Jay Houhlias
She acts, she produces, she tells and builds stories, she even sometimes does headstands with her feet on the wall when the ideas aren’t flowing. Through all that, she lives a life rich with exactly the right kind of fuel for artistic endeavour. Claudia Karvan’s career has spanned decades, and her body of work is a culmination of lessons learnt, both from personal stories and the stories of those around and close to her.
On the latest series of her show Bump, Claudia explains the connection between real life struggles and how these
translate to screen.
“What we are going through in our own lives, all the writers on the show, and the producers and creatives, we funnel it back into the show.”
“But obviously there is a layer of imagination to it. I think having that personal connection you can always feel it as an audience member…”
“Kelsey Munro’s mother was going through chemo when we were plotting season 5 which was very emotional for her, but it did mean that for instance, episode three series five is a complete bubble episode where we are inside a chemo room
like its groundhog day…”
“…You can feel the detail… feel something is personal and close to the writer or creator’s hearts.”
Now in its fifth season, Bump is a life affirming drama and its makeup is us, urban inner western Sydneysiders. Claudia believes its accurate depictions of how we are with one another is why it resonates. She aims to “make a world people will recongise and feel comfort in and seen.”
“That is the purpose of culture and storytelling, to document how we are moving through the world and reflect ourselves back at us. Obviously it’s also entertainment, but it’s reflecting us. I think we are a sophisticated industry, and we are doing that for the most part really well…”
Television series’ have seen an astounding rise in popularity over the last decade, with the calibre of shows only getting better and more intricate as the medium expands.
“Television is so fast… You can see something out in the world a month ago and we can weave it into scripts and then it will be on air into Stan on Boxing Day… Feature films take a much longer time to script. They’re a one off, harder to finance – it’s a very different feeling.”
“There is also a level of intimacy you gain… We’ve filmed fifty episodes of Bump, and you can really
interrogate a character and get to know an actor and all the different facets of that person, and you can keep evolving that character too – that’s why I love TV.”
The content for the show is drafted in writing sessions. These sessions, as Claudia describes them, are “intensely focus-based, quite personal, and filled with talking.”
“On Bump there is usually five to eight of us in the room. The bigger the whiteboard the better… you’re just scrawling ideas all around you so you can see the ideas up there and so you can have a graph… character graph, arc of the show, episode graphs… you are talking and sharing and entertaining each other and making each other laugh and building on each other’s ideas, you’re pitching…”
“There are days that are very frustrating where ideas just aren’t flowing. Sometimes we might do mediation or a headstand or put our legs up on the wall. It’s sort of part improvisation part discipline. It’s brainstorming basically.”
“We try not to do more than three days a week, and no more than two days in a row because our brains start hurting. We go for
walks as well. Half of it is called brainstorming where you are broadly pitching… the other half is plotting… much more specific…
how does this episode go?… whose story are we going to? Then we start blocking out scene by scene.”
“I would say it’s the most arduous part of the journey. Once you’re on set it’s a different type of work. It’s longer hours but mentally, the hardest work happens in the story room.”
“You’re laying down the tracks for what will be the next year of your life. If you’re not thorough, it’s sort of like dropping a stich when you’re knitting a jumper, you have to go back and unravel it all again or you’re always going to see that hole.”
I then remarked how ironic it is that moments of creative brilliance sometimes come when you take a step back and do something different. Alleviating your mind from the creative task is sometimes the best way to ensure its continued productivity.
“It’s silly to just keep flogging a dead horse. As a bunch of writers, you could sit in a writers’ room from 9-5, and yes you’re doing those hours, but you’ve hit a wall, and you start coming up with really bad ideas. Often it’s better to just finish at
2 o’clock… The creative world is very different to other industries like that.”
The past few decades have come with a lot of evolving for the Australian film industry. While they no longer “Take
another one for Kodak” at the end of a take, there have also been shifts in awareness as to “who is telling the story”, creating a more diverse and representative environment.
Claudia has been working since 1980, making her a rarity amongst an industry often favouring actors at their peak, or creators
in vogue.
“I think when I was younger, one of the traps I fell into… is that if I’m not really stressed, and if I’m not tense, and not terrified, or if I’m not suffering from insomnia, then I’m not working hard enough – which was really false.”
“And I guess it doesn’t help if someone tells you something, you’ve got to learn it yourself unfortunately, that’s one of the
annoying things about being human.”
“Creativity is passion and electricity and I guess you’ve got to just kind of push yourself to the envelope before you
realise eventually it’s unsustainable.”
“Hopefully you’ve got people around you who are looking out for you and caring for you so you don’t burn out too quick… before you realise you can also be very creative and calm at the same time.”
Keeping creative and calm does sound nice. If it took someone like Claudia Karvan years to figure out that was the way,
it must be worth putting into practice. Young or old, burnt out or just beginning to heat up, it seems you can find some solace in the fact one day, you may be looking back as Claudia did, wondering why you needed to be in such a frenzy.
Anyone for a headstand?
Head to www.stan.com.au/watch/bump to watch the new season of Bump.
