August 2008 Archives
So what's on televison this week, what should you watch for quality viewing, what should you consider watching from the trashier end of the market, just in case you need to be familiar for your next hob interview, what's everyone going to be talking about.
Here's our weeklyI(ish) glance over the TV schedule.
Sunday
7:30 PM ABC 'Doctor Who: Forrest of the Dead', the second hand of this two parter, if you missed the first episode jump onto the ABC's i-view online. Great episode from Stephen Moffat. 7:30 PM SEVEN Can Daniel McPherson breathe new life into 'Dancing with the Stars'? 7:30PM TEN 'Australian Idol' will the 6 consecutive days of Auditions built them a decent audience. 8:30 PM NINE 'Scorched' is a tele-movie extravganza with online components that extend before and after the boradcast. SBS 9:10PM Tony Ayres brilliant second feature film 'The Home Song Stories'. FOX CLASSICS begins a month of Bond films with 'Do No' and 'from Russia with Love', OVATION 10 PM 'In the Library' Clive James talks to Cate Blanchett, Nickelodeon is playing my favorite cartoon 'Invader Zim', CI fail at programming putting the 'Claremont Serial Killer' documentary on at 8:30pm but that makes it on at 6:30 in WA because the channel is not time shifted - losing the biggest audience for the show.
Monday
8:30 PM ABC 'Four Corners' tackles the monopoly of Coles and Woolworths in Supermarket pricing, 9:35 PM ABC 'EnoughRope' Andrew Denton talks to the very funny Bill Bailey, 11:35 PM ABC '9-11 The Falling Man', a geat documentary. 7:00 PM TEN 'Taken Out' is it 'Perfect Match' for a new millenium? Games shows have been tanking this year, remember the Power of Ten? Million Dollar Wheel of Fortune. 10:05 PM SBS 'Shameless' returns.
Tuesday
10:30PM NINE 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' Billie Piper starts in this miniseries based on the best selling book from the award winning British blog. 9:30PM TEN 'Rush' action packed new Australian TV series.
Wednesday
8:00PM NINE 'Hole in a Wall' - we're awarding this the TV trash of the week award. 9:30PM ABC 'Very Small Business' from the creators of 'The Librarians' will it got o the red or stay in the back, it's on the ABC so it's guaranteed a full run, 10:05 PM SBS 'Laputa: Castle in the Sky' beautiful Japanese animation.
Thursday
8:30PM NINE 'The Strip' more Aussie Drama, City Homicide, All Saints, Rush, can we take it all in?
Saturday
10:00 PM SBS 'Great Aussie Albums' this great series returns with a focus on The Go-Betweens '16 Lovers Lane'.
Here's our weeklyI(ish) glance over the TV schedule.
Sunday
7:30 PM ABC 'Doctor Who: Forrest of the Dead', the second hand of this two parter, if you missed the first episode jump onto the ABC's i-view online. Great episode from Stephen Moffat. 7:30 PM SEVEN Can Daniel McPherson breathe new life into 'Dancing with the Stars'? 7:30PM TEN 'Australian Idol' will the 6 consecutive days of Auditions built them a decent audience. 8:30 PM NINE 'Scorched' is a tele-movie extravganza with online components that extend before and after the boradcast. SBS 9:10PM Tony Ayres brilliant second feature film 'The Home Song Stories'. FOX CLASSICS begins a month of Bond films with 'Do No' and 'from Russia with Love', OVATION 10 PM 'In the Library' Clive James talks to Cate Blanchett, Nickelodeon is playing my favorite cartoon 'Invader Zim', CI fail at programming putting the 'Claremont Serial Killer' documentary on at 8:30pm but that makes it on at 6:30 in WA because the channel is not time shifted - losing the biggest audience for the show.
Monday
8:30 PM ABC 'Four Corners' tackles the monopoly of Coles and Woolworths in Supermarket pricing, 9:35 PM ABC 'EnoughRope' Andrew Denton talks to the very funny Bill Bailey, 11:35 PM ABC '9-11 The Falling Man', a geat documentary. 7:00 PM TEN 'Taken Out' is it 'Perfect Match' for a new millenium? Games shows have been tanking this year, remember the Power of Ten? Million Dollar Wheel of Fortune. 10:05 PM SBS 'Shameless' returns.
Tuesday
10:30PM NINE 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' Billie Piper starts in this miniseries based on the best selling book from the award winning British blog. 9:30PM TEN 'Rush' action packed new Australian TV series.
Wednesday
8:00PM NINE 'Hole in a Wall' - we're awarding this the TV trash of the week award. 9:30PM ABC 'Very Small Business' from the creators of 'The Librarians' will it got o the red or stay in the back, it's on the ABC so it's guaranteed a full run, 10:05 PM SBS 'Laputa: Castle in the Sky' beautiful Japanese animation.
Thursday
8:30PM NINE 'The Strip' more Aussie Drama, City Homicide, All Saints, Rush, can we take it all in?
Saturday
10:00 PM SBS 'Great Aussie Albums' this great series returns with a focus on The Go-Betweens '16 Lovers Lane'.
Here's a new blog that might become quite a useful resouce. Film Studies for Free hopes to link together scholarly and educational resources for filmmakers from around the web.
Australian television is coming to life after the Olympics and there's a couple of things of interest on this week.
TUESDAY
8:30pm SEVEN 'Packed to the Rafters' a new comedy-drama series staring Eric Thompson and Rebecca Gibney. 10:05pm SBS 'Helvetica' a whole documentary about the font.
THURSDAY
8:30pm SBS 'The Circuit' - if you missed it last uear, SBS is replaying the first season.
TUESDAY
8:30pm SEVEN 'Packed to the Rafters' a new comedy-drama series staring Eric Thompson and Rebecca Gibney. 10:05pm SBS 'Helvetica' a whole documentary about the font.
THURSDAY
8:30pm SBS 'The Circuit' - if you missed it last uear, SBS is replaying the first season.
The Crossover Media Lab is returning to South Australia early next year.
For a fortnight in February Adelaide is going to be the place to be, with Crossover, the Australian International Documentary Conference, The Writer's Conference, the Adelaide Film Festival and many more events all happening at the same time.
Last time I caught the final presentation which featured participants from Crossover and it on it's own was an inspirational event. All the best speakers from last time are back.
Find out more
Related Posts
The change that has come, and the change that has got to come
Day of the Figurines
February 23rd 2007 at Graeme Watson personal blog
For a fortnight in February Adelaide is going to be the place to be, with Crossover, the Australian International Documentary Conference, The Writer's Conference, the Adelaide Film Festival and many more events all happening at the same time.
Last time I caught the final presentation which featured participants from Crossover and it on it's own was an inspirational event. All the best speakers from last time are back.
Find out more
Related Posts
The change that has come, and the change that has got to come
Day of the Figurines
February 23rd 2007 at Graeme Watson personal blog
24 Hour Comic Day is happening again on Saturday October 18th, here are all the details.
This is a really fun event, and a great collaboration between FTI and Artrage. If your into animation or comics its a great creative outlet where you get to meet lots of new people. Check out some of the photos from the event.
This is a really fun event, and a great collaboration between FTI and Artrage. If your into animation or comics its a great creative outlet where you get to meet lots of new people. Check out some of the photos from the event.
Take a look at the a little piece of SBS's new comedy series 'Bogan Pride'.
It's a comedy musical, created by performer Rebel Wilson (Monster House, The Wedge) andTony Ayres (The Home Song Stories, Walking on Water). Perth based Director Peter Templeman (Marx and Venus, Lockie Leonard) directed the series.
It's a little while until the show hits the screens, it'll debut in October, but already there are suggestions that this could be Australia's next big comedy hit.
It's a comedy musical, created by performer Rebel Wilson (Monster House, The Wedge) andTony Ayres (The Home Song Stories, Walking on Water). Perth based Director Peter Templeman (Marx and Venus, Lockie Leonard) directed the series.
It's a little while until the show hits the screens, it'll debut in October, but already there are suggestions that this could be Australia's next big comedy hit.
As part of my work for the 'Change Agent' stream of the 'Reframing the Future' program I have been doing lots of reading about change managment, and more interestingly it's associated fields.
In the past, change managment processes in organisations followed a freeze - unfeeze model. Things would be ut on hold, reviewed and anaysed, new ways of working would be developed and put into place, and then the work would begin again. Locally an example of this would be ScreenWest's 2003 review of programs, where for a large part of the year everything was 'under review'.
This processes works fine, but there are few commercial businesses that could take such a slow moving approach in today's fast moving business environment. As they say, it's not the big that eat the small, but the fast who beat the slow. Speed is everything. Yet how do you make effective change quickly.
Earlier this week I was at Reframing the Future's Forum in Perth. This interesting meeting brought together around 60 Trainers and Administrators from some of Perth's leading private and public training institutions. The fields of the schools was diverse, but the challeges being reported were quite similar.
Throughout the day we shared a number of stories. I discussed a new program we have just begun at FTI in partnership with National Indigenous Television, I noted that setting up the program had been quite a challenge as we had only a few weeks to complete the work and this involved organising travel for participants from across Australia. A colleague who works in the public sector at a TAFE college sighed and reflected, "This is where TAFE colleges fall down", while a private provider can move fast and meet industries needs, public colleges are tied up in red tape and beauracracy. We would have begun training, while they may still be filling out travel request forms.
So one of the key focusses for change management today is how do you bring about fast change. Change that occurs at the speed of the business you operate in.
The second challenge we face is making a change that takes hold. Too often people fall back into old ways of working.
As a team member at FTI, like many businesses, you can find your working day consumed by meetings. One thing we constantly try to change in our workplace culture is that meetings can be short. We automatically tend to schedule a meeting for an hour. That means we can do 7 things in one day. Yet is we can make meetings shorter, 30 minutes, we could maybe achieve 14 important discussions in a day. If we limited meetings to just 15 minutes our productivity could double again. If we got rid of half the meetings and replaced them with email or electronic white board discussions, we could do even more. Two years ago we decided to limit our weekly staff meetings to 30 minutes, we manage to achieve this about 50% of the time.
I'm fond of a story about Queen Victoria, frustrated with long meetings with her Ministers - she changed something - she didn't make the time set aside shorter, she just removed all the chairs from the room. The meeting had to be conducted standing up. Not surprisingly the meetings were completed in record time when people's legs got sore.
The key to success here is the change was not the obvious change, but it was a change that was effective. So managing change - effective change- requires a fair degree of innovative thinking.
I just finished reading Frans Johansson's book ' The Medici Effect'. Taking it's name from the finacing family of the Italian Renaisance, it delves into the methodology for coming up with creative solutions, innovative answers and new ways of thinking. It's a great starting point for anyone who needs to battle the cries of 'but we've always done it that way'.
Johansson challeges us to find 'intersectional ideas' thought patterns that allow us to bring in information from outside of our own area of expertise. His examples include everything from architects being inspired by termites, to the music of Shakira, Sweedish crusine and the success of Pixar. Johanssonsees three forces that are pushing intersectional ideas, the global movement of people, increased computational abilities and the convergence of scientific disciplines.
The book challeges us to identify our assumptive thought patterns, and reverse them - creating new ways of thinking. It encourages us to look outside our own world and culture. It challeges us to learn information differently. Come up with crazy ideas, letting down are well established thought barriers.
One of the answers to making those changes stick, is to make the change one that is noticeable. Remarkably different from past practice. The new should be so unrecognisable from the past that those team members in a business who are the laggards and the resisters stand out a mile. Like on a film set when the script is changed, everyone should be able to spot the guy with the old script, it's a totally different colour and he's on the wrong page.
'The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epedemics can teach us about innovation'
Frans Johansson
Harvard Business School Press, Boston - Massachusetts, 2006
In the past, change managment processes in organisations followed a freeze - unfeeze model. Things would be ut on hold, reviewed and anaysed, new ways of working would be developed and put into place, and then the work would begin again. Locally an example of this would be ScreenWest's 2003 review of programs, where for a large part of the year everything was 'under review'.
This processes works fine, but there are few commercial businesses that could take such a slow moving approach in today's fast moving business environment. As they say, it's not the big that eat the small, but the fast who beat the slow. Speed is everything. Yet how do you make effective change quickly.
Earlier this week I was at Reframing the Future's Forum in Perth. This interesting meeting brought together around 60 Trainers and Administrators from some of Perth's leading private and public training institutions. The fields of the schools was diverse, but the challeges being reported were quite similar.
Throughout the day we shared a number of stories. I discussed a new program we have just begun at FTI in partnership with National Indigenous Television, I noted that setting up the program had been quite a challenge as we had only a few weeks to complete the work and this involved organising travel for participants from across Australia. A colleague who works in the public sector at a TAFE college sighed and reflected, "This is where TAFE colleges fall down", while a private provider can move fast and meet industries needs, public colleges are tied up in red tape and beauracracy. We would have begun training, while they may still be filling out travel request forms.
So one of the key focusses for change management today is how do you bring about fast change. Change that occurs at the speed of the business you operate in.
The second challenge we face is making a change that takes hold. Too often people fall back into old ways of working.
As a team member at FTI, like many businesses, you can find your working day consumed by meetings. One thing we constantly try to change in our workplace culture is that meetings can be short. We automatically tend to schedule a meeting for an hour. That means we can do 7 things in one day. Yet is we can make meetings shorter, 30 minutes, we could maybe achieve 14 important discussions in a day. If we limited meetings to just 15 minutes our productivity could double again. If we got rid of half the meetings and replaced them with email or electronic white board discussions, we could do even more. Two years ago we decided to limit our weekly staff meetings to 30 minutes, we manage to achieve this about 50% of the time.
I'm fond of a story about Queen Victoria, frustrated with long meetings with her Ministers - she changed something - she didn't make the time set aside shorter, she just removed all the chairs from the room. The meeting had to be conducted standing up. Not surprisingly the meetings were completed in record time when people's legs got sore.
The key to success here is the change was not the obvious change, but it was a change that was effective. So managing change - effective change- requires a fair degree of innovative thinking.
I just finished reading Frans Johansson's book ' The Medici Effect'. Taking it's name from the finacing family of the Italian Renaisance, it delves into the methodology for coming up with creative solutions, innovative answers and new ways of thinking. It's a great starting point for anyone who needs to battle the cries of 'but we've always done it that way'.
Johansson challeges us to find 'intersectional ideas' thought patterns that allow us to bring in information from outside of our own area of expertise. His examples include everything from architects being inspired by termites, to the music of Shakira, Sweedish crusine and the success of Pixar. Johanssonsees three forces that are pushing intersectional ideas, the global movement of people, increased computational abilities and the convergence of scientific disciplines.
The book challeges us to identify our assumptive thought patterns, and reverse them - creating new ways of thinking. It encourages us to look outside our own world and culture. It challeges us to learn information differently. Come up with crazy ideas, letting down are well established thought barriers.
One of the answers to making those changes stick, is to make the change one that is noticeable. Remarkably different from past practice. The new should be so unrecognisable from the past that those team members in a business who are the laggards and the resisters stand out a mile. Like on a film set when the script is changed, everyone should be able to spot the guy with the old script, it's a totally different colour and he's on the wrong page.
'The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epedemics can teach us about innovation'
Frans Johansson
Harvard Business School Press, Boston - Massachusetts, 2006
The WA Heat of the SDA National Pitch is coming up soon and last weekend we had a great workshop that focussed on some of the skills and considerations that go into making a good pitch.
Below are the slides used in the presentation and if you want to hear a little bit more about pitching, or remind yourself of the discussion we had in the seminar - there is an MP3.
The Pitch
Below are the slides used in the presentation and if you want to hear a little bit more about pitching, or remind yourself of the discussion we had in the seminar - there is an MP3.
The Pitch
One of the great advantages of the Video Production training program here at the Film and Television Institute is that we get down to film making really early on in the program, in fact within the first six weeks of our program all participants have completed their first film, a short micro-documentary.
This exercise allows students to develop ideas, work in a team, put their new skills in camera, lighting, sound and editing straight to work, and experience the full production cycle is a very short period of time.
Here's Jason Springer's captivating documentary on the Australian Poker League.
Hear how other students at FTI have found the program
This exercise allows students to develop ideas, work in a team, put their new skills in camera, lighting, sound and editing straight to work, and experience the full production cycle is a very short period of time.
Here's Jason Springer's captivating documentary on the Australian Poker League.
Hear how other students at FTI have found the program
Take a look at Go Animate this online tool can help you make pretty good animations with a selection of templates and characters.
Encourage Innovation. Change is our life blood, stagnation our death knell.
David Ogilvy
I came across this quote while web-surfing, Ogilvy is of course one of the leading advertising companies in the world, and this quote is one the front page of their site.
Over the last few months as I have been learning more about change management, I'm becoming very much of the opinion that it's linkages with innovation are essential. To be able to make an effective change, their must actually be something to change - a significant difference from the past. If the new regime is too similar to the past practice it is too easy to slip back in to the old ways of working.
David Ogilvy
I came across this quote while web-surfing, Ogilvy is of course one of the leading advertising companies in the world, and this quote is one the front page of their site.
Over the last few months as I have been learning more about change management, I'm becoming very much of the opinion that it's linkages with innovation are essential. To be able to make an effective change, their must actually be something to change - a significant difference from the past. If the new regime is too similar to the past practice it is too easy to slip back in to the old ways of working.
