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‘The filmmaker is present – experiment, process, image – a practitioner’s talk about process as the focus of moving image works’, Louise Curham at the Australian Screen Production Education & Research Association 2016 conference, University of Canberra, July 5-7.

What happens when we scrap pre-production, production, post-production instead focusing on process alone? I am going to discuss process-based experimental techniques as productive strategies to make moving image works.

Why have I proposed this discussion for the screen production education and research community? The first reason is that you teach. I have used this process-only approach productively in my sporadic teaching activity.The second reason is research and re-enactment, one of the three strategies, is intrinsic to my PhD.

The film industry talk about pre, prod and post as a process. Workflow strikes me as a better word for pre, prod and post, focused as it is on pre-conception, execution and delivery of a product. This thinking relies upon a pretty clear idea of what you want to achieve before you start and built into this pre-visualisation is a preconception of what success will look like. Of course, happy accidents occur and conversely, and things don’t turn out as planned but in essence, the work is laid out before you begin.

My provocation is that there is much to be gained in a learning situation if the emphasis is on the learning process as an end in itself. Now I am not a professional educator. I’m making this statement from observations of myself at work and watching others in learning environments I’ve set up – my fairly frequent guest lectures and workshops.

Intentional Malfunction workshop participants dry their hand processed super 8 outside PhotoAccess, Manuka. Another image of this workshop heads up this post. (more…)