Goalpost Pictures’ Kylie du Fresne

Kylie du Fresne is one of the founding partners of Goalpost Pictures, a leading Australian independent feature film and television producer. The company has always believed in partnering with original voices and underrepresented groups to tell important yet little-known stories. One such recent TV series is Black Snow, which sheds light on the impact of slavery on the Australian South Sea Islander community. Du Fresne talks about the research and care that go into bringing original visions to the small screen.

TV DRAMA: Black Snow tells the story of a community of South Sea Islanders in Australia, a community that hasn’t been highlighted much in contemporary drama. Is telling stories that haven’t been told before part of Goalpost’s remit?
DU FRESNE: Yes, Black Snow is about the Australian South Sea Islander community, referred to as ASSI. The story of the ASSI has to do with slavery in Australia, and it’s a part of our history that very few people know about—160 years ago, people were stolen from a number of Pacific Islands to work in the sugar cane fields of Australia, [and] descendants of these people can be found throughout Australian society today. As a company, we are always interested in ways to Trojan Horse interesting stories that people might not necessarily know about and find a compelling genre to wrap that story within. In this case, a detective series told over two time frames allowed us to subtly explore this history while still delivering a familiar genre series.

TV DRAMA: I understand you had consultants on set to ensure ASSI representation was accurate.
DU FRESNE: The representation was in many areas. It started with the writing, from the very early stages of the writers’ room, with an ASSI producer who was through all development and production. There was also an ASSI scriptwriter.  Then it went to the cast, the score and the title designs. It was a multifaceted collaboration with the community across all areas of production. We also had a cultural and historical consultant, who was there to help and work with the crew and the cast on cultural protocols, giving them history and context before they started work on the show. It was successfully immersive across the board and rewarding for everyone involved.

TV DRAMA: As some of the actors had never acted before, did you have someone who helped them?
DU FRESNE: We put the new actors, the majority of whom were ASSI, with an experienced dramaturg who worked with them through preproduction and was on set to make sure they were all supported and comfortable in what were, particularly for the young cast, very demanding roles.

TV DRAMA: How have you found Australian dramas traveling internationally, and does having a well-known name like Travis Fimmel playing detective James Cormack help?
DU FRESNE: Of course. We’re a company that has always looked to identify interesting, exciting, appropriate, but internationally known cast, particularly when you are looking to complement that with opportunities to discover exciting new talent. It’s that balance of experience and exposure meets opportunity, if you like. That was always very much part of what we wanted to do, and certainly, our partners wanted to make sure that we cast that role with someone who had that profile. We were very lucky that Travis wanted to come back to Australia and do a show when he has predominantly worked in the U.S. But he was really keen to come back home. He read the material and immediately connected with it.

TV DRAMA: What other shows do you have on your slate?
DU FRESNE: We work across both film and television. On the television side, we have a series called Cooper, which is a South African-Australian co-production based on a novel by Malla Nunn. It’s also a detective series but set in the early years of Apartheid. It’s about a mixed-race detective who has to pass as white to do his job.

It’s another show that is a Trojan Horse to talk about Apartheid, but the complexities, nuances and gray areas of it as opposed to the story we have mostly seen on screen. Malla Nunn is a novelist who grew up during Apartheid, and when it came, her family was suddenly split into three racial groups—white, mixed and colored. Again, it’s a detective show, but it allows us to explore the complexities of what happens to people and families and lovers when suddenly you can’t be with whom you want to be with or do what you want to do. We are doing that as a South African-Australian co-production.

TV DRAMA: A film or a drama series that illustrates complex subjects can be more revealing than news reports or documentaries because if you relate to a character, I believe you can gain a better understanding.
DU FRESNE: It’s something we are very attracted to in our company. We did that with our film The Sapphires. It was a musical set in the ’60s, but it allowed audiences to [gain a deep understanding of] what happened with the Stolen Generation [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families by the government]. We did that with Cleverman, which was, for all intents and purposes, a fantastic fantasy sci-fi series but, again, allowed us to talk about another subject matter. It’s something we are really interested in and are attracted to that material. It’s not the only thing we do, but we certainly like to do that.

New Gold Mountain was the series before Black Snow, which we also did with All3Media International. It’s a Gold Rush series set in the late 1800s. There was a California Gold Rush. That ended, and then everyone came to Australia, and it was called Gold Mountain. A large number of the people who came to Australia were Chinese, along with Americans, Englishmen and Irishmen. It’s also a murder series but told through the eyes of a Chinese headman who was employed by the English to keep his community doing things that the English thought were appropriate behavior, but he also had to manage his community. It stars Yoson An from Mulan and Alyssa Sutherland from Vikings. That is a four-part series we did for SBS.

TV DRAMA: In America, there is still work to be done to get to good representation of women in front of and behind the camera. What is the situation in Australia?
DU FRESNE: I think we’re doing pretty well. The way that we finance most of our projects is through government incentives. We have the market, and we have the government. Most broadcasters have guidelines about gender and representation in front of and behind the screen that they must hit to even apply for funds. There is certainly work to continue as there are still areas where women are underrepresented, but in Australia, there has been some great work.

At the Australian Directors’ Guild Awards this year, it was predominantly women who won in the television space, including Corrie Chen, a Taiwanese-Australian director who won best miniseries for our series New Gold Mountain. And Sian Davies, who directed and set up Black Snow, won two Directors’ Guild Awards for her previous work.

TV DRAMA: So many countries are dealing with rising production costs. Is that a problem in Australia as well? And how do you get around it?
DU FRESNE: Australia has not been immune to the increased cost of production. In the last four years, we’ve had such an influx of international productions, as well, that has had a huge impact on costs. That’s waned a little bit, but not much. The pressure on local producers has been immense in terms of the rising cost of crews. How do we manage it? We just have to find a way. We have loyal crews that work with us. When people come on a Goalpost production, they come for a certain kind of project. But it means that, at the end of the day, we generally have to raise more money to make our shows, which is something that all producers around the world are experiencing.