How Did I Get Here?
At Negara Film & Television, as a cross media writer, producer, director and presenter over several formats and disciplines, Kerry Negara has gathered unusually diverse skills and experiences from her work in broadcast media and corporate communication.
The Beginning: A Hands On approach by Kerry Negara
I am often asked, “How did you get here?” Well, kind of like this… Music Video, TV Commercials, Corporate films A short stint as a location film caterer served as a great introduction to production. I found myself working on feature films during a ‘tax incentive induced explosion’ in production (long live 10BA!) Paul Cox’s award winning Lonely Hearts , Bob Weiss’ groundbreaking Women of the Sun series and John Lamond’s first non exploitation movie, Breakfast in Paris. I still firmly believe that catering is the heart and soul of every shoot, should never be skimped on, and that the caterer should be treated regally. On my shoots the caterer is revered.
After some industry training at the Australian Film Television & Radio School, I started in the media business as an In-House Producer, making TV commercials, music videos and corporate films with Ron and Ruth Brown’s small but dynamic R&R Media in Carlton, Melbourne. Independent Content Creators Association Australia Financing Your Independent Film Ron Brown productions R&R Media’s showreel show reel was full of enticing snippets of 1980’s bands and songs that have become etched in the Australian mindset – songs so iconic some of them are now on the soundtrack at our supermarkets - The Church’s The Blurred Crusade – The Church – Almost With You from The Blurred Crusade Unguarded Moment by The Church (song only) Little Heroes – One Perfect Day One Perfect Day by The Little Heroes, Moving Pictures – What About Me ? What about me? by The Moving Pictures Little River Band’s, Down on the Border. R&R’s extended film clip The Blurred Crusade opened theatrically as a short for Australian director, Gillian Armstrong’s music film Starstruck Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982) – House of Self-Indulgence. It was an exciting moment sitting in the cinema watching something I had contributed to, if only in a minor way. What a pity cinemas no longer do this.
As I hawked our show reel to Creative Directors up and down Melbourne’s St Kilda Road advertising agencies, I was firmly thrown in at the deepend, producing on a multitude of TVC scripts and corporate videos. Before I could say ‘cut!’ our small team was juggling the production of 3 TVC’s and corporate films at any one time – ‘V-Line take A Strong Line’ - ‘Me & the Met We’re Moving Melbourne! (still a bad joke in Melbourne) – and lots of toys commercials, not to mention the music videos that kept coming in. I was on a hot housing route to learning every facet of filmmaking by what I later realised was the Fred Schepisi method! Fred Schepisi – The Film House The production of 30 second and 60 second commercials, longer corporates and music clips represented almost every aspect and challenge of filmmaking in a nutshell. Combined with completing courses at AFTRS industry Open Program it was agreat way to learn the business of film & tv prodiuction AFTRS Open Program – Courses Our main selling point in those days at R&R Media was that we shot on 35 mm for the same price as video. What a bargain. Ron Brown’s canny secret was access to 35mm film ends. I was independent and on a commission. Life was hectic and rewarding. This was a hands on introduction to production as I took responsibility for client liaison, building the data base, casting, sourcing and locations, propping, booking crews, studios and talent. We used the songwriting savvy of Mike Brady (Up There Cazaly) Original Up There Cazaly Aussie Rules Anthem and Red Symons (Skyhooks, Hey Hey its Saturday) for our TVC jingles.
In my spare time I immersed myself in film history at the Melbourne Cinemateque and in contemporary fringe culture via the burgeoning live music, stand up comedy, and fringe theatre scene. In the 1980’s and 1990’s Melbourne had more live gigs per capita than any other city in the world. (Yes I’ve thoroughly researched this fabulous fact.) My friends and I would search through the weekend gig guides, seeing the fledgling Men at Work at The Cricketers Arms, or Billy Baxter’s first gigs at The Tote with his Hollowmen, ABC 774 radio Paul Kelly singing about our own towns From St Kilda to Kings Cross – Paul Kelly and even singing about Billy Baxter Billy Baxter – Paul Kelly & The Dots and later in the 90′s Dave Graney at The Continental’s suave supper club, Dave Graney’n’ the Coral Snakes – I’m Gonna Release Your Soul or the Tongan Australian divas Linda and Vika venturing out on their own Linda And Vika – House Of Love Vika and Linda – When Will You Fall For Me 1994 . For a laugh we’d see over and over again the formerly punkish in your face, country music parody, TheWhittle Family at the untamed Last Laugh theatre restaurant, or upstairs at Le Joke Jimeon’s first stand ups Jimeoin-Moths, Carrot Cake, Surprises, Greg Fleet’s candid one man shows 10 Years in a Long Sleeved Shirt and fresh from Perth, a droll young comedian Judith Lucy Up Front 4: Judith Lucy.
Anyway, back to the 80′s and on a roll, R&R Media expanded the business to include facilities and in house staff. I was exhausted and took off to Singapore, staying at the RafflesHotel for 9 weeks. Beautifully original and fan cooled – it certainly wouldn’t be affordable now! Side trips to Malaysia and India rested the spirit and recharged me. I returned to a position as an In House Producer for Concord Advertising. Wow, what a ride that was. I had to learn a whole new way of relating on ‘the inside’ of advertising. This was hot territory, not for the faint hearted. Because I was production skilled, I was very hands on, saving the agency a lot in financial overheads, but I burnt out quickly in this intense environment and walked away while I could! Not to be missed experience all the same.
My interest – and creative confidence- was growing in another direction. When visiting my family home I would mute the TV commercials, while my father rebuked me with, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. I soon found myself saying yes to the approaches of film school students who wanted me to produce their short films Short films and film students are fine if somewhat frustrating, and with the need to pay the rent I accepted a return offer for another stint at R&R Media. This time with a new challenge as Marketing Manager and in charge of New Project Development. Again we became awash with TV commercial production. Documentary – great ratings but an unsustainable business All of this led to my own program creation and forming Negara Film & Television. I was writing, directing and producing charity commercials for my former clients; Every Child Deserves a Family, Tony Lockett Kick a Goal for Kids, The World is in our Hands. Great stuff for practicing the craft of writing and expanding on my casting and production skills.
I started developing a documentary that came out of my marriage and time spent living on the gorgeously mythologised island of Bali in Indonesia. With babies at home and a husband at work, I could juggle my schedule to suit myself. Very liberating. SBS Television gave me a facilities based documentary pre-sale and an office to work from. Management later added some cash to make the production deal work. I titled the documentary Done Bali, after listening to so many travelers and tourists telling me, they’d ‘done Bali’. When it went to air it rated its socks off and SBS screened Done Bali 3 times in one month due to switchboard demand. Buy ‘Done Bali’ for broadcast 
The objectified Balinese had never been interviewed before about the reality of their own history! Proudly, it remains the highest rating locally produced documentary ever screened on SBS’s The Cutting Edge and has sold into worldwide territories mainly through Discovery Networks. Done Bali – ‘the manufacturing of the paradise myth’- is on tertiary curriculum lists internationally.
At the same time through my passion for Melbourne’s live music and comedy scene, SBS TV asked me to work as a Reporter / Director on their new series nomad. This was great fun, making featured personality profiles on singers, musicians, album producers, songwriters, poets, comedians – Dave Graney video profile – nomad’s producers were responsible for creating the viewer competition that discovered the Newcastle band, barely out of school, Daniel John’s Silverchair - Silverchair – Tomorrow.
SBS management asked me to develop a live multicultural entertainment series on the network. With office and facilities support from SBS and cash from Film Victoria I developed Live From the Continental, making use of the sophisticated Continental Café supper club as a live venue around the raconteur talents of ‘man at work’, Scottish Australian all round talent, Colin Hay, with support from Vietnamese Australian comedian Hung Le and Tongan Australian singers Vika & Linda. What a line up of multicultural talent. The SBS executives loved it. And then…what a sad day for Negara Film & TV. A new TV programming head came on board as our pilot was about to be produced and ‘pulled’ the whole deal. This was one of my toughest lessons in television production. It’s one thing to create inspired new programming, it’s quite another to understand and to wrangle the in-house politics and competitive jealousies of interstate network producers. I learnt the hard way that 98% of new program development never sees the light of day.
Out of the ‘Live from the Continental debacle, I did make a profile piece on the extraordinary Australian talent, Colin Hay for an experimental TV network Optus TV. Colin has a wonderful way of telling a story, any story, especially his own – Colin Hay video profile
Through this fickle period of devising new shows and programs for TV, my corporate clients continued to sustain me as I produced docudrama and teaching videos for the counseling, ageing and heath care industries.
Segment producing for TV and radio
With my unbridled curiosity for just about everything, I continued to develop new documentaries, but essentially I found whilst remaining independent, the sustainable broadcast career path was definitely to be found more in segment producing for TV and radio shows. The joys of segment producing are many. For a start segments are 3 – 8 minutes long. There is a satisfying start and finish to every job. But in the main it is the inventive, gifted, original thinkers I’ve researched and interviewed who enrich my world. The building of my research contacts book and general knowledge is an interactive exercise as the shows I work on increase my comprehension and awareness of subjects within the arts, politics, business and educational communities. In the main, these shows and the personalities I research and produce are a delight to be amongst. Daily shows are relentless in their rapacious appetite for content and the new new new. Weekly shows on the other hand are much more civilized, human friendly environments. Shows I’ve enjoyed working on include nomad, The Movie Show at SBS, Insiders, Stateline, 7.30 Report at ABC TV, The Deepend at ABC Radio National.
Glamorous Events – media education
At times I have been asked to draw on my industry knowledge and contacts to create and manage various events and media training for the Australian Film TV & Radio School, RMIT University media studies and the Australian Writers Guild. To their generous credit, some of the luminaries I have persuaded to give of their time include – Shaun Micallef (Full Frontal, The Micallef Program), Jane Turner (Kath & Kim, The D-Generation, Fast Forward, Full Frontal, Big Girl’s Blouse, Brian Dawe, (7.30 Report satire Clark & Dawe, The Games Mockumentary) Frank Woods (The Adventures of Lano & Woodley), Nick Murray (Foxtel Comedy Channel, SPAA Independent Producer of the Year 2003), John Clarke (7.30 Report satire Clark & Dawe, The Games Mockumentary), Rod Qantock (Humorist), Kate Langbroek, (The Panel, Hughesy & Kate) Ted Emery (TV Director/ Producer, D-Generation, Acropolis Now, Fast Forward, Full Frontal, Eric Bana Special, Jimeoin, The Micallef Programme, Kath & Kim.), Tim White (Film Producer Gettin’ Square, Ned Kelly, The Three Stooges, Two Hands, Strange Fits of Passion, Oscar and Lucinda, Robinson Crusoe, Broken English, Cosi, Angel Baby, Stark, Eight Ball, Map of the Human Heart, Spotswood / The Efficiency Expert (USA), Death in Brunswick), John Maynard (Film Producer, The Bank, The Monkey’s Mask, The Boys, All Men Are Liars, An Angel at My Table), Robert McKee (Story Seminars).
Picking up the camera and mini disc – the sole operator
Producing with TV crews who are expert in camera and sound makes field work a breeze. So it was with some apprehension that I picked up my first mini DV camera as a sole operator to shoot research interviews for documentaries in development, Young Tigers in Indonesia and Revenge of the Attractive in New York and Melbourne. I had the benefit of working alongside the notable David Bradbury; tenacious multi award winning documentary filmmaker, Frontline FilmsFrontline, Chile: Hasta Cuando?, Public Enemey No1, Nicaragua: No Pasaran, State of Shock, Shoalwater: Up for Grabs, Nazi Supergrass, The Last Whale, The Battle for Byron, on two documentaries Loggerheads, an anti logging film, and Cape York, a sustainable environment film. The intrepid documentary filmmaker, Bradbury, embraced the mini DV camera as a way of getting past the program gatekeepers at the ABC & SBS. The method works well when programmers see the invaluable content. This past experience convinced me to go Mini DV again in making A Loving Friend, my current documentary about double standards within the arts industry toward pedophile artists. I’ve found there’s nothing like self sufficiency when content is controversial and likely to put well connected noses out of joint. 
Over the past 2 decades I have built a collection of candid interviews with many Balinese people from all stratas of society, who talk openly about aspects of their lives and socio political history. My enthusiasm for reporting South East Asian stories saw me filing the first radio stories in 2004 from the fledgling Ubud Writer’s & Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival when no one else in the Australian media saw it as significant or newsworthy. The festival is now listed by many as “one of the top festivals in the world”. Back then, I spoke with Jakarta’s illustrative poet and environmentalist Amol Titus, Hong Kong based Sri Lankan detective / teens writer, Nury Vittachi, poet Alvin Pang who later become Singapore’s Young Artist of the Year in 2005, compassionate and with her finger on the local pulse Balinese playwright & teen writer Sonya Piscayanti, festival director Janet de Neefe………and in following years the maverick Indonesian Theatre Director Putu Wijaya, Photographer Rio Helmi, Balinese musician/poet Ketut Juliarsa, the heartfelt Balinese poet Mas Ruscita Dewi, outspoken scholar, writer and cultural-critic Ziauddin Sardar, multilingual translator Balinese/New Zealander/ Kadek Krishna Adidharma. I’ve since enjoyed moderating panels at the Ubud writer’s festivals with wonderful writer’s such as Scottish novelist William Dalrymple The Last Mogul Australian journalist Eric Campbell Absurdistan English travel writer Claire Scobie Last seen in Lhasa, Dutch poet Albertina Soepboer… Indonesian video journalist activist Fozan Santa, Australian documentary filmmaker, Indonesian specialist John Darling Ofcourse as an independent, there are so many stories and memorable interviews, but that’s enough.
FOLLOW YOUR PASSION. And some training helps :- Training & Professional Development: AFTRS Centre for Screen Business Open Program
2007 Media Economics Seminar, Business Models for Digital Distribution Seminar
2005 The Mike Leigh Method of Script Development
2004 Getting the Best out of Mini DV
2004 Robert McKee Story Seminar
2004 Robert McKee The Art of Horror
2003 Writing for Documentary – Chris Masters Masterclass
1986 Theory of the Short Film
1983 Production Management Film & Television,
With a fair bit left out, That’s how I got here. I’m often asked and now you know. From within that spectrum of work, research and inter personal experience is the ground from which I gather the material for my talks. See ‘Talks’ tab. I’ve left out the feature film and novella I’ve been writing, The Paradise Game – but that neatly brings me to current work. Go to Current Production tab to see which programs I’m working on right now.
Good luck! Kerry x