A STUDY GUIDE BY KATY MARRINER & FIONA EDWARDS http://www.metromagazine.com.au ISBN-13-978-1-74295-058-7 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au A STUDY GUIDE OVERVIEW Tony Robinson, who has previously presented Time Team and Ned Kelly Uncovered, embarks on a case study of Australia’s past, from the earliest explorers to white settlement, Indigenous Australians, multiculturalism and Australia’s role in two world wars. Filmed on location around the country in November and December 2010, in this exciting and fast-paced six-part series Robinson is joined on his mammoth journey by some of Australia’s foremost historians and writers, including Tim Flannery, Thomas Keneally and Eric Wilmott. From the search to identify the ‘great southern land’, through colonial trials and tribulations and right up to the establishment of the dynamic modern Australia, Tony Robinson covers a huge amount of ground as he reveals the key events and major influences that define Australia – and Australians – today. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2 • Discuss the pros and cons of both television and film. Look at the following link. View the excerpts provided. http://listverse.com/2007/12/04/ top-10-greatest-tv-documentary-series/ • History of Medicine: thirteen parts, shown in 1978 on the BBC and on PBS stations in America. Jonathan Miller, in the series, used a combina- tion of visual images and lecture-like presentations to not only trace the history of medicine, but to explain the working of the human body in entertaining ways. • Victory at Sea: One of the earliest tel- evision documentary series and one of the first dealing with World War Two, Victory at Sea used extensive archival footage – up to that point unseen by the public – taken during the war to illustrate the long naval struggle that helped bring Allied vic- tory, from the Battle of the Atlantic to the island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific. What helped make the series even more memorable was the participation of composer Richard CURRICULUM LINKS: GENRE Rodgers, who wrote the stirring theme music. Tony Robinson Explores Australia is Tony Robinson Explores a documentary series. Television has • The Civil War: Ken Burns’ well- Australia would be a valuable gradually become the primary source of known and highly acclaimed series knowledge for the great majority of the made a star out of author Shelby resource for middle and population – most of us still get our news Foote, whose commentary is one of from television sources, for example. the most enjoyable and fascinating senior secondary students of aspects of each episode. Touching, English, History, Geography Television has provided directors and poignant, fascinating, The Civil War producers with another format via which is viewed today as not only Burns’ (integrated humanities) SOSE/ their material can be shown to a mass best work, but it became the new audience. standard for history-related television HSIE, Media and Film Studies. documentaries. Discuss: • The Blue Planet: From an underwa- ter lake to close-up photography of • What do we mean by documentary? sharks and a blue whale, to a fasci- nating trip into the black abyss, this Discuss what viewers can expect from is David Attenborough’s documentary documentary (in the cinema and on on the life of our planet. His first was television) and the relationship between the historic Life on Earth, followed by documentary and reality (or actuality). series such as The Life of Mammals, Planet Earth and of course The Blue Students are to generate their own defi- Planet. Each series was full of beauti- nition of documentary. ful film work. One of the greatest things about The Blue Planet is its • What is the difference between film stirring score, and the feel it gives for and television? the epic drama of the oceans. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 3 Discuss: • What do these series have in com- mon? • Does there seem to be a formula? • What works and what doesn’t? • What would you do to improve the visual outcome? Student activity: • Consider the following list as the four distinct (but sometimes overlapping) purposes of documentary: - to record, reveal, or preserve - to persuade or promote - to analyse or interrogate • What do you notice about the editing BEFORE VIEWING of the extract? How is narrative - to express. constructed? The premise of a film or series is the fundamental concept that drives the Can students think of other • What do you think are the benefits narrative. documentary series that fit into and limitations of the different ap- these categories? proaches they have identified? Student activity: • How might these different motives Following this discussion, challenge intersect? students to revisit their definition of Read the article below. documentary, written at the start of the • Are there any other purposes that the lesson. Tony Robinson explores pioneer documentary series might seek to Australia in this latest TV show fulfil? • How might they adapt their definition after watching and discussing the Tony Robinson strides through the lobby Students are to find samples of clips? and cafe of a hip South Yarra hotel with documentary series and show briskness, ease and purpose. After extracts to the class. • Can they argue for their definition in months of filming under the Austral- front of the class? ian sun, the diminutive Londoner has a Ask students to note down their glowing complexion. thoughts on each example. Documentary series are often narrated by one lead personality. Tony Robinson As he approaches 65, he could well be a • What is the purpose of the series? Explores Australia is narrated by Tony poster boy for healthy lifestyles. There’s Robinson. the trademark hooded eyes but not a • What different approaches can you trace of the grotesqueness or pottiness identify (use of narration, direct that define his roles in Blackadder and questioning, observational etc.)? Student activity: the knockabout host of The Worst Jobs in History and Time Team. You are a journalist and you have been asked to write an article on Tony Robin- He’s in the home stretch of the fast, son for a weekend TV guide. The article seven-week shoot of Tony Robinson is to be no more than 400 words in Explores Australia, a six-part series on length. the history of Australia from European settlement to today. • Who is Tony Robinson? The island continent has a particular • Is he an authority on history? affinity for Robinson. Several years ago, he gamely ventured into a contested SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 4 chapter of our history with Ned Kelly are great organisers … They would never An only child, Robinson credits his father Uncovered for the ABC. have been able to create that kind of for teaching him to argue and ‘be the state back home because of 2000 years biggest pain in the arse at school’. But he’s approaching his new show with of history but over here they were able the same ignorance Captain Cook had to create a template for a very egalitarian ‘He imbued in me this 18th-century when he first landed in 1770, he says. kind of state that worked around things notion that you could deploy rhetoric and ‘The difference is he had real ignorance, like the family, equality, justice.’ intellect in order to challenge the status whereas mine is clouded by Kylie and quo of anything,’ he says. ‘What am I Jason videos and Picnic at Hanging ‘There were a lot of self-serving bas- doing when I’m 13 or 14? I’m having the Rock and Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly. I tards, just as there are in any political most terrible rows with my dad because want to engage in what Australia is.’ class who followed them, but somehow he taught me to argue.’ I think that combination of visionary, The program, Robinson says with capable, working-class people and an But it’s an approach that has served characteristic vernacular, is not Robert intellectual elite that aspired to create a Robinson’s numerous forays into history Hughes or Tom Keneally explaining what new world by and large worked.’ and factual TV well. happened. ‘It’s me saying, “I don’t un- derstand this shit, explain it to me”.’ Even the racism behind Federation, ‘I left school when I was just 16. I have namely the White Australia Policy, been surrounded all my life by smart- But as he often does in his shows, ‘however bad its consequences might arse, academically minded people who Robinson undersells his knowledge and have been … nevertheless the reason have often talked in a language that I authority. it was done was utopian. We celebrate found inaccessible. Like most Austral- the Athenians as the fathers of democ- ians, I’m a stroppy bastard and have The central question for the series, racy but they were fascists compared to always resented that.’ he says, is how a convict settlement those who espoused the racism behind transformed itself into a series of well- Federation.’ ‘Emotionally, I’ve always wanted to tell ordered, wealthy colonies and from there stories; that’s probably my way of keep- into a country that is one of the top 15 If anything, he feels his ignorance – ing the darkness at bay.’ economies in the world today. though discussions about the Battle of Vinegar Hill, the Myall Creek Massacre ‘The stories I’ve wanted to tell Robinson says he always regarded and the fall of Singapore suggest he is have always had that element of transportation as an unspeakable evil far more conversant with Australian his- deconstruction …’ ‘meted by the British ruling class on tory than the rest of us – is an advantage these poor ignorant, penniless dupes in the making of the show.