Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows John Holmes, head of drama at the Seven Network, being interviewed by filmmaker Lizzy Gardiner. Holmes claims that the stars of Home and Away are heavily promoted because of the importance of the serial to the Network’s prime-time schedule. The clip features an interview with Isla Fisher, who appeared on Home and Away from 1994 to 1997. Fisher says that she had to adopt 'multiple personalities’ to cope with the different demands placed on her as a soap opera star. Fisher describes herself during that period as like 'a puppet’ and 'someone else’, and reflects on her choice of acting as a career. The clip includes footage of Fisher on the Home and Away set.

Educational value points

• Home and Away is central to the Seven Network’s programming schedule. It shows at 7 pm, a timeslot considered vital by the commercial television networks because it attracts viewers for the prime-time programs that follow. In 2004 the Australian Film Commission found that Home and Away was the second most popular home-grown serial on Australian television after Neighbours and, according to the Seven Network, Home and Away continued to dominate the 7 pm timeslot in 2006, attracting up to 1.5 million viewers each week.

• Television networks use serials, or soap operas, to appeal to a 16 to 24-year-old demographic. Graeme Turner, Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and co-author of Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia, claims that this young demographic is targeted by advertisers, who see the young viewers as the purchasers of tomorrow. In a bid to attract this audience, the casts of television serials are dominated by young actors, who are heavily promoted in mass-market publications, particularly in entertainment and girls’ magazines.

• John Holmes, head of drama at the Seven Network, discusses how celebrities are used to promote shows such as Home and Away. Graeme Turner describes celebrity as a commodity manufactured to sell and market other products, in this case a television program. A support industry of agents, publicists, managers, editors and writers collaborate to make young soap opera stars the 'single most visible category of local television celebrities’ (Fame Games, Cambridge University Press, 2000). Turner says that these stars dominate the covers of mass-market magazines, talk-show guest lists and live appearances at shopping centres.

• Each television network in Australia is part of a larger media organisation with interests in the print and broadcast media sector. The affiliates are used to cross-promote shows on the networks. The Seven Network owns one in four magazines published in Australia, including New Idea and Total Girl, and so is able to provide extensive coverage of the stars of its home-grown serials. Celebrity stories work to promote a specific television program, as well as to sell magazines; cross-promotion also occurs within network programs, with celebrities appearing on news and current affair shows, lifestyle shows and programs such as Dancing with the Stars.

• Former Neighbours stars such as Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce and Jesse Spencer and Home and Away stars such as Danni Minogue were able to advance their singing and acting careers after appearing in television serials; however, most young soap stars do not enjoy such success. After leaving a soap opera many quit acting or struggle to find further acting work. In part, this may reflect the lack of opportunities for actors in Australia. But Tony Knight, head of acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2006, says that young soap opera actors are often cast to play characters who are very like themselves, and that they lack the emotional range, technical skills or versatility to tackle other roles.

• Isla Fisher is one of the few actors to graduate from a television serial to an international film career. Since leaving Home and Away, Fisher has had minor roles in Scooby-Doo (2002) and I Heart Huckabees (2004). Fisher’s first major Hollywood role was in Wedding Crashers (2005), for which she won the Breakthrough Performance Award at the MTV Movie Awards. She has also appeared in London (2005). Fisher is now based in London, where the British tabloids and magazines continue to give coverage to her romantic attachments rather than her acting achievements.

• Filmmaker Lizzy Gardiner has had first-hand experience in the film and television industry through her work as a costume designer. She was principal costume designer on the television serial E Street between 1989 and 1992. Together with Tim Chappel, she won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). Since then she has designed costumes for numerous films including Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), Eye of the Beholder (1999) and Mission: Impossible II (2000). She made her directorial debut in 2000 with the documentary Killing Priscilla, a record of director Stephan Elliot’s struggles to make Eye of the Beholder.

This clip starts approximately 22 minutes into the documentary.

Costume designer Lizzy Gardiner interviews the head of drama for the Seven Network, Jonathan Holmes.
Jonathan Holmes A show such as Home and Away, which is vital to the schedule of the Seven network. I mean five nights a week, half an hour, it is the introduction to the primetime after the news and current affairs. Your entertainment schedule starts at seven – very important. Of course it’s going to be great support for a show like that and everyone that’s in it. And the elements of the show that are visible are obviously the artists and the machine is going to put those people, those faces, in shopping centres, on the front cover of the TV mags and they’re going to try and find an angle, try and find stories – the new boyfriend, this exciting piece of information that, you know, you can’t possibly live without. You know, we’re asking those questions of those stars because they’re on TV, not because we’re actually fascinated by their personal lives. If they weren’t on TV, no-one would really care at all.

A montage of entertainment magazines is shown.
Lizzy Gardiner (as narrator) But the problem is that all that publicity doesn’t necessarily transform the subject into an ego-driven maniac. Often the effect is the opposite. You begin to feel dehumanised when compared to the image created by the fame machine.

Lizzy Gardiner interviews Isla Fisher, a star of Home and Away.
Isla Fisher If you end up merging into one, that’s when you become an unhealthy being, I think, because that’s when you can’t drop the pretence of – you know, when your mother says, you know, ‘How are you?’ and you go, ‘What do you mean by that?’, you get defensive with your own mum, you go, ‘Oh’. Because you have to. At work, working on a soap, you have to – you’re dealing with, say, wardrobe department, make-up department, producers. You’re dealing with such a – like, so many people, you have to be very versatile. So you’re a chameleon-like. You’re very, yeah, this is how I speak to Russell. ‘Hi, Russell, how are you?’, you know. ‘This is our producer.’ And this is how you speak to make-up. So you end up, all the time, and then this is how you speak to members of the general public and then to press – you can’t speak to them a certain way – so you end up, you know – you end up developing multiple personalities in order to keep everyone satisfied, which unfortunately is the nature of the business. So, in many ways, you stop – you stop thinking, now, what to do – what does Isla want to do? If Isla’s feeling in a bad mood, why can’t Isla just be in a bad mood? But she can’t be, you know what I mean? Because you are, in many ways, a puppet. You’re saying someone else’s bullshit and hitting someone else’s marks and wearing someone else’s wardrobe and being someone else – on top of with being, you know, all these other things. I think it’s very hard.
Lizzy Gardiner So why would you want to do it?
Isla Why would you want to do it? I always looked at the screen and, you know, went, that’s where I want to be, which is what we’re talking about. It’s wanting to be – it’s wanting to be someone different from yourself.

Isla is on set during a break.
Director Also, Isla, take more time with the last few lines. You know, when you get – when you manage to manouever the conversation back to you.
Isla As you do… OK.
Director Take your time with that.

Lizzy Gardiner (as narrator) So, for a weekly wage of around $1,200-$1,500, the young soap stars are expected to do their 50 hours a week on the studio floor and remain immune to the fame. And live with the fact that there are thousands of girls just like them, only younger, looking for their big break.