across award-winning and outstanding programs.

“In recent months, she has also been acting head of distribution, guiding our programming and scheduling across multiple channels to bring high-quality content to audiences when and how they want it.

(L-r) Dop Ben Nott, Kriv Stenders and Jamie Leslie.

Friends and colleagues have paid tribute to film and TV first assistant director Jamie Leslie, who died on Friday from cancer. He was 62.

His final film in a distinguished 38-year career was Kriv Stenders’ Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan.

“Not only was he an industry legend but he was an incredible mentor for me and a huge reason that film came to be,” Stenders says.

“Jamie came on early in pre-production when the film was teetering on the edge of an abyss. We weren’t bonded, we lost $2 million two weeks before shooting, we had no tanks, choppers or guns and we were running on fumes longer than I ever thought was humanly possible.

“But never once did he waver. He was my rock and every hour, every day we just worked the problem, until there was the next one.

Anthony Hayes in ‘Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan’.

Anthony Hayes has been acting since he was nine. While there is no danger of him giving up that stellar career, for the present he is concentrating more on his other passions: writing and directing.

In the past five or six years he has been in the fortunate position of choosing roles he really wanted to do – in the movies Cargo, War Machine and The Light Between Oceans and TV’s Mystery Road and Seven Types of Ambiguity – rather than just for a pay cheque.

Now his primary focus is writing and directing, starting with Gold, a thriller in which he will co-star with Sam Worthington about two guys who discover the world’s biggest gold nugget in the Australian desert. After that he hopes to make Stingray, a crime thriller he wrote and was set to direct in 2016 until the financing fell through.

Prolific screenwriter Everett De Roche, who died in Melbourne yesterday, was one of the instigators of the Ozploitation genre movement of the 1970s and 80s.

The Us-born writer, who migrated to Australia with his wife in 1968, was 67. He had battled with cancer for three years. He started as an in-house writer for Crawfords for four years in the 1970s, penning episodes of Homicide, Division 4, Ryan and Matlock Police.

His first feature screenplay was Colin Eggleston.s Long Weekend in 1978. Among his film credits were Richard Franklin.s Patrick (1978), Simon Wincer.s Harlequin (1980), Franklin.s Roadgames (1981), David Hemmings. Race to the Yankee Zephyr (1981), Russell Mulcahy.s Razorback (1984) and Franklin.s Visitors (2003).

In 2008 he and director Jamie Blanks collaborated on a remake of Long Weekend, for which he added two characters, a baby dugong and several scenes. "The basic environmental message works as well today as it did in 1978," he said.

H20: Just Add Water producer Jonathan M. Shiff is now dipping his toes into the family drama pond. Today, the renowned kids TV producer, also known for such series as Ocean Girl and The Elephant Princess, is starting production on new show Reef Doctors, starring four-time Gold Logie Award winner Lisa McCune (Blue Heelers, Sea Patrol). The 13x1-hour action adventure family drama follows Sam (McCune) . a Gp single mother with a freespirit and a determination who has an unusual hobby: venom. Running the remote Hope Island Clinic, Sam is an accomplished doctor, who, with her team, looks after the residents of all the neighbouring islands, as well as the holiday makers and thrillseekers who visit the area. The residents of the tiny island pull together through thick and thin, proving...