Frank Coates

Here is a link to the website of Frank Coates. Frank is an Australian author who, like Tony Park from a previous post, writes novels set in Africa. While Tony spends time in southern Africa, Frank is in eastern Africa.

The following is a synopsis of his novel Beyond Mombasa from his website:

In 1897, Ronald Preston, a young civil engineer, takes his new bride, Florence, to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast of Africa to begin construction of a railway line through an unchartered wilderness.

But Preston realises the Uganda Railway, later branded the ‘Lunatic Line’, is no place for a woman. Ahead lie hostile tribes, dense jungles and brutal thorn-bush deserts where his wife would be the only white woman among ten thousand men.

In the four years building the railway he must overcome political intrigues in far-away London, his taciturn caravan master who is haunted by memories of his hot-blooded woman, and a fellow engineer whose obsession with the man-eaters of Tsavo leads him into dangerous ground.

When his crewmembers are brutally killed, Preston stalks a predator more treacherous than the lions.

Based on a true story, Beyond Mombasa explores Florence Preston’s journey of discovery across Kenya as well as in her marriage, and her husband’s seduction by the power of Africa.

History of Australian cinema

Here are links to an extensive history of Australian cinema by Roderick Heath, posted on greencine.com in three parts:

Part 1: 1896-1968
Part 2: 1968-1989
Part 3: 1990-2010

Pursuit of a compelling desire

Australia-based blog The Story Department has a guest post from Michael Hauge on character desire and making an emotional impact with characters in pursuit of a compelling desire. Hauge writes:

For my entire career as a screenwriting instructor, author and consultant, I have held a single guiding principle: the essential component of all successful movies is the hero’s pursuit of a compelling desire.

This sounds simple but is more difficult to do well in practice, especially for writers who approach the task with overall plot structure in mind.

The craft of comedy

Here is an episode of ABC Radio National's The Book Show, featuring a discussion with the host and three Australian comedians about how they learned the craft of comedy and what kind of vocational reading they did.

Australian cinema study podcasts

Interested in what cinema study is like at an Australian university? Here are some podcasts from Monash University on cinema.

They all (unfortunately) take a collective-imagined-identity-on-a-moral-trajectory version of a Kantian constructivist conceptual method. This means they procede as if a group mentally constructs an imagined entity which controls the group and should (contrary to the previous claim) be guided toward generating the moral endpoint of an egalitarian paradise in which the constructed abstract collective entity regulates order within the group.

This is such an entrenched line of reasoning in Australian universities that there are many versions and many ways of people adopting the same basic line of argument without knowing why they are advocating it nor acknowledging that there are alternatives to interpreting everything through sets of assumptions which result in adopting and advocating this line of argument.

Tony Martin interviews Robert McKee

Below is a video of Australian comedian Tony Martin (originally from New Zealand) interviewing Robert McKee about screeenwriting:

Malcolm

Malcolm is, in my opinion, one of the better movies that has been made in Australia. It features a character named Malcolm who is mechanically skilled but naive in many and inexperienced in many other areas of life. When Malcolm gets fired from his job, he takes in two lodgers who turn out to be cons willing to take advantage of his mechanical ability.

The trailer for Malcolm is below:

Thriller movies

The Australia-based blog The Story Department features a post on thriller movies and what degree of plausibility a filmmaker should go for or a viewer should expect. The gist of the post can be broadly summed up in the following quote:

Most film students know that almost every thriller under the sun has plot holes and flaws in logic in them but they are still accepted and beloved by many because of so many other elements of quality craftsmanship.

Setting - Great Ocean Road

The following videos feature the Great Ocean Road, situated along a section of Australia's southern coastline. Researching settings can be useful for coming up with new story ideas and avoiding cliched treatments of setting.

Australian book reviews

If you're looking for good Australian cinema and fiction sites, there are limited options. One site with reviews of Australian books is www.aussiereviews.com. It has an emphasis on childrens and young adult books.

It could be worth a look if you want to browse what Australian books are around and read some down-to-earth reviews, with an emphasis on a young age-group.