Podcast – Creating comedy with Class of ‘07 writer/director Kacie Anning
Kacie Anning on her career, advice, and the process of pitching, developing and shooting the high-concept comedy Class of ‘07 with Prime Video Australia.
Kacie Anning on the set of Class of '07
Find this episode of the Screen Australia Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Pocket Casts
The day before Kacie Anning got on a plane for Vancouver to begin directing on Greg Daniels’ Amazon series Upload, she pitched her own concept to Prime Video Australia, for the apocalyptic high school reunion series Class of ’07.
On the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, Anning talks about how much she, Matchbox Pictures, and producer Mimi Butler planned for that 15-minute pitch to Head of Content Tyler Bern, compared to the usual casual and conversational pitching style you would see in Australia.
“Knowing Tyler was American, obviously knowing the platform was founded on American content, if you will, we were like, ‘Let's do the whole very polished, verbal, 10 to 15-minute spiel. So that was a process where we wrote that pitch, we rehearsed it, got it feeling very slick,” says Anning, the creator, writer, executive producer and director of the new Australian Amazon Original Series, Class of ‘07.
Following that successful pitch, Class of ’07 then went into an intensive development period with Prime Video Australia and throughout the podcast Anning explains how that differed from the typical Australian television development. She also discusses her career from web series Fragments of Friday to now, advice for general meetings in the US and why crafting the right tone in comedy – and particularly on a high-concept comedy like Class of ’07 – is “everything”.
In Class of ’07 a group of women are attending their 10-year reunion when an apocalyptic tidal wave strands them on the island peak of their high school campus. Starring Emily Browning, Caitlin Stasey, Megan Smart and more, you can watch all eight half-hour episodes on Prime Video Australia now.
“In Class of ‘07, what's fundamentally a female friendship story, [you] hang it on this really high stakes setting, and then get into all the crunchy and meaty stuff from there,” she says.
“It's definitely for me, a response to what I call ‘the wedge’ of your late twenties when people are really either settling down or blowing their relationships up and starting again. It's a really fertile, existential few years in your life and to throw all these characters together in one big pressure cooker situation felt like a pretty good premise.”
To hear more, listen to the full episode on the Screen Australia Podcast.
Subscribe to Screen Australia Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Pocket Casts
Audio Transcript
[00:00:05] Caris Bizzaca Welcome to the Screen Australia podcast. I'm Caris Bizzaca, a journalist with Screen Australia's online publication, Screen News. I'd like to firstly acknowledge the various countries you are all listening in from - the unceded lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This podcast has been created on the lands of the Gadigal people of the larger Eora Nation and I've had the great privilege to be a visitor and be able to work on these lands during my years at Screen Australia. Always was, always will be. For this episode of the podcast, we're talking to Kacie Anning, the creator, writer, executive producer and director of the new Australian Amazon Original series Class of '07. The high concept comedy follows a group of women who are attending their ten-year reunion when an apocalyptic tidal wave strands them on the island peak of their high school campus. Starring Emily Browning, Caitlin Stasey, Megan Smart, and more, you can watch all eight half hour episodes on Prime Video Australia now. Throughout the podcast, Kacie talks about her career from web series Fragments of Friday to now, pitching to Prime Video Australia, the difference in the development process in the U.S., advice for general meetings in the States and how she captured the specific comedic tone of Class of '07. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast through places like Spotify and iTunes where you can leave a rating and review. Any feedback, send to [email protected], and don't forget you can also subscribe to Screen Australia's industry eNews for all the latest funding announcements, opportunities, videos and more. Now here's Class of '07 creator, writer, executive producer and director Kacie Anning. Can you tell me a bit about your background in the industry and some of the projects that you've worked across?
[00:01:57] Kacie Anning I am a writer and director and creator and most recently also an executive producer. I have mainly worked in television comedy. I grew up in north Queensland, was that creative kid that fell in love and got pretty obsessed with movies. I went to QUT (Queensland University of Technology) in Brisbane where I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film and TV. I made a bunch of shorts there, then I got into the Australian Film, TV, Radio School's (AFTRS) directing cohort and I did my postgrad there as a director and out of AFTRS, I then created a calling card web series for myself as a writer and director that is called Fragments of Friday, and that was an online comedy project in the nascent days of web series. We made one series crowdfunded, the second series was made with Screen Australia money, and it's all on YouTube still there to be viewed in posterity, but that was really the thing that then got me the next step towards long form directing. My first longform comedy narrative gig in Australia was on a show for Stan called The Other Guy, and from there I also started working in the US episodically as a director. I worked on Upload for Prime Video, which was for showrunner Greg Daniels, who was one of the creators of Parks and Recreation and The Office, so that was a very, very cool first gig for a big international streamer and a big complex VFX heavy show. And then I've continued to work episodically and as a writer, but I've been very busy in the last few years making my own show as a creator called Class of '07 for Prime Video, which is a big ensemble female comedy about a high school reunion that turns apocalyptic.
[00:03:52] Caris Bizzaca Yes, it's Lord of the Flies in cocktail dresses. As you're talking through your projects there, you're a writer/director, but primarily seem to be director across those credits. I was wondering did you gravitate toward directing in particular first?
[00:04:14] Kacie Anning No, I think my pathway, even as a kid, I was writing stuff and it's difficult for me to separate. I'm not sure if I could only be a writer or only be a director. I certainly really love episodic directing where I'm just brought on singularly as a director, but having a writing background as well gives you some pretty strong story skills that never go astray as a director. I think comedy directing especially is its own little niche corner of the film and TV landscape. I think once you start to make strides there, but all the work I got off the back of Fragments [of Friday] was as a writer and director, and then and then you start working episodically as a director, but certainly where I've ended up is more in a creator lane as well, where both those skills have come to the fore. It's a bit muddy, I'm not not sure I can pull one from the other.
[00:05:13] Caris Bizzaca With Fragments of Friday, you wrote, directed, created, starred in and you've obviously written on projects and directed on different projects, but correct me if I'm wrong, but is Class of '07 your return to directing something that you've written and created?
[00:05:37] Kacie Anning I haven't actually thought of it that way, but yeah, between Fragments and Class of '07, there's many years in between and I guess you just get runs on the board as a director or a writer, but I think my path was always going to be both. Now especially, I think, more in the model of a creative showrunner as well, and someone who's really creating highly authored, single-voice driven TV.
[00:06:07] Caris Bizzaca Is that something that you were looking to do as your next step with something like Class of '07? It sounds like it was much more organic.
[00:06:16] Kacie Anning These things have a very long life span, it takes a long time to get a show up, so you're always developing what you can on one side and doing gigs on the other. When we pitched to Tyler [Bern] from Prime Video, that was his first Australian pitch as well, but the very next day, I flew out to do Upload, so it's been a few years and lots of things have been going on. But primarily for the last two years I've been full time on Class of '07, which is a real privilege to be able hunker down in your own work for that many years.
[00:06:55] Caris Bizzaca You talked a little bit about what Class of '07 is about. How did the actual idea come about? And just thinking about that pitch, was that pre-pandemic that you pitched?
[00:07:04] Kacie Anning Yes, we pitched in 2019. I knew I wanted to create a high concept comedy. It was around the time that the Good Place came out, and I was really struck with that show how they managed to do such a high concept show, but with the trappings of a traditional ensemble commercial framework. For a show that's like very esoteric and cerebral and about philosophy, I was just like, how the hell did they do that? I was very inspired by that. There were lots of high concept shows at the time, Upload being one of them, but also a show like Forever, that was an early comedy on Prime Video, which was Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen in an afterlife, but really it was a relationship comedy, just extrapolated against these really absurd settings. I like a framework, I like to feel like you can hang - in Class of '07 what's fundamentally a female friendship story - hang it on this really high stakes setting, and then get into all the crunchy and meaty stuff from there. I knew I was looking for a high concept comedy. Female friendship has continued to be this theme that, you know, I've made a show about it in the way of Fragments [of Friday], but also Class of '07. I don't think I will ever not be telling female friendship stories. There are friendships in my life that you're obviously growing and changing, and that's just such ripe territory, especially in your late twenties, so it's definitely, for me, a response to what I feel and I call the wedge of your late twenties when people are really either settling down or blowing their relationships up and starting again. It's a really fertile, existential few years in your life and to throw all those characters together in one big pressure cooker situation felt like a pretty good premise.
[00:09:12] Caris Bizzaca With that process of pitching to Tyler Bern from Amazon Prime Australia, what was that like? Did you already have context there because Upload was Prime series, but you were saying this is pre-Upload?
[00:09:30] Kacie Anning Very very pre-Upload. I mean, look, it's always nice to be able to go into a pitch and say, 'I'm flying out tomorrow to go and direct on Greg Daniels new show.' That's a lovely little way to grease the wheels. We approached the pitch quite comprehensively and that was in collaboration with Matchbox and my producer especially, Mimi Butler, and a bit of a tendency we feel in Australia, which is quite a casual and conversational pitching style. Knowing Tyler was American, obviously knowing the platform was founded on American content, if you will, we were like, 'let's do the whole very polished verbal pitch, ten to fifteen-minute spiel. That was a process where we wrote that pitch, we rehearsed it, got it feeling very slick, and then really, it's me talking for ten, fifteen minutes with Tyler, and it's so hard with comedy because you want to make sure it's funny. Tyler was very poker face through it and you think, 'oh God, this isn't landing at all. What a disaster.' Then at the end, he cracked a smile and said, 'that's really interesting and really funny.' Comedy is that thing where you feel like you've got to do half story, half stand up in your pitch and make sure it's funny if you're going to be selling a comedy. We treated it in a really comprehensive and polished way.
[00:10:54] Caris Bizzaca The show then gets, is it commissioned by Amazon Prime Australia or does it go into a development period from there?
[00:11:03] Kacie Anning It goes into a development period and quite a different development model than what we were certainly used to in Australia. The Bible is a really important commissioning doc in our experience. I don't know if that's necessarily the Prime Video model or if that's how they're doing things now a few years later as well. But we had a mini-Bible with some character breakdowns, some rough episode outlines, but they were pretty topline and the Bible was a very long process. It was probably six or seven months in the midst of the first 2020 wave, which very lucky to have that much work. We had done writers rooms for the pilot, I think we went to Tyler with the pilot, I feel pretty sure. We had materials to show the tone of the show because obviously it's a very delicate tone, and then most of that is just breaking the back of that Bible document, and in our case was very comprehensive. It had very detailed episode outlines. It was a tricky process in that I think the Australian development model can feel a bit more like, okay, here's the mini-Bible and the network might go yeah, great, we've got some questions. We obviously want some gaps filled in, but we fundamentally understand what you're trying to do, so go ahead and get stuck into plotting and then come back with your outlines. Whereas with the [US] Bible process, we couldn't move on to plotting until we'd got the Bible right, so we did do sort of mini rooms, very small in the end, between myself, Mimi Butler and Romina Accurso, who was one of our very important writers right from the beginning, and we just did those over Zoom to nut out episode outlines. It's just a process of refining, you send it off, they've got notes, you send it off, they've got notes, but it takes its time. We also had a few interesting journeys, just understanding different development styles between an Australian method and an American method and understanding that the American development model is very, rightly so, character based, and the documents prior to that had been a bit more like this happens, then that happens and then this twist happens, that twist happens, and what they were really looking for from the project was the emotional propulsion of plot. So to make sure that we're understanding at all times how characters are feeling, and it's a bit of a culture shift to sort of get that style of prose writing into documents so that you said, I'll use the example of Genevieve in our show, who's the former school captain, very neurotic and is nervous poo-er and never was able to poo at school. She's back in this high school setting and going, 'oh my God, how the hell am I going to take a shit, basically?' And it's using language freshly triggered by her adolescent memories of being a nervous poo-er and bullied by Saskia, Genevieve seeks out toilets all over the campus. It's very character focused and making sure that emotional through line is coming in. That was certainly a learning curve, but I think is absolutely the best way to develop and ensure that you're not just having plot that turns because plot turns, you having plot turn because characters are making it turn.
[00:14:36] Caris Bizzaca Once you get the Bible done, does it then go into writers' rooms, larger writers' rooms than that smaller one you were talking about?
[00:14:46] Kacie Anning We then also worked, you've got to rewrite the pilot based on what you discover in the Bible and based also on what a network wants out of a pilot and also Amazon are really good at knowing, they're such a data driven, have this huge trove of understanding the back end of how their audiences watch things. It's certain things like knowing that the first five minutes has to move really quite fast and be getting us to the story sooner and those things are really helpful to know and just making sure that you've got that momentum running. Then we also were doing an episode two script and making sure that was coming through, and it's a long greenlighting process that Amazon can speak to better, but you're just taking it script at a time and then you eventually get that green light. That of course involves on the producing side, which Mimi could speak better to, is a whole bunch of budgeting and then you get a green light and then you start talking cast as well to ensure that you've got that great marquee name that is going to really hold the show and make it a big international show as well, so lots of pieces of the puzzle have to come together. But once you are greenlit, then you're on your way to plotting. I will say, though, that the plotting process, because the episode outlines in the Bible is so comprehensively outlined, the plotting process is then, you're getting into a writers' room and you're really not beholden to your outlines because you have come up with them, but they're not brainstorm writers' rooms. They truly are plotting rooms, and it's about putting skin on the bones of the story that you already have, and sometimes I think our writers could come in and be like, 'what if this happened? What if that happened?' [But] it was like, 'no, we know what happens in this episode.' The work of the writers' room is to flesh out how it happens. What's the funniest version? How can we get the most nuance in here? It's quite a prescribed plotting process from there, but you've done all the work in the Bible and the Bible has taken months, so from there you're just doing the work of getting it on the page.
[00:17:03] Caris Bizzaca Where those rooms all on Zoom because of COVID?
[00:17:08] Kacie Anning Bits and bobs, just depends what wave we were in more than anything.
[00:17:15] Caris Bizzaca I saw Courtney Wise, your producer on Fragments of Friday was credited in that development process. I was wondering if that was the first time you've been able to work together again since working on the web series?
[00:17:29] Kacie Anning Yeah, it was. We brought Courtney in with a bunch of writers in our earlier development brainstorm phase. Then the world gets busy, everyone gets busy. These things take years, so people aren't always available after that. But it was a great comfort to have Courtney in the room because I knew how we worked in a story sense, and then you're just adding more voices. I think with comedy rooms in particular, it's really the balance of going, okay, who are my story brains? Who do I know is going to come at this from a story-based place? And who are my comedy brains? And they're not exclusive, writers aren't exclusively one or the other, but it is about putting together this alchemy of people who can balance the really big framework and the huge amount of characters with finding comedy as well.
[00:18:27] Caris Bizzaca You mentioned earlier about tone, and that there is a very specific tone for this show. Could you talk a little bit more to that? What was the tone that you envisioned for this from the outset?
[00:18:41] Kacie Anning Tone [is] everything. It's exactly what makes this show special. It was hard pitching this show because it's not like, a) the premise doesn't feel like much else out there and b), the tone is unlike anything else out there. I have a tone that I have figured out is my tone, and there's three tent poles to that. The first is human-facing comedy, which is observational, pithy, relationship-driven comedy. The middle pillar is absurdity, heightened and elevated hijinx, if you will. That pillar is so important to me, like silliness is the reason I watch comedy, so as much as I love a talky comedy, if you throw a slapstick crash in there, someone falls over, I'm in. That's my happy place. The third pillar of my tone is heart and warmth. I have a very cynical outlook on the world sometimes, but it's always bedded in this really human, connected place. Those three pillars I know how to bring together, but they're not easy to bring together. It's really the balance of making sure and I have a thesis on how this tone works, which is that I call it riding the tone, which is that you can't be doing all three things at once. That's a mess. What needs to happen is one thing at a time, but you can ride the tone up and down, so you could have a really unexpected drama scene and then this beautiful, awkward pause at the end and a comedic button at the end of it, which brings us out of drama and reminds us that it's a comedy. As much as I love very human, especially female, especially the way women speak, I just love writing women speaking. But it's an apocalypse show, it better get heightened at some point. It's just about finding how you balance it all, and sometimes the story informs that because you've got a really big dumb gag that the whole thing centres on and then how you pad it in around that. But it's delicate and it's not easy for other writers to come on to. It is a very authored tone in that regard and it takes a bit of figuring out which moment is which moment.
[00:21:19] Caris Bizzaca In terms of being able to not only being the creator, writing on it and directing on it, is that useful as well in that when you're talking about these pillars and the tone, is part of it in the writing but also in the performance, so how you're directing actors, but also where you're going to bring music in or where you're going to edit. Are there all these different levers that are creating that tone?
[00:21:48] Kacie Anning It's a bit of a cheat, really, to be a writer/director because it actually works much easier on the directing end because I've done all my prep. I know, especially when you're shooting things out of order, I have years worth of development where I know exactly where this character is at this moment, and I know where the arc is going, whereas if I'm a director coming on to a gig, you have to have all of that mapped out in your mind in order to be able to shoot out of order and know where you're going, so certainly an advantage on the directing side. But comedy is a really fickle, magical thing. The thing that is so funny on the page isn't always funny in the room, and then the line that you didn't think much of in the rushes, suddenly an editor does a brilliant cut and it's one of the funniest moments in the show, so you do have to leave a bit of space for that stuff. But I have a real sense of timing and that's how I work with actors. I think so much of comedy is in the performance, I think so much of comedy visually is capturing the right joke in the right frame. I'm pretty dogmatic about certain things are funny and certain sized shots and certain things need to cut with certain things to make them sing in the edit, and in a best-case scenario, you get into the edit and the editor has followed that rhythm and you're like, 'great, that's exactly what I thought.' Then other times you get there and you go, 'oh God, I didn't do it right' and we got to try and force it in the edit. There's obviously an incredible oversight that I can have across the whole process that allows me to very, very specifically get into the nitty gritty on set and know how it's going to be engineered in the edit.
[00:23:43] Caris Bizzaca You said earlier how you can't really untangle writing and directing as separate things for yourself. I was wondering, do you have a part of the process that you prefer, whether it's development or it's being on set during the shoot or if it's in the edit in post-production?
[00:24:04] Kacie Anning I really love writing. I'm probably, like a lot of creative people, very introverted. I'm really happy if you just leave me in my head for months on end. I struggle on set, it's not my happy place. It feels like nothing but stress and the best description I can have for it is that it's like the most rewarding torture you could engage yourself with, which is that it's really hard. Pressure is non-stop bearing down on you. You're juggling all these cast and just the normal uncertainty of sets. They're just really, there's so many variables that go into them.
[00:24:48] Caris Bizzaca Trying to predict for the unpredictable?
[00:24:50] Kacie Anning Totally and it's horrible and I don't enjoy that process. I find it very demanding on me physically, mentally, especially being introverted, it just sucks the life out of me. But I certainly had a lot of moments on this set where I looked around and the most remarkable crew creating the most insane problem solves for things that you put on a page, like somebody needs to build a boat that's got a bike on it and you just like, 'oh, this was a funny idea on the page', but then someone's got to actually figure that out and you would see these things realised with all the seriousness with which another genre would be taken and that the most creativity and inventiveness. Certainly, I had so many moments looking around this, especially the reward of knowing what you want it to be, knowing what it looks like in your head, and then stepping behind the monitor and being like, 'oh man, that's so close to what I was imagining.' That, I don't think is something that a lot of people experience in their jobs. To have a vision, to bring it into a three-dimensional world, to see all these crafts people bring the machine together of the filmmaking process, and then to see the vision come through the pipeline is insane and really hard. I just wish more directors would talk about how hard it is, because I do think there is this mythology of the director who loves being on set and thrives on the adrenaline and I hate that, it's not enjoyable, so I'm trying to demystify the director who enjoys shooting.
[00:26:36] Caris Bizzaca For all the introverted directors out there.
[00:26:39] Kacie Anning Yeah, rewarding torture.
[00:26:46] Caris Bizzaca I wanted to jump to a few more big picture career type questions. In 2018, you were a part of Screen Australia's initiative Talent USA: L.A initiative, and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what that was and what it led to?
[00:27:10] Kacie Anning I went in the 2018 cohort for the Talent LA Initiative, and in lots of ways I think, and this is exactly what it's designed for, I was perfectly pitched for what that was. I was at exactly the right moment in my career for what that exact initiative was trying to do, which is I guess creatives, I think the word 'bridging' was used, so you're not an emerging creative anymore. You've got a few runs on the board, you're not mid-career either. You're in this bridging phase, you're full of promise, and it was a wonderful mix. I'd had Fragments, but I directed on The Other Guy, you're getting runs on the board. There were some people who had made features already and other guys who had like a first script deal with Apple, all these like really exciting new generation of creatives. My year was actually in New York and it's three days' worth of wonderful speakers who come and talk to you about all the opportunities in the States, and out of that trip I ended up getting representation with WME as my agents and Mosaic as my managers in the US on top of my reps in Australia, at Creative Rep, and you can engage those people and maybe it goes great, maybe nothing happens. But in my case, I was really fortunate, I did some subsequent trips where you go and do generals and you run around and meet everybody in the town in L.A. and then from there I had a breakfast with Greg Daniels, who had a new show called Upload. My agents were like, look, it's a long shot, but you might as well meet him, and then many, many months later, I ended up going to Vancouver to direct two eps of Greg's show. I benefited enormously from the Talent L.A. Initiative and in careers, everything compounds on everything else, and it was a lovely sweetener in my deal with Amazon that they were familiar with me already from having worked on Upload and people liked my eps and that's certainly helpful. It really is a fantastic pathway that I feel like I was perfectly primed for.
[00:29:36] Caris Bizzaca There are these initiatives like Talent USA, but there are also people that are going over to the US, Australian creatives, making that trip over to the US to do those general meetings and things like that. Do you have any advice for anyone that will be making a trip like that?
[00:29:54] Kacie Anning The thing I would say is that you don't know which meeting is the meeting. LA, the town's full of yes people. They never want to be the person who's missed out on the talent that goes on to direct the thing that everyone's excited about, so they're so open minded. I think conversely, Australia has a very small, insular industry that can be very risk averse. The really exciting thing about the US is that they're not afraid of young talent. I'm a very young director, I'm thirty-four. I was directing on things in my late twenties in the US and that is not daunting to them. They are really excited by young talent and certainly it's that age old story where one trip I did, it was a young intern who takes you through to the meeting and then when you're back there six months later or twelve months later, that young intern is now the executive. You need to really understand that you can't - not write off anyone, but you don't know which meeting is 'the meeting'. You don't know which person in the elevator is going to be the person. I've certainly had pitches over there, just soft pitches or generals where I've talked about what I've worked on and in one case felt like, this person's not at all interested in this. It's nice to have a coffee with them, and then a week later through my reps, 'this producer loves your work. They want to option your idea.' And you're [thinking] 'that guy? Right! Okay.' Then you go on to have this wonderful collaborative relationship, so you have to stay open minded. I think they love Australians. You can just walk into a room and get by on a little bit of your Australian-ness.
[00:31:43] Caris Bizzaca The accent wins them over?
[00:31:47] Kacie Anning The accent wins them over. We're very good humoured, we're sometimes irreverent and I think I just try to go into them with ease and make it a human conversation rather than sell myself too hard, but they're just relationships. That's what I'd say. Just build the relationships. I wouldn't be going in trying to squeeze a gig out of anyone immediately. As I said, you don't know who the person is who's going to think of you for that job in a year's time.
[00:32:20] Caris Bizzaca You did have that time in Vancouver and in the U.S. working on Upload as well as worked on the Disney Plus comedy Diary of a Future President. What were some of your big takeaways from that period?
[00:32:35] Kacie Anning I think it's so daunting, especially on Upload. That was a VFX heavy show. I had not really done many VFX heavy or any really VFX work. I thought I was going to be this talky-talky director making human comedies, and then I'm flying to Vancouver rereading scripts, going, 'Oh my God, what have I got myself into?' You get there and you quickly realise the episodic block driven model of TV in the States is so well supported and you are on a train and you've just go to hold on and they set all your meetings for you. They they're going to take you in a van to look at all the locations. I think it's the fear of like, 'Oh, I don't know how to do it and what I have to do to make things happen.' It's like, no, it's being produced. You just have to come on and figure out how to take the elements on the page with the people you're working with and in as far as big VFX work, I had several scenes where characters were running through the grey void of the Internet, I was like [thinking] 'Oh my God, how the hell am I going to do this?' And you realise that it's not all on you. There [are] meetings upon meetings upon meetings about these things, and there are full time VFX supervisors who are just there to work on the show, work through these technical, complicated elements, and in the case of the grey void of the Internet, lots of different options were thrown up. But your job as the director is to go, what's the story I need to tell? And I knew certain things had to happen in that scene, so you go, 'I don't think that approach is right because of this reason.' In the end, we ended up building this like sixty metre green screen for them to walk on and these shows have the resources to just build these things. It's amazing. But your job is to tell the story, so you have to work with everybody to do that. In as far as worrying about how to do it, do I have to drive things? You're very well supported, there's an entire team around you. There's a schedule around you. They are such a well-oiled machine, and then a set is a set. You know how to be on set, how to work with people to get what you need, so really, once you get over the 'I'm not sure how it works' part, you're fine. Just do the work, just get stuck into how you're going to tell the story.
[00:35:16] Caris Bizzaca That was Kacie Anning and a reminder, you can watch her new series, Class of '07 on Prime Video Australia now. If you're enjoying this podcast, you can subscribe to it through places like Spotify and iTunes, and you can also subscribe to the fortnightly Screen Australia newsletter to keep up to date with new initiatives, opportunities, videos, articles and more. Thanks for listening.