Full Transcript for Karina Holden

time I have been on a ship, it's been the Drake Lake. And it's been incredibly peaceful. I've even slept with my My windows open and the breeze blowing in with that beautiful, fresh, cool air, just watching the albatross soaring. But those seas become mountainous. And, you know, you have people who just for days can't take to their feet and are terribly, terribly seasick. And if you think about going back in history, the old mariners who were in sailing ships, traveling through those roaring 40s, the furious 50s over these seas, it was epic. We're very lucky these days that the big ocean-going vessels that travel down there have stabilizers that almost always work. Sometimes they don't, but it certainly, there's a lot of drama in it. From telling a story of why it's important, it is this huge mixing bowl of where the oceans overturn and we have the warmer water from the surface mixes all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. And that's part of the, the pump of the heat moving through the ocean and regulating our temperature. So it's actually a really important physical structure as well. 00:04:27 Speaker 1: The vision is quite, it's quite scary actually. And you mentioned the ancient mariners and I couldn't help but think of like 15th, 16th, 17th century mariners rounding the Cape Horn. How on earth they survived? How did they? 00:04:42 Speaker 2: I know, it's extraordinary stories and I've stood on them a reproduction of the Magellan ship and it is, it's, you just, you can't conceive that this thing was in this ocean bobbing up and down in, you know, waves that are topping out over 10, 15 meters, um, traveling for days and, and having no sense of where they were even going. So, um, you know, human nature is extraordinary. 00:05:10 Speaker 1: In the first episode, there's some amazing, well, all the vision is amazing, to be quite honest, because someone who's never been to Antarctica, there's a vision of the polar bear emerging from her winter's den and then with two cubs following. Now, how on earth did you get that vision? 00:05:29 Speaker 2: Well, that was a really interesting story in that the scientists who were working on polar bears up there, they. 00:05:36 Speaker 2: Once they've established where a polar bear den is, they actually leave camera, remote camera traps on recording the moment that they're hoping to see the emergence of polar bears for the first time. And because the polar bears have to dig their way out, they, they see this little nose poke and it triggers the cameras. And so that's the extraordinary thing through this dark winter. These bears live in almost like it's an extended womb. They're born blind, quite hairless and they live in this underground snow cave with their mother and then when they're big enough and old enough she'll dig her way out and have this moment of emergence and then they spend a couple of weeks around the den itself before they start their lives as ocean predators and wandering the arctic but if

we hadn't have had camera traps recording that it's a moment you would never see. 00:06:34 Speaker 1: What sort of, when you say a den, would they just dig a hole in the ice? 00:06:38 Speaker 2: They do. Yeah. And that story is interesting because it's, it talks about the Goldilocks effect of the snow needing to be not too hard because they need to be able to dig down into it, not too soft so that it doesn't collapse on them. And because on the island of Svalbard, where you have these really high populations of polar bears, you're seeing a change in the climate and you're getting more rain instead of snow. And it's causing den collapse. And so you're not having the recruitment of the young polar bears. And so, you know, we were looking at the camera traps and able to see a mother bear who really successfully was able to choose the right snow conditions to den in. But it just goes to show that it's not just about having a place for these animals to live. you know, the conditions of which they live in are complex. And so, you know, I guess that that's what we're unpacking across the series is all of this detail of how life is connected in the Arctic to the conditions. 00:07:37 Speaker 1: You've got vision in the Arctic and then down the bottom in the Antarctic. How did you combine them? How did you coordinate all of that? How did you recruit firstly the mariners and then the scientists? How How did you go about that? That seems to me to be incredibly complicated. 00:07:55 Speaker 2: It's a long, it was a long period of time. It was a three-year project with development beforehand. The big thing is access. So if you're going to go and shoot these stories, you have to have conversations that go for a very long period of time about how you're going to get there. Are you going to be able to piggyback on the back of a ship? Are there scientific expeditions going that have room? Because obviously when you're in these remote places, there's logisticities are expensive and complicated and there's a lot of safety. And so finding the groups of people, the scientists, the expeditions that had the capacity to allow us to film and tell their stories and then present a really wide variety because science in the polar regions, it could be robotics, it could be atmospheric science, it could be biology, it could be oceanography, it could be glaciology. And building this big picture up of All these different disciplines of people working, it was, you know, like it was a really fun part of putting the series together, but it meant we had to range very far and wide to bring it down into the number of stories that we have across the three parts. And obviously there is an ensemble cast of scientists who are telling us all different parts of polar science from different angles. 00:09:12 Speaker 1: Did you have to pay them? 00:09:14 Speaker 2: No. 00:09:14 Speaker 1: No. 00:09:15 Speaker 2: No, it's a part of documentary. We're documenting the work that's being done. It still was an expensive show because often it meant that we had to contribute towards travel and logistics costs. But we were following people who were doing their job and who were great communicators, who were passionate about sharing what they're learning with the general public and not just putting their science in scientific papers. Because ultimately, you know, the search for knowledge is about sharing it with everyone. 00:09:44 Speaker 1: In the world. We are chatting with Karina Holden. She's the executive producer of an amazing series on the ABC, Ages of Ice, back shortly. Welcome back to Conversations. My guest today is Karina Holden, who's an executive producer, director, writer. It's an amazing series. series on the abc called ages of ice and you'll be captivated by it because it's a landscape that's foreign to most of us unless you've been fortunate enough to travel down there i'm a bit too scared to do that karina i'm a bit scared of the cold at some stage so we talked about how you uh as being an executive producer and writer, how you had to assemble the scientists who allowed you to film their work. But was there a specific requirement that you had? How did you actually select them? 00:10:33 Speaker 2: Oh, look, I think, I guess I have a gut instinct as to whether I feel like their work is exciting, if they're good communicators, if there's enough kinetic energy in the scenes we're going to be able to film. You know, I wanted to be I wanted the series really to have a flavor of adventure. And I think a lot of us think of science as people who are, you know, in lab coats or using computers to model ideas. And, you know, they're all tools that you will see, but I love the idea of the scientist as the adventurer and taking us into places where it felt like there was immediate danger or it required physical effort or they were against the elements. And I think that that to me, helped to bring alive the process and the sense of discovery that the people that we see in the series are engaged in. 00:11:24 Speaker 1: Did you start out producing this and directing this series with an end goal in mind? Was there a message that you were wanting to get across? 00:11:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's always important. You do go on a bit of a journey in the process and this was long. This was three years and I think I had definitely, you know, like both a kind of an intellectual and an emotional journey myself in going through the process. But when you started off and you're being commissioned by a set of broadcasters, so in this case, ABC in Australia and PBS in America, it was important to kind of, you know, what are you setting out to do? And for me, it was, you know, there was a real love letter to science. It was really putting the idea of, you know, we've gone through a bit of a a strange period where we've got this, everybody's got their own set of facts and, you know, information is kind of, has gone through this wash of AI slop and social

media. And I really wanted to bring respect to science through this process and inspire people by this search for discovery of knowledge. Ultimately, you know, to understand when you've got people who talk about the climate and and who refer to science, what are they doing and how are they coming to those decisions? And, you know, I think that that was a really important part of what I wanted to just show within the series itself. 00:12:54 Speaker 1: There's so much debate about climate change and you've got the climate change deniers. Do you feel you've had irrevocable proof that the climate is changing and that we are at some sort of crisis point? Yeah. 00:13:08 Speaker 2: And I think that even in referring to the title being Ages of Ice, it puts front and centre off and we hear people sort of saying, well, the climate has always changed. We've had ice ages. And that is true. And I think that what was really important to look at was people who are looking at deep history and trying to understand how the climate works, how the climate system works. It's a very complicated system. There's a lot of feedback loops that happen within it. And We're only really starting to understand those, even in the process of making this series. You could see scientists teasing new factors that give them more understanding of how the climate system works. But I think that what's undeniable is the rate of change we're seeing in the current day and age. And we have seen change, but there is a very huge body of evidence that we have an anthropogenic change related to the industrial system. And so that is what we are seeing reflected in the work on screen. 00:14:16 Speaker 1: The point is made in the documentary that in the Arctic anyway, the ice is forming later and melting earlier. As a scientist and as a documentary maker, I mean, how concerning is that? How concerned were the scientists that you could observe. 00:14:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, very, because I think that people have had projections of what kind of sea level rise we may see, what kind of temperature rise we may see, what kind of change in the ice-free Arctic Ocean we may see. And those numbers are kind of rapidly changing in a direction that is not great for the planet, I think. you know, like a lot of people talk about how do we stop this from happening? I think the reality is we're facing a change and we just need to be adaptive now in our thinking. That doesn't mean that we can't have an impact on how far the change goes. And I think we are heading into new economies of where we have renewables and we have new technologies that are going to be able to stop the kind of the carbon footprints that we've had in the past. So we can make change, but we have to be realistic about the fact that we are going to see major changes in how much ice there is in the Arctic and how much melting there is in the Antarctic. And we need to plan for it. And we need to bring science into our conversations when we're having these conversations about our society and our economies. 00:15:55 Speaker 1: And how hot our summers are going to be, perhaps. 00:15:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, we are, we're kind of, we've had targets to try to keep, you know, the change to no more than 1.52 degrees. And that's where, you know, people are really lobbying hard that, you know, if we put in these adaptive changes and we actually plan our economies as such, we might be able to keep it at that two degrees and not go to three degrees or four degrees, which is And this is the thing, it's really hard with scale because it doesn't sound like that much. It doesn't sound like that much to have an extra 10 centimetres of sea level or whatever it might be. But you're just thinking about maybe it's not our generation, maybe it's the next generation, but we are seeing change. And it does have ripple-on effects, obviously. 00:16:46 Speaker 1: I want to talk about your other stuff that you've done, or the other stuff that's... Sounds very complimentary, doesn't it? The other work that you've done. But a few more questions of this documentary series, Ages of Ice. What was the hardest? What was the most difficult thing about it? 00:17:05 Speaker 2: I mean, like there was a– it felt like climbing a lot of Mount Everest, to be sure. It was every expedition that we would put together to film some science had an incredible amount of planning and safety around it. and then you'd get through that and then you'd have another one. So there was a lot of stamina and then just kind of thinking about how to bring this all together. And it feels like an impossible dream at some points. You're kind of in this moment where you're pulling these stories together and then you have to, you have to make them work as an arc because it's not just one person's stories, it's many stories. And how do they sit together? And so Yeah, it's definitely, you know, you boil your brain as you're kind of working through all of trying to bring the science into a place where it doesn't feel dense. It feels accessible, that there's a positive story for people to engage in. It feels exciting. You're not trying to sell a doomsday message, but you're trying to also communicate clearly and honestly about climate change. So there's lots and lots of things to balance. 00:18:18 Speaker 1: The most enjoyable thing, the thing you loved most? 00:18:21 Speaker 2: Oh, just being in those places. I mean, I loved pushing myself and being somewhere really extreme and knowing that it was such a privilege to be in these places. Spending time with Inuit in far North Canada, being in. 00:18:39 Speaker 2: Sailing boats in the middle of the arctic ocean surrounded by pancake ice and. 00:18:43 Speaker 1: Well let's say that's an amazing vision that is amazing of the sailing boat i think and compared to sir david attenborough the specially designed polar exploration ship it's such a contrast how did that sailing ship survive yeah. 00:18:59

Speaker 2: Well it was an old dutch catch that had been reinforced to be able to travel up into the arctic and we didn't have to break any ice because it was It was in the springtime and we were in an area that had very patchy ice, but it was just, it was really important to the story because we were telling the story of how quiet the Arctic Ocean is and has always traditionally been because of the ice. And so we were telling this beautiful story of the biophony of how the animals use sound to sing underwater. And that was just such a joyful experience. 00:19:34 Speaker 1: We're talking with Karina Holden, who's the executive producer and director of the ABC series Ages of Ice. If you haven't seen it on broadcast, you can get it on ABC iView. It's magnificent footage, actually, and a great story. Back after the break. Welcome back, everybody. If you've just tuned in to Conversations, we're speaking with Karina Holden, who's done amazing things, won Emmys with her filmmaking and her productions. We're talking about her latest production, which is an ABC series, Ages of Ice, which is looking at both... polar regions the antarctic and the arctic and some as i said previously some amazing vision i said we'd go and talk about the other works have you done but i i lied actually because i got no one more question there's some vision of um a couple of scientists getting into or one's a pilot of this submersible craft that goes down to the bottom of the ocean in the now it looks so scary i And the thing that intrigued me, it looks quite complicated and it looks almost like a spacecraft, but it didn't appear to be attached with any lifeline to the mother ship. 00:20:47 Speaker 2: And you know what? I was lying on the floor of that ship in that scene. We had to, I was there directing, but I couldn't be in the shot and it was a really tight little. 00:20:59 Speaker 1: So you were in the craft. 00:21:01 Speaker 2: And I was lying on the floor. I was lying on the floor with my monitor, making sure and asking questions and, And not peering out, but I do have claustrophobia and I was kind of feeling like, oh, this will be a real test. But because it's got these beautiful big Perspex bubbles, it feels like the ocean is all around you so you don't feel claustrophobic inside. And as it goes down and it gets darker and darker, it actually feels quite comforting. And there's this gentle whir of the engines and it felt actually like a really cosy place. special, delicious experience that I had no expectations that it was going to feel like that. But it was extraordinary. And it was like being an astronaut for a few hours. 00:21:49 Speaker 1: Karina, didn't you read about the submersible that went down to the Titanic? I did. 00:21:54 Speaker 2: I watched it. 00:21:55 Speaker 1: And was crushed by the pressure of the water. And these things look so fragile with their glass windows. How on earth? 00:22:02 Speaker 2: What if it broke down? I, there was so many safety. Um,

we, there was so many things that we had to go through. Um, I watched the Titan sub documentary after I did that trip for sure. But I mean, that was a terrible piece of machinery of which people were literally bolted into a tin can with a tiny window. I would never do that. 00:22:26 Speaker 1: Never. 00:22:27 Speaker 2: Um, or at least I'd tell my parents I'd never do it. But this one was, um, I mean, there was two subs in the water. We could only dive if both of the submersibles were working. There was an ability for it to be rescued. If the engines cut, we could survive underwater for three days with food and we had supplies and we had emergency divers who could travel down to 70 metres and pull us back up. 00:22:56 Speaker 1: What about emergency toilets? Did you have those? 00:22:58 Speaker 2: There was a bucket on board of which the very lovely submersible pilot was honest about how she often needs to use it in an emergency because she has a very weak bladder. Fortunately, she didn't when we were filming, but these are the things that happen. I mean, and across the series, you know, just the logistics of being in 10 layers of clothes out in the Arctic with no arm No bathroom facilities, you know, like that was part of the fun. 00:23:32 Speaker 1: Such a fragile looking thing, but such a sophisticated looking thing. I wonder what it cost to build. 00:23:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, these submersibles are often on tourist ships as well. So incredible bit of engineering and I feel very lucky to have experienced it. 00:23:51 Speaker 1: How did you arrive at this position where you're such a respected, award-winning documentary maker? Tell us about the early days, the early influences. And there's a great piece in the Australian Geographic story with you and some amazing photos of you lying in water, lying in, you know, shallow water and telling your story. Where did it all start for you? 00:24:14 Speaker 2: Oh, look, I pinch myself as to the opportunities I get. I I still feel like a complete fraud at times where I'm like, I can't believe I'm here. But, you know, like I guess, you know, I grew up with parents who really encouraged us to enjoy the outdoors and not be afraid of it and to rise to the challenge of being in nature and and not see it as an adversary, but someplace that you could get an incredible amount of enjoyment from. And that kind of set me on the direction of working and going and getting my science degree and working in conservation biology for a while before I pivoted into filmmaking. And most of my young life as a filmmaker was making natural history films. And natural history films are harder to get commissioned these days. I was part of what used to be the ABC Natural History Unit. that would collaborate with Attenborough and the BBC. But, you know, because I, once that unit shut down in the early 2000s, it was still trying to find the opportunities to make these types of stories as an independent filmmaker, which meant that I had.

00:25:29 Speaker 1: To go and. 00:25:31 Speaker 2: Form business relationships with networks all over the world. And so now that's what I do. And I bring funding from other countries to these commissions. so that we can make them in Australia as well, because Australia struggles to have enough finance to be able to fund just purely Australian natural history series. And so, for example, when we made The Magical Land of Oz, which was narrated by Barry Humphreys for the ABC, that was also co-commissioned with the BBC and PBS. And so bringing finance has helped make big, epic, adventurous series and hopefully keep this form of specialist factual storytelling alive for Australian audiences, because I think we all grew up with it and it's getting rarer to see it from an Australian perspective and see our own country reflected in the storytelling that we see on screen. 00:26:24 Speaker 1: Did you do your degree as a marine biologist? 00:26:27 Speaker 2: I did both terrestrial and marine. And in fact, my postgraduate was in snakes, which probably set me up for television quite well. 00:26:38 Speaker 1: Well, how does a scientist become a business person? 00:26:42 Speaker 2: Oh, well, I think that this is a. 00:26:43 Speaker 1: Is there a turning point at that moment? 00:26:46 Speaker 2: It's also why I love telling the stories of scientists because I think showing how different and diverse and interesting and adventurous they can be. But I think when I started my degree in science, I knew that I wanted to pivot into filmmaking or science writing. I loved the idea of taking what we were learning to the world and encouraging this idea of the furtherment of knowledge. And I loved actually doing the research. I hated doing the statistical work and the technical write-up, but I loved being in the field. And so even before I started my science degree, I had the kind of pipe dream that one day I would be on a mountain in the Himalayas making something for National Geographic Channel or something. So that was there from quite a young age and I kind of got there. 00:27:39 Speaker 1: Are you outgoing, gregarious? 00:27:44 Speaker 2: I'm quite introspective. I love being around people, but I love to hear their stories. I feel like a sponge. I feel like I love to be in the presence of people who are just expanding my consciousness and then I love to take all of that and bring it back to the world in a way that may be accessible, that shares it with other people. 00:28:08 Speaker 1: Did you work with Sir David Attenborough? 00:28:10 Speaker 2: I did it from a distance. He left a ham and cheese sandwich on my desk. When I was in Africa, he was using my desk at the ABC and he left his sandwich. And that sandwich stayed in my fridge for a very long time until a friend ate it accidentally. But yeah, only from a distance, never in person, sadly. 00:28:30 Speaker 1: So what was your big break. 00:28:32 Speaker 2: Actually yeah strangely which was we have had just the most

extraordinary year and so over 30 years ago I volunteered my time at the ABC over a summer and was taken out by a cameraman to go and collect bogon moths and put them into the shot and carry all the camera gear and we hiked up into Mount Bogong and I was just there on work experience using, you know, being young and fit and enthusiastic. And after working on that film, they said, why don't you just stay on? 00:29:08 Speaker 1: Amazing. Karina Hogan is my guest. She's a filmmaker and a scientist and there's probably lots of other stuff we could label you with, Karina, but we'll take a break. And we'll talk about some of the other work that you've done, which is one you great acclaim across the globe. Back shortly. Welcome back to Conversations. It's a great chat. Karina Holdness, my guest, she makes movies and writes them. Your correct title is Head of Factual at Northern Pictures, Karina. I should get that right. I should give people the... credit that they deserve. Tell us about Northern Pictures. 00:29:44 Speaker 2: Well, it's a company I've worked for for over 15 years now. And as Head of Factual, that means basically anything that we produce that's in the documentary or the factual space is something that I have to oversee. And then I have a team of great people and different directors and producers who are working. So I was very lucky on Ages of Ice. I was able to direct and produce that series. But at the same time, we were making The Jury, Skeleton in the Garden for SBS. We were making Love on the Spectrum for Netflix in the the US, we were making The Matter of Facts for ABC here in Australia. And so, yes, lots of different things are happening in any one day where I'm also planning polar expeditions. 00:30:35 Speaker 1: So that was what was intriguing me as I was, you know, obviously I have to research, Karina Holden, it's so diverse. I mean, it's not as though you specialise in outdoor documentaries. I mean, they the love on the spectrum was so highly acclaimed that you couldn't be anything different to a geographic documentary. How did you wander into that one? 00:30:59 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, like I guess across the board of the work that we do, it's just trying to tell the most impactful, beautiful storytelling that we can, often bringing perspectives that are not seen in other media and whether that's giving voice to different groups of people or interrogating an idea that hasn't had a lot of attention paid but is really important and can potentially create change. And then when we're making the work, it's just about the human experience. It's about making people, giving them the time for their stories to come alive and for us to learn about different types of people in the world and their experiences and, and, and, and making them look beautiful and impactful. 00:31:54 Speaker 1: See, this is a multi award winning series and love on the spectrum. Like an Emmy award is not just, you know, a gold Logie. You're in international company there. So what was it about that series that, that attracted such attention and acclaim? Yeah. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: I mean, it was, it was such a beautiful journey and, You know, we started working on a series called Employable Me for the ABC. So myself and co-creator Keanu Cleary, who you hear on screen. And in working with young people with disabilities and especially with autism, we took them on a journey where they were getting their first job interviews and their first jobs. And they said, well, you know, this is great, but what I actually really want is a girlfriend or a boyfriend or what I want is love. What I want is love. And, you know, like we'd always loved the idea of making a dating show, but doing it in a different way so it wasn't about competition or rivalry or conflict. And so we pitched this idea and it took quite a long time because people were like, oh, is this going to feel a bit niche? And it's proven to be quite the opposite. I mean, when you hear Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian or, you know, you know, Jonathan Bailey or all these big Hollywood actors say what their favorite show is. It's Love on the Spectrum, which is completely crazy. But I do think that it has something to do with the kindness in it. And that when Americans look at this, this style of programming, of which I think that we make really well across the Australian market, especially on our public broadcasters, you see other producers doing it really beautifully as well. I think it's a surprise for the Americans to because they're so used to the grabby, attention-seeking, conflict-driven storyline. And I think that this for them is this beautiful, warm bath of an acceptance and expanding their sense of, you know, who's worthy in the world of the kind of attention that celebrity and television programming puts on people. 00:34:11 Speaker 1: So what's it like when you're sitting there, oh, I guess you're sitting there and you're contending with other productions and it's announced that your program has won the Emmy. 00:34:22 Speaker 2: It's extraordinary. The first year for season one in the US, we were nominated for three Emmys and we won all three and we were blown away. We just thought we are just lucky to be here. And the first time I walked up on stage and accepted the award and I looked down and there's Ron Howard and Peter Jackson sitting And I'm just like, there is no way that this is my life. There is no way this is happening. It's extraordinary. And, you know, we're lucky enough to have been back four times. We now have 10 primetime Emmys. 00:34:52 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:34:54 Speaker 2: And we're now in production on season five. So the journey continues and we're able to share it with this extraordinary group of young people who have gone on to become major talent and stars and are now appearing on places like The Voice, on dramas, have got incredible brand deals who their whole lives have changed. It's just so wonderful to see. 00:35:24 Speaker 1:

You move comfortably in those circles now. Do you have friends in high places? Do you have celebrity friends that you didn't ever contemplate you would have? 00:35:32 Speaker 2: I'm, I'm a behind the camera person very, you know, I just like Kian who is, who's the director and, um, you know, he's, he's, we've worked together for over 10 years now. He gets invited to, to lunch at, uh, Gwyneth Paltrow's and Ben Affleck's and, um, he's lucky he does those things, but I think I would just, I would just find it a bit overwhelming. So I'm very much happy to be behind the, behind the camera. 00:36:01 Speaker 1: What's happening in your personal life? Can I be that inquisitive? Oh, yeah. 00:36:06 Speaker 2: Well, I'm in a very happy place. I've been engaged for about a year. So I am very lucky. In fact, it was probably right at the beginning of the ages advice process. I met my partner and he and I will get married in September next year. Having been a single mother, my son finished his HSC yesterday. I suddenly have two twin stepdaughters as well. So we are becoming the Brady Bunch as we speak, and it's beautiful. 00:36:39 Speaker 1: Sorry to be so personal. Do you want to tell me what's in the pipeline? What wonderful projects? I mean, this is obviously the Ages of Ice is a terribly time-consuming production. What's next? Do you have a whiteboard in your office? 00:36:56 Speaker 2: I sure do. What's on it? Well, you know, like there's the things that you would possibly dream of doing and hope to do. And there's the things that are happening, which is incredible. We're making season five of Love on the Spectrum for Netflix at the moment. We have another Netflix series that will come out next year that hasn't been announced yet. There might be something even more exciting happening again. And I'm really, really hoping with ABC, that we're going to have another big natural history science epic that will go into production because PBS is very keen as well. 00:37:40 Speaker 1: How restrictive is the ABCs? They're a public broadcaster. They depend on public funding. How restrictive is that in terms of funds available compared to maybe the international production companies or the broadcasters? 00:37:57 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like there's always been a squeeze on public funding for television production that over time has got tighter and tighter. So I was actually the head of science at the ABC back in 2010. I would commission a brand called Catalyst, which is no longer on air. There'd be 15 hours of independent documentary and another 10 to 12 hours of natural history commissioned. And now we're lucky if we get one independent commission of natural history a year. So, you know, all of that is cost cutting the funding for this type of programming. And, you know, from my perspective, the only way to keep it going is to make sure that we're doing these big co-productions that help to bring in a bigger budget for the programs to travel. But yeah, I mean, these shows would only exist because of the ABC. Nobody else does science or natural history at all. So we're very lucky and we've got Screen Australia supporting us. So from a public broadcasting point of view, I am so glad to live in Australia and work for Australia. Even with the opportunities that are given to me to work internationally with places like Netflix, I would always still choose to live in Australia and work here. 00:39:23 Speaker 1: So that intrigues me. I mean, you work at Northern Pictures. now I've quite honestly never heard of Northern Pictures and you're collaborating with all these well-known broadcasters or platforms that we see on TV how how's the connection mate how is this is it just an Australian company? 00:39:40 Speaker 2: Yeah think about our Australian film industry it punches above its weight you know we go out there and we make international films and we have incredible directors and producers who work internationally and it's all part of the hustle. It's wonderful to think of the creative process and being able to write and direct and be somewhere and make a story. But at the end of the day, if you can't do the hustle, you can't make the shows. And so that's a huge part of it. And there's some most excellent people who are doing extraordinary work. I think about Jen Petum, who's just had her feature debut with Tenzing on Apple, which is a global story. And, you know, you can talk about Baz Luhrmann and all of the people who have come before him, but Australians do definitely hit above their weight. 00:40:30 Speaker 1: You a hustler? 00:40:31 Speaker 2: Yes, I have to be. I have to be. I don't want to be, but I have to be. 00:40:36 Speaker 1: Well, that's an amazing series, Ages of Ice. It's beautifully shot. It's gripping. There's no doubt because you think, oh, what would I be like in that environment? So I hope it goes well for you, Corrine. It's been delightful chatting. Thank you so much. Oh, wonderful. 00:40:50 Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Graeme. 00:40:52 Speaker 1: Karina Holdman is my guest, executive producer, director, writer of the ABC series Ages of Ice. If you missed it in the initial broadcasting, you'll get it on ABC iView. You definitely have to look at it. Thank you so much for joining us.