Thinking about the questions before interviewing producers….
I knew what I want to write about for my research project but my subject matter (Comparing between high/low budget productions) was still much too broad which lacks a clear focus. After talking to Elisa Tranter, I got better idea and decided to focus on “The Business of TV Production in Australia”. Then, I was advised to make a contact with Ewan Burnett and ask ‘how does he run his production company and the challenges he has to deal with on a daily basis etc’. Guess what….when I called Ewan Burnett, he was in other country and won’t be back in few weeks. Thanks to Elisa Tranter, my lovely lecturer who advised me again to make a contact with Riccardo Pellizzeri from Grundy TV Production. Seriously, I wasn’t sure at all if I can make the interview with him since he is a very famous series producer. I started wondering if he can make any time for an interview. As I expected, it was little bit hard for me to get through Riccardo but after emailing him about my questions, he called me back to confirm the date for interview. How great is that!!!

I started preparing the questions for the interview.
Interview Question
1. Market forces - How has the production business changed in a high budget environment over the past ten years?
2. Is it more difficult to finance a project today than it was ten years ago?
3. What strategies do you employ to deal with these issues?
4. New technology - How does new technologies affect the way you run your productions and your production business?
5. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of working in high budget
production as compared to low budget production?
6. Would you agree that working in low budget production is better than working in high budget production? Why?

These questions will allow me to look at the business of production in a historic context. Then, I can start finding some low budget producers about similar sorts of things such as “How has the business changed in a low budget environment?” and “What has been the impact of new technologies like HD cameras & desktop editing systems etc?” to compare with high budget production company.

I lookforward to interview them all!