Transcript: Postgraduate Media Practice and Industry

i’m just going to play so the the

m.a media practicing industry was launched in 2019 um

and uh it was very much a you know in the idea was to kind of have

a really different um approach to ma in film and media production um it

really is a lot about prototyping it’s about developing a suite of ideas rather than that old conventional thing where

you would make one big project at the end of it instead you make many many many versions and

iterations and many different kinds of creative outputs and there’s also a lot of flexibility in

the pathway okay so now i think well probably oh god everyone here i just want to um

acknowledge the category people of the uro nation on whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands a campus i very

much hope to welcome you to very soon covered willing i’d also like to pay respect to elders

both past and present acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge in this land

okay let’s play a little primer we have here

storytelling is such a powerful way of waking people up

i think screen is the most powerful means of shaping how we think about

ourselves [Music]

[Music]

okay so the master of practice and industry courses structure it’s quite different

to many different mas so you basically complete nine subjects including course strategies and there

are only two core subjects one at the very beginning the first semester and one in the final assessments semester

you can then choose two subjects from each block um innovation industry and production so

they’re really there and they’re quite sort of you know um they’re quite broad-based so innovation

is really looking for a business of screens and this kind of stuff the production ones obviously as they say

they’re more production orientated um but you able to kind of select your own

journey throughout that mma um and and really sort of push your

degree experience much more towards a practical production orientated thing or more to a administrative arts

administrator or curatorial or um sort of a

person who is is is more in the business of screens or the entrepreneurship of

media output so there’s a really there’s a lot of flexibility and a lot of students when they come in they come in

thinking they want to be one thing and they discover on the journey throughout the m.a that they become something quite

different um it takes one and a half years we do have

an option of an extended ma for some international students

who require a two-year course part-time students will be undertaking one or two subjects per semester and

depending on how many subjects you take the course will take between two to five years

so as i said you do one course subject uh oh so this is for the grad search so the

graduate certificate in media practice that really is just three subjects you could do that um

uh actually this is not correct it would only take you um

yeah one semester point five years to do a grad surge um if you did it full time

uh if you did it part-time it will take 1.5 years sorry that’s that’s all right um but you do do one course subjects so

what that could be if you just wanted to do a graduate certificate as a kind of dipping your toe into post-graduate

experience that might be something you would do story call which i tend to run but you might

do screen ideas and you might do business screens that will give you the ability to kind of package up a really

powerful media idea screen project idea possibly to take into market so you can

pick these subjects or for example you could do something like you could um focus on screen ideas and then do

advanced post-production to put together you know a really interesting visual representation of your of your

project you were thinking about or if you were more interested in developing your skills

as a leader i suppose of an organization you could think about doing story core and then think about doing curation and

advanced creative entrepreneurship that would that will be very much um a suite of pro of subjects that will be

really compelling that way so the reason the media practice and industry you know why is it so

exceptional it’s completely different almost to every other media ma um

offered in australia as i said it is still very production orientated but it gives you the power to create your own

path you have the autonomy to shape your degree and suit your next career move uh you can select a range of subjects and

you obviously can do this as you go along you don’t have to have it all worked out at the beginning and you can focus on areas that matter

to you but i think what everyone or the students tend to do is they discover things as they go through and they

discover there are subjects particularly i think a lot of the subjects that grade do does

um advance post and immersive that they were perhaps felt that they were that wasn’t really

an area that we wanted to go into but they become really kind of interested in in pursuing that

we’re very much focused on the future um the workforce is changing and so is our

focus we aim to build on your skills from the inside out to make it versatile versatile resilient and powerful

professional very much uh focus on the fact that there’s

you know it’s it really is a challenging environment there people don’t know they’re wanting ideas they you know the

industry is changing high in a really fast way and it’s also there’s a lot of ideological issues there’s a lot of um

cultural and creative issues you need to be engaged and we try and bring that together and be very mindful of what the

industry is doing you know as i’ve said the whole architecture is flexibility we really

have a lot of students um who work full time um we try we do a lot of things on the weekend we do block mode teaching so

the course i do the story core course is offered over five saturdays over a semester so we come together it’s very

intense we don’t see each other for months but there’s lots of things going on um that that you need to do in between so there’s a real range of of

the way the the ma is delivered and we try and keep it out of that main nine to you

know some of them started you know four to seven you know so so you can kind of build a

proper full-time job around that or certainly meaningful work around that

okay the application deadlines are a late january for domestic students and

early january for international students the dates exactly will be released in coming weeks

domestic students can apply through uts online application and international students can find more information

through our international office webpage admission requirements um

basically you know we’re pretty open with um the people we bring in you don’t

have to have an absolute detailed expertise in your undergraduate what we want is for you to

have a ba or equivalent higher qualification certainly we do also do recognize prior

learning um so if you have evidence of general and professional qualifications we can also that could also be a pathway to entry

um if you do have a ba um we want you or a master’s or grad department and graduate certificate the degree has to

be in a field of society and culture ie bachelor of arts bachelor of communications or creative arts

if the degree is not in that field of society or culture we ask that you have a minimum of two

years related professional work experience some of our most interesting students i think have come from really different

backgrounds architecture maths physics and they’ve bri you know they’ve produced some of the most interesting

work because they come from a really different world experience if you do um want to apply that way and

that’s that relates to you we ask that um you submit a cv in a personal statement

uh these are the details the english language requirements are pretty straightforward you can see those on the

web um [Music] okay so i’m going to hand over to secret

now just to talk through a student experience um yeah so sigrid

welcome maybe you could talk about some of the um really you know the things that attracted you the course and and you

know what what was important to you and what was some of the highlights yep thanks rachel

um hi everyone my name is secret um i am a map alumni and i also finished

my master’s degree in media practice and industry in during this year

and i’m currently working in video production and digital marketing content

as a communication assistant so i decided to continue my study at uts

and chose to study this course because i wanted to

learn more about media industry other than the production side

during my bachelor’s degree i was involved in many filmmaking practices so

at the time what i’ve learned about media is mostly about production like filming and

video video editing but i believe uh

making a film or any kinds of media product

media projects is probably more than that so and i also know there are some um

great postgrad uh programs in communication at uts

so i did my own research about this course and after reading the

course structure the course information i became very

interested because this course offers a range of subjects

in three different streams which allow you to understand

the media industry from different perspectives

so today i would like to share some of my study experiences

uh first i want to talk about what i’ve learned from the

innovation stream i always know that producer plays an

important role in filmmaking but my previous

understanding about this role is producers are mainly responsible for

funding and getting people together to make a project

but when i was studying a subject called business of the screen

i became more aware that what a producer needs to do

is uh much more than that it’s more like a business thing

for example as a producer you need to evaluate

how likely your idea will succeed you need to estimate the budget

and you need to pitch your idea to the potential investors and so many other things

and in this project i was able to pitch my own idea and writing a producing

portfolio it was just like a film producer uh stimulation actress uh exercise and

it’s quite challenging for me when i was doing this subject because it

is a brand new area for me and i’m not really good at finance or management but

i’m very glad that i studied this subject because it helped me gain

a deeper insight into the industry in terms of pre-production

also i would like to talk about the post-production stream

like i said uh i’m already equipped with some media production skills after

my bachelor’s degree and some people may question that

whether i could learn anything new about media production from this course

and i would say i did really enjoy all the media production classes in this

degree especially one of the interesting subjects called immersive

media they introduce you to uh virtual reality technology and 3d

creation and this are more like uh advanced level

media production skills compared to the uh traditional filmmaking techniques

and in this subject i was also given the opportunity to try and learn of some

high high-tech equipment and software like 360 camera or unreal

engine to make my own vr projects it was uh it was really fun and

interesting when i was doing this subject and i think

more importantly it helped me develop my um skills in media production

because other than the traditional uh media forms there are

more forms of media such as motion graphics

and interactive media so yeah this i think these are some of the areas i

hadn’t really learn about before in my previous study

thanks very much for that secret that was great um

okay um so now we’re just going to go over to some questions i’ll just put up

the question page um okay

so go to so we got any questions about the course that greg can yeah yes we’re um

anonymous attendee i i’m not sure if that’s their real name asks does uts have any industry

connections uh yeah well obviously we we have loads of industry connections um um

so you know we’re constantly um doing internships uh we’re doing um

a lot of uh we work with some very major companies um some of them are at fox

studios shooting very large productions um so we approach all the time for internships um there’s a professional

internship um subject you can do as an undergraduate we have also for postgres

they can do informal internships and that is actually done through the

um work uh integrated learning um and uh careers department and they organize all

your insurances for you they also make sure manage how many hours you work so yes

um yeah we work with all kinds of production companies um and we support

students going out and and doing that work beyond i mean one of the things we’ve brought in now is that anytime

anyone shoots on campus they’re required to take someone on

uh anonymous attendee also asked do i need to purchase my own equipment or am

i able to use uts’s so one of the great things about uts is our media lab uh it’s stuffed full of

cameras uh tripods recording devices um yeah we have

huge amounts of resources um so no you absolutely do not um we’ve got edit

suites on campus mixing suites um software all that kind of stuff you certainly don’t need to do anything um

and you know one of the really interesting things we’ve had the benefit of recently is that um even though we most

you know we all went through lockdown in sydney we’ve managed to keep our facilities open the entire time so students were able as long as they were

covered safe um to come onto campus and to take care out and to use the facilities as they needed to be

um if they needed edit suites and stuff like that or access to software

um again another question do i get to create my own film i’m going to let you answer this greg

because i think that you’re probably better placed than i am yeah well i i uh depending on the it depends on the

subject that you do there are a lot of the practice-based subjects have a

number of assessment items that are all creative rather than and

theory based so there are a number of opportunities to make your own smaller projects

there is a subject called uh collaborative media which is the capstone subject where you can take on

a more show runner role um or you can also take on

a crew role um and that’s more like a project green

light type pitching situation for that subject so um

when you say film i’m assuming you might mean short film we’re not really set up for feature

films um [Music] so the answer is yes

hannah if that’s her real name asks do mpi students enter into film festivals or

similar could i use a project i do at uni as an entry into a festival i can

answer that rachel if you like yeah uh yes we have had a number of successful

uh postgraduate films go uh and be do quite well on the festival

circuit as we have with our undergraduate students so uh hannah that is a a

yes um one thing we don’t do is that we

don’t submit we tend not to submit two festivals on your behalf

uh i’m assuming that’s not what the question is um anonymous attendee is back with

another question i am interested in screenwriting is this the right course for me

uh yeah absolutely we have um i mean you know you often write in in all kinds of

different sort of like so i do story core and i mean the students do campaigns you know so

and you’re making short films so you’re quite often writing just as part of um [Music]

the normal output but we have a subject called we have two subjects one is called screen ideas one is called

writing for the screen which is a probably um a little bit more old-fashioned approaches to

screenwriting um and structure and all that kind of thing um and then we have another one which is called screen ideas

which is really interesting the first half of the semester is focused on developing um

a narrative for a traditional screenplay and then we flip it and you’re doing the

same narrative idea but you’re doing it for an immersive project so we kind of you actually have this extraordinary

experience of looking at different uh approaches to screenwriting with

different platforms so in fact it’s it’s a very very broad way broad and deep way of approaching

screenwriting um i have a question for secret which is um

careful how you answer this secret what was your favorite subject and what was the hardest part about studying the mpi

uh yeah so i i think uh my favorite subject

is probably um story core

yeah it’s a it’s actually a compulsory subject and

i think this subject really broadened my vision because

i hadn’t really related any uh ethical issues to

filmmaking and ethical production was kind of like a really new

concept for me when i first heard about it so

but as i learned more about it i started to realize

ethics is very important for every single one who

work in this industry and making a film is not only like telling a

story or making money we need to consider a lot of other

aspects for example gender equality diversity

and also sustainability uh etc so this subjects makes uh you to consider

uh about moral issues while telling a story which i think is very important

and all student assignment in this subject is um

is project based and like when i was assigned to

a study diversity topic in the film industry i was required to

create a five-minute video essay instead of uh you know writing a 2000 or

3000 word essay and it’s really like

fun to do the video about the topic and we also have the in this subject

we also have the opportunity to work to work with the real world

client to help them create a campaign video

yeah so all these student projects allow me to

build up my own portfolio and more importantly

made me have a better understanding about what ethical production is

thanks secret that’s very nice i teach story course so yeah i hope she didn’t say that i didn’t i

didn’t pay and say that but um yeah uh cigarette i’m guessing rachel will give

you that money later for that answer um the next question what kind of jobs does

this degree lead to i’m tossing up whether i want to go into producing or editing and want to know is is this the

right course for me why don’t you do producing and editing yeah i mean the thing is you can’t the

whole time i mean i i we do have a lot of subjects oriented towards producing i

mean curating businesses screens and advanced creative entrepreneurship and we have a lot of

like quite high-end post um subjects that greg takes so um

and you’re cutting all the time i mean so it’s not i mean yeah i mean in some ways this is is a

better degree because you can do both um i also think it’s real like with the kind of future of the industry is you

really do need to have at least two or three things you’re quite good at um

i think the days where you just absolutely focused on one particular silo discipline your film is

is gone um because i i just think uh that very old-fashioned very traditional

trajectory where you work in a heart department you work in post you actually need to have a lot of

i i don’t and i don’t believe you need to be multi-multi-skilled but i do think you need to be a specialist at two or

three things um at least two would you agree greg i i would and um it also makes you a little

bit more employable yeah um which kind of answers

kind of answers the next two questions in a roundabout way do all the academics come from a directing background or are

they experts in certain fields and areas um

they do yes they do all the academics come from well not just directors so we have i

mean um i’m a director i’m a documentary director writer producer i mean also work in drama um

alex is a screenwriter director uh matthew was a writer producer margaret is a

documentary director producer um [Music] bettina does work and look at

the documentary um emmeline is a production designer so yes we we’re constantly working in our own profession

our research is in screen um outputs not just um

journal articles so yeah we all um i mean greg just had a wonderful um

a wonderful feature he produced and edited is that right

yeah quite a few roles but yes producing and editing were the main two i’m just at a festival he’s about to have uh something

he cut at sydney film first what one left so that greg sorry i yes announced it okay and there’s a couple other

things coming up as well but i can’t talk about those yet doing a panel so yeah we are we i’m just about to start

i’m shooting something i’ve lynched it like winched in all the staff to to i’m shooting something uh into december so

yeah we we we keep up our practice very seriously i mean and we we we involve the students

in that um and you know that’s that’s the interesting thing i think about work you know one of the things that i see from

our alumni um they make these networks at at school

they then they they that turns into you know paid work once they graduate it’s

just that they’re constantly connecting building networking um

and and you know they’re coming back to to the to our world of intersecting which is fantastic

um hannah asks and i feel like we’ve answered this will the course teach me the business side of making a film

sure will um we have i think two of the most interesting um

subjects business of screen really is the coal face of producing um creative

producing i say so you do everything you you the first half looks on developing

your own project um and then you hit that you know that liam

who is teaching it now it takes you through financing marketing uh agencies develop everything so from where to go

so you basically spend three months or semester developing a project as you would for

industry the other one created advanced creative entrepreneurship is

actually run in partnership with the compton creative school um david court who who authored that

curriculum um he’s got some of them the leading screen personalities on the board and involved

in that school and one of the reasons we did that partnership with an external body was to bring in that industry

experience and he’s really looking at things like like serious business like leadership um

and developing and growing screen businesses um in a really interesting organic way

it’s not clamping on i think corporate culture to screen it’s really trying to grow what are the leadership

questions and and and business models that come out of a creative practice

and the other one is curation which i think is just you know it’s a growing field everywhere now from every museum

every gallery every you know vivid everything is is is involved in the curation of screen

content and and it’s something that that audiences are engaging with so we have you you learn those kinds of skills too

so if you want to push yourself in that that way i mean in that direction we also do

design thinking we do influence in the digital world you can really orientate your ma much more

just to a business um you know focus on market marketing budgeting financing leadership

or you can push it much more towards production or you can have a balanced portfolio it’s

really up to you um anonymous says i saw something about uts

in the sydney film festival recently the program or graduates part of the festival yes yes we are oh well where do

we start so opening my film uh we start with opening night film here out west

which has two of the writers uh there’s five key creatives i

think yeah a number of the directors and uh two of the writers von and bina um

blake james vaughan’s who’s a map graduate from the early 2010s has a feature film

called friends and strangers um two works that i did the post-production on are

part of the festival i’m also hosting a panel discussion that we’re recording tomorrow

um call on the future of storytelling where we look at immersive ai

uh interaction and does humanity have a future in telling

stories or is it all going to be uh um and so many more the 9th and 10th of

uh november at the central park west um palace palace

cinema we are having a retrospective of our alumni’s work um

so that’s i might get um serena to send out that link to you so that’s on um

so that’s a combination of animation uh the animation discipline map and animal

logic so we’re having a 90 minute uh curated screening of alumni works um in

conjunction with the festival as well so yes lots of things which include that that retrospective includes a number of

post-grad works yes as part of it um miley uh two questions for miley would a

bachelor of arts in writing qualify me for entry into this course yes so that is a a ba in um society and

culture so yeah ba is fine yep and how does the collaborative project work uh i

probably answered that uh so that’s the final subject that you would do as part of the mpi and

so everyone in the subject or in the class would pitch a project and we run it like project

greenlight which was the ben affleck matt damon show where people

pitch projects and one of those projects gets selected to be produced in this

case we depending on the class size you you might pitch a project which gets

voted on by your peers and out of that class three or four of

those projects might get made okay um anonymous asks do we work with

real clients that’s a question for you rachel yes you do so the very

historical uh we get new clients every semester um the students work uh it’s it’s the last

assessment it’s quite hard i mean working with a real client to create a narrative focused social

impact campaign and it’s quite scaffolded i think sigrid was talking about it um but there’s an mou memorandum of

understanding um and you work to the client’s brief we also bring in um

a lot of top campaign makers um we we have we often have a guest lecturer from

amazon she’s their pro he’s their lead creative director does a lot of campaigns but also does a lot of pro

bono campaigns for social impact companies so he comes and works on a bespoke level

with the client briefs and and the student groups and then you you work with the clients for about six to seven

weeks um through a really scaffolding process but you have to form your own group mou you

have to deliver to those clients and we have you know rush cut screen required kind of screenings and then

they use that content in their in their campaign so it’s quite it’s quite high stakes um but really fun i think it’s in

great it is really fun because there’s also um in design thinking you work with real

clients too boover often um partners with with all kinds of different groups who are you create

material solving real world problems that they could then go and use so one of the things they work with the federal

police on um human trafficking was one of the the subjects you were so you are working

with real client real world clients um and obviously we want to kind of increase that as much as we we can um

yeah but but yes that happens last question uh portfolios as part of the course do we

get to develop a portfolio um if this is that well regarded for

future employers yeah look you know i i tell you the thing is you know i i think it’s

yes you do what happens in this ma is you come up with many many more projects than just one final film

so they’ll be different things will be at pitch stage people think some things will be ready to go into financing or

development funding some things will be completed other projects you will have different

roles in you’ll produce things written things um but you’ll have a whole suite

of material the other thing is outside the formal curriculum we have an

incredibly active um group of students who are constantly so the undergraduates

they have a capstone film so they we have how many a year 50 60 greg

i think you know so we’re constantly um they’re looking for crew so people like

build up their portfolio a lot of the the postgraduate students build up you know they want to get more experience on

cutting films or producing so they work on those so that all becomes part of the portfolio as well so it’s it’s actually

you depending on how much time you have um because i do understand that people work and you’ve got your your full study

load uh you can just do as much as you could do until you drop off the perch yeah so there’s

huge amounts of opportunities for work um there’s also opportunities to work there’s so many undergraduate projects

and yeah that’s what i was just saying i was just saying that yeah i mean example is something like paul

paulo you know who’s a postgraduate student who just ended up doing so much of the sound design music you know

recording all kinds of things he’s still doing active work for undergraduate um capstone films and and they’re

developing really interesting working relationships that will lead to are leading to paid work as well

so is that i think that’s it is it and yes of course is really critical for a future employer

so thanks for coming i think we might wrap up there any other questions i mean you can always contact us afterwards you

know where we are um i’m pretty sure you can get a copy of the recording but yeah reach out if

you’ve got anything else you want to know or any details um and we’re always happy to answer your questions

okay so just gonna sign off no no one else okay well take

care everyone and do get in touch

you