Helen Carter VIEW DETAILS Several significant Australian cinematographers have collaborated with director Gillian Armstrong to shoot short videos, feature length dramas and documentaries using 16mm film, video and digital formats and spanning many industrial and creative practices. Through close analysis of shots and sequences, and personal communication with cinematographers this thesis will review Australian cinematography from the 1970s to 2015. Through the use of certain films directed by Armstrong the thesis shows that even within the work of a single director, the contribution of different cinematographers is distinctive. This research identifies the unique contribution cinematographers bring to these films and articulates the creative, technical and organisational work of cinematography crews.

Chief Investigator: Helen Carter Re-viewing cinematography in films directed by Gillian Armstrong Minglei Wang VIEW DETAILS This research investigates China's cultural diplomacy in the 21st century based on a case study of Chinese arts and cultural programs conducted in Australia.

Chief Investigator: Minglei Wang China’s cultural diplomacy through arts in Australia: A case study of China Cultural Centre Afnan Beela VIEW DETAILS The project focuses on the Saudi film industry. This country had a transformation and a new opening of its film industry in 2018 and so makes a valuable area of study in comparison to the revival of Australian film production and the recent opening up of the Chinese film industry. A short documentary on the Saudi film industry will form a component of the research.

Chief Investigator: Afnan Beela Recent Developments in the Saudi Film Industry Martin Dunne VIEW DETAILS Deadly Earnest was a name communally used by five actors between 1959 and 1978 to introduce horror films on Australian commercial television. Yet between 1948 and 1970 Australia had an unofficial ban on the genre of horror. This thesis examines the Deadly Earnest phenomena through biography and evidence and explores the changes when this ban was repealed by Don Chipp from 1970 on.

Chief Investigator: Martin Dunne Deadly Earnest Lachlan Salt VIEW DETAILS Within the last ten years, television aesthetics and industrial practices have become increasingly convergent across other entertainment mediums such as video games and cinema. The television title sequence offers another avenue, mostly unnoticed by scholars, into contemporary convergent television production and aesthetic practices. In order to investigate the convergent television landscape today, television title sequences from the 2010s created by prominent motion graphic design studios are explored in my thesis. To this end I have created several audio-visual essays that directly demonstrate concepts and ideas from a traditional written component in my PhD thesis.

Chief Investigator: Lachlan Salt The Aesthetic Television Title Sequence Sonny VIEW DETAILS A creative research project that is examining virtual environments as a new format for durational film aesthetics.

Chief Investigator: Kristen Coleman - PhD Candidate in Screen and Media Sonny VIEW DETAILS Motion Capture has revolutionised the way we bring human movement into digital animations. But does the immersive quality of MoCap help us better express the creative potential of human performance, or do we risk performers being reduced to tools of the software itself? This research project examines the relationship between sophisticated software and the humanity that brings it to life.

Chief Investigator: Peter O’Brien Emotional Creatures
or Warm Props?
Identifying the Critical Importance of the Human Performance Component in Real-Time Digital Animation Productions VIEW DETAILS We live in an age of rapid digital transformation, and the question of how we keep local content alive on the small screen is at the heart of this project, highlighted by an intensely local observational documentary produced for ABC TV, following joint Adelaide Festival Artistic Directors, Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield as they scour the globe for the 2020 festival in its all-important 60th year.

Chief Investigator: Richard Jasek Getting Their Acts Together
(Adelaide Festival Documentary) VIEW DETAILS The Philippines Mountain Province commemorates its founding with the Lang-ay Festival, a cultural event derived from the indigenous practice called lang-ay, which has several meanings, such as dining at your neighbor's house, sharing of food or tapey (rice wine), and inviting someone you don’t know to eat or drink coffee at your house. This project aims to identify and analyse the different cultural performances and activities where the concept of nation and community is being performed by the different ethnolinguistic groups of Mountain Province during the Lang-ay Festival.

Chief Investigator: Roger Federico Performing Community at the Lang-ay Festival of Cordillera Administrative Region: Theatre in the Nation, the Nation in the Theatre VIEW DETAILS How does the border metaphor in eco-documentaries reflect our wider sense of place in the planet? This creative, practice-led research will look at relationships between humans and nature from the perspective of nature-culture borders as sites of inclusion, exclusion and fragmentation, and ecological restoration.

Chief Investigator: Wendy Fowler Bordering Nature: Exploring documentary metaphors for the Anthropocene