March 23, 2023 • 26 mins
Julie Peters grew up in the 1950s, way before trans was generally heard of, let alone understood. As a child she had difficulty working out why people insisted she was a boy when she knew she was a girl. She affirmed her gender in 1990. Julie has been activist off and on since the early 1980s. Her activism has involved being out in the workplace, slide shows, performance, readings, running for Parliament, engaging with health workers, lawyers, police, academic lecturing and research.
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(00:01):
In the olden days, one of myjobs back in, ooh, that was
the, the early seventies.
I was on the lineup crew and whenwe had something like, um, you know,
Kamal and the ABC show band, we putout about 60 mics and you know, sort
of basically one for every instrument.
And you know, it took ages of course,and I dunno how they actually mixed it.
(00:22):
Cause of the desk onlyhad about 30 inputs.
Welcome to season seven ofthe Prima Donna Podcast, Sonic
Portraits of Australian Artists.
This audio was recorded andproduced on Wurundjeri Country.
I pay respects toelders past and present.
The first episode in this seriesfeatures the infamous Julie
(00:45):
Peters, legendary in media.
Having worked at the ABC formore than 50 years, and tireless
advocate for trans rights.
To find out more about Julie, about theproject and to hear more episodes like
this one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
(01:07):
Well, I fell into the ABC byaccident because, well, I was
already uni dropout, you know, soI'm, I'm very advanced at my age.
I dropped out of uni at 19, I thinkit was, and what I was finding I was
enjoying at uni was student theatre.
Then I saw this ad for you know anoperations job at the abc and I went,
oh, maybe I could just learn abouttelecine and stay six months or so and,
(01:28):
and you know, then I go back to theatre.
But anyway, it turned out thatI stayed 52 years, but when I
joined in the early seventies,telecine was still black and white.
I felt like there was a lot ofhistory because nearly everybody,
particularly the production people andthe actors, had all come from theatre
(01:51):
because telecine was still very new.
And it felt like in many ways you'reworking in theatre, uh, rather
than how telecine feels today.
Shows were done either live or as live.
In that you'd actually recorda segment with four cameras.
We did a, a ki's showcalled Adventure Island.
(02:13):
And, um, a soapy called Bellbird.
So if you were doing Bellbird, they'dactually roll the opening titles.
Then they would just cut to thestudio and do the first scene.
And once they were happy withthat, they would then rearrange all
the cameras and go to a differentset and do the second scene.
And we'd do it as an add-on edit,and there was no post-production.
(02:34):
So we had somebody in the telecinebooth who was playing the dogs
barking and the, and the birdstweeting and that sort of thing.
And on Adventure Island, we actually hada little small band over in the corner.
And, uh, what I remember aboutAdventure Island, the Celeste, the
Celeste, gave it a very differentfeel to a lot of other kids shows.
So anybody had an idea it'd goding, ding, ding on the Celeste.
(02:56):
And it gave it a quite a cute feel.
When we started color, most ofus didn't know much about it.
Cause most of the guys hadcome from the PMG, you know,
postmaster general's department.
And so we actually brought somelighting people over from the BBC.
(03:16):
They'd give us basic lighting training.
And what was interesting at firstwas that when people first get into
colour there, there's a tendencyto get really bright colours.
But the BBC guy, was very quick inemphasiding, particularly for drama,
we have to be subtle because that's farmore natural, and particularly in that
first say five to 10 years of color,we had to assume that most people were
(03:36):
watching it in black and white anyway.
So we had to be blackand white compatible
in my first couple of years at the ABCthe first thing they'd actually let me
do, which was related to performance,was I was a boom operator, and this is
way, way before people had radio mics.
So when you had six actors in a room ina set, it was always a three wall set.
(04:00):
The cameras were then sittingon the side of the wall so
they could get closeups and
people looked across the room and inthe middle pretty well usually was the
microphone boom, an extendable poleI can still remember just turning.
You can't see on the radio,but I'm, I'm turning my hand.
It was quite performative in thatyou actually had to fit into the
(04:23):
flow of the actor's performanceto get the audio correct.
The other thing, which I also learnedabout was that, that if somebody was
in a wide shot, you could actuallybring the microphone back because
that would give audio perspective.
(04:47):
Camera was much the same.
The flow of your camera work, becauseyou're a team of three or four camera
operators, usually had to totally fitwith what the performers were doing.
And so, for example, if an actor lookedto the right, that was a cue to either
pan the camera or cut to another camera.
The bit I found difficult initiallywas absolute sheer concentration
(05:09):
of getting the simple things rightevery time because in a way they
didn't really care if you coulddo very complicated effects.
They're more far more worriedabout whether or not you cut to
the right camera on the news.
You know?
Because yeah, if you made a mistakeon a lot of those proteles, unlike
today when we were pre-recordingcause we were live to air, the
whole East coast saw your mistake.
(05:32):
We hardly do anything live to air.
Although, I suppose proteles like Q andA feel like they're live, but normally
what happens, which the viewer doesn'trealise that we record an hour and a
half for an hour and then, you know,try and use the more interesting bits.
When we started Recovery, I realisedthat we owned about 220 parcans, which
(05:57):
are a thousand watt narrow lights.
That was what was used inall the rock and roll venues
around Melbourne pretty well.
But you know, lighting was movingon at that stage and they were
now moving lights and protelemablelights and things like that,
but we couldn't afford those.
So, uh, I managed to find, you know,just lots of really interesting ways of
(06:17):
doing patterns with all these parcans.
And normally I would pickthe colors based on how I
emotionally related to the music.
But what was interesting, one ofthe lighting crew told me that, um,
the looks I had created, becauseI was trying to be as imaginative
as possible, and I'll come back tohow I chose the colours in a sec,
is that, um, those looks were beingpretty well copied That following
(06:41):
week on, Hey, hey, it's Saturday.
I took that as quite a compliment,but I must admit I didn't actually
watch to see if that was true.
Around about that time, I was also doinga little bit, a few acting classes.
And some singing lessons as welland I realised that, that, uh,
particularly in Bel canto singing,that they talk a lot about,
(07:03):
there's really only three emotions.
Mad, glad, and sad, youknow, happy, angry, and sad.
Yeah.
Sort of in my head I said, well,you know, sad is blue, angry
is red, and happy is yellow.
So what I would tend to do iswhen I was trying to decide what
colours to use for a band, it becamea bit of a formula in my head.
(07:24):
I would listen to the music and.
Okay, what emotion do I feel?
That means I'll use those coloursand then depending on the rhythm.
you know Cause a lot of pieces startedoff with, they're really loud bit at
the start and, and they might do a lotof fast light changing, or maybe it
started off very slowly and then partwaythrough the song, the emotion changed.
That's how I would choose my colors.
(07:47):
In the early nineties, one ofthe women who was sort of working
as a casual in ABC operationsjust sort of said casually to
me, how do you get into lighting?
How's a woman get into lighting?
And something clicked a few dayslater and I thought, well, I should
run a lighting course for womenbecause you know, most of the
people who are, you know, totallyat that stage, except for me, nearly
everybody in lighting was a bloke.
(08:09):
They're all camera guys onparticularly doing news and 7:30
report and those sort of shows.
And so I went to the trainingofficer who totally by coincidence,
is now the managing directorof the ABC David Anderson.
And I said, I wanna run lighting coursefor women, and he looked at me and
and said, okay, let's look at this.
And it possibly was, it looksgood on the figures to run
(08:32):
a lighting course for women.
I don't know.
I don't know the logic of how Igot it up, but what happened was I
managed to get studios for 10 days.
So it was a 10 day course.
Because what I realised that a lotof women didn't have is they didn't
have like basic sub electricity interms of, you know, how many lights
can you plug into the one outletwithout, um, you know, blowing a fuse.
(08:53):
And they didn't quite get optics becausemost of 'em didn't do physics at school.
So I gave them the basicsof electricity and basics of
optics and basics of colour.
Because if you're gonna light, youneed to understand colur temperature
and the fact that, you know,different likes are different colours.
And if you want somebody to, tolook consistent or look good, you,
you've gotta actually at leastunderstand what you're doing.
(09:19):
You can use some, you know,really ugly fluorescent lighting
to make some for a baddy or,or to make something look ugly.
Under a lot of circumstances,you don't wanna do that.
You just want them to look like them.
And it's interesting when we look at ahuman face and the human face is moving
in lighting, we remember the shape.
We don't remember the way thelighting is on their face.
(09:40):
And so that, you know when when there'sreally steep lighting above a face,
there's actually quite deep shadowsaround the eyes and that sort of stuff.
And I, I remember reading about, youknow, some of the classic portraiture,
um, painters from the 17th and18th century, and I looked at the
lighting they use and I went, ohyeah, that, that's quite interesting.
(10:01):
You know, and, and in many ways Ifelt that that was one of the best
ways to start to learn lighting,was to look at paintings and, and,
um, then I also start to look atadvertising photos and things like that.
Photos in magazines.
I like the look of, and so I, Imight have been doing that for
fashion as well, but I was alsodoing it for lighting to see
Okay, how did they light thisparticular, yeah, woman in this pose
(10:30):
Where I can play the most in terms ofjust looking at an individual face,
because to me, the, the individualface and lighting an individual
face is the key to lighting.
I did it on news readers, so you know,I would adjust the light up and down,
physical height and sideways, and thenI'd possibly put in three back lights.
The reason I often put in threeback lights is because some people
(10:51):
had black hair, some people hadwhite hair, some people had no hair,
and so I tended to put one in thisdead center on top of the head and
the two to the side of that on theshoulders, but not the head, which.
If somebody had, you know, white hair,I could not light the hair and light the
shoulders and make that the back light.
(11:11):
Whereas other people, I might put allthree up, particularly in the eighties
with a lot of women with big hair.
I could go crazy.
But then what would happen is youhad to then take into account that
particularly in the early eighties,we were still going crazy with
chroma key or green screen or bluescreen as it's now caught, and they
weren't very good in those days.
You get really rough edgesaround here, particularly if
(11:33):
somebody with really curly hair.
It was really hard to get a good key.
In some studios, we couldonly do one colour because
the studio was wired that way.
So if somebody came in with blue eyesand you had a blue screen behind them,
you then had to be really carefulabout, you know, not having the
picture showing through their eyes.
(11:53):
Because of the era I was in, we wereall expected to do out, you know,
outside broadcast as well as studiosas well as the news, as well as
spending a bit of time in telasinicrolling films to air or whatever.
I mean, the first OB I went to was,was a running carnival, but they
wouldn't trust me with anything.
So all I got to do is the graphic.
Which sort of said ABC at the endand the name of the swimmer, or the
(12:13):
name of the presenter or something.
In those days we didn'thave a graphic generator.
We actually had cardboard graphicslike letraset on black card, which
cameras pointed at, and then thevision mixer would, would combine them.
And we did that live and we even, youknow, we did the news that way too.
Each camera in the newsroomcould pan to a graphic standard.
And so, you know, the graphicspeople were making, you know,
(12:34):
letraset graphics all afternoonfor, for whatever stories were on.
With the lighting courses forwomen, I, I took the attitude
that a lot of it wasn't about themgetting into lighting necessarily.
(12:55):
Look, some of them did and some ofthem were like documentary makers.
And what that meant was that, you know,they were very much on minimal budgets
where they were, you know, if theycould help with the lighting, it meant
that they could do it with just twopeople rather than three or four people.
I think they were theones who used it the most.
And you know, that certainly happened.
(13:16):
Documentary makers used it becausethe way I started, I always, I
started with with portraiture ofa human face and we, we could all
practice on each other as well.
And then, then I managedto get studio crews.
Yeah, we had a full, a full TVstudio with four cameras and so we
used it a little bit for training
(13:38):
you know, camera operators,but also training directors.
So we had, you know, young womenwho wanted to direct for camera
coverage, who would then directthe piece we were doing as well.
So we had a rock and roll stage.
We had a piece of classicalmusic, which was a lutist and
(14:00):
two singers, and we had a drama.
So we did a three wall soapysort of style thing, which
was, you know, four cameras.
And it was a scene from a play wherethere was three or four people and,
and we were able to cut between allthe cameras in, in an interactive way.
So my crew lit those three events.
(14:27):
In the first version, it wasonly a ABC women who did it.
And, um, we had people come in from ABCDarwin, ABC Sydney, and do the course.
What I thought was also interesting,a number of the, um, people in, in
news said, well, how come you're notdoing a, a lighting course for men?
I went, I said, look around.
(14:47):
I can't help it.
If you, you, nobody'steaching lighting except me.
I get a grip.
You know, you totally, uh,control the industry anyway.
But what I thought was just asvaluable is that I was actually
giving people who wanted to be adirector, for example, language
for speaking to a lighting personbecause of the way I approached it.
(15:10):
And I, in many ways, I think thatwas how it was used the most.
In the end, it gave these womenlanguage, Which meant that they
could get a look they liked froma DOP or a lighting director in
the future, and I certainly hada good feedback about that.
In fact, one, one of the womenwas a member of WIFT Women
in Film and telecine, and shewent to the WIFT committee and
(15:32):
said, wow, look what Julie did.
Can we get her?
Anyway, cut a long story shot.
We did it a year later again,but this time it was half ABC
and half external industry.
WIFT organized AFC funding.
Yeah, to help bring external people in.
And we, we had some, um, a lot ofin, you know, uh, industry people
(15:52):
come and do that course, which,um, I was quite pleased at that.
And again, I think the people whoappreciate it the most were people
who were, who weren't using it forlighting, but using it to understand
lighting so that they could get thelook lighting looks they wanted from
their DOP or or lighting director.
(16:13):
I have seen things change in some ways.
And it nearly always myopinion for the better.
But for example, There's stillvery few women I see on camera, but
I remember the ABC hiring youngwomen in mid seventies with the idea
of trying to get women on camera.
But, but in the end, they tended todrift into other jobs like editing
(16:36):
and telasini rather than camera.
But you know, certainly a couplewere on camera for a long time,
but, you know, camera can becamera in broadcast telecine in
many ways can be limiting in that.
It was broader when, when I was ayoung youngster because a camera
operator could be doing football onSaturday, divine Service on Sunday,
(16:58):
and then an opera on Wednesday, oryeah, Wednesday and Thursday, and
they were good at all those things.
Whereas now nearly all crewstend to be far more specialised.
You have people who specialise indrama, people who specialise in sport.
And even though to me, I go, what?
It's not that different.
And, and, and I feel just ascomfortable doing drama sport
(17:20):
and rock and roll, but it justdoesn't really happen these days.
That's one way thatindustry's changed a lot.
One of the reasons I, I don't thinkmany, I I've seen like a huge increase
in, in the number of women, forexample, on camera at the a ABC,
is that we've got so few becauseindustries change, so dramatically.
(17:41):
I remember probably in the early to mideighties, we would've had 45 people on
the camera roster, and I think maybewe had one woman for at that time.
Whereas now we've got sixpeople on the camera roster
and all the rest are casuals.
(18:10):
Part of me is really surprised.
I'm still being activistand in fact activist at all.
When, when I was particularlygrowing up in this, you know,
uh, when I was trying to thinkabout being trans in the fifties,
sixties, seventies, it seems that.
There weren't many choices.
If you are going to be trans, you hadto pass so well that nobody would ever
(18:31):
realise that you were trans and that,you know, people call that going
high, stealth, or, or basically if youlook, think of it in a sociological
terms, there's three choices.
Either you can , try andconform to gender norms.
For example, a trans woman wouldportray a very stereotypical,
you know, version of womanhoodrather than just be themselves.
(18:54):
Another possibility is, which MaryDouglas talks about, is like pollution,
where you just push the edges ofgender and say, I'm, I might have a
beard, but I'm gonna wear a dress.
You know?
And occasionally you see people whodo that, it's really high stress
to be, to in sense, polluting.
That's Mary Douglass'sversion of the word.
But then, then there's a way ofsort of being a bit in between
(19:16):
where in some circumstances yousort of pass and other circumstances
you are activist or are out.
When you live in the borderlands,there are some parts of your life.
Whereas, you know, for, formost trans people, they have
lots of family who aren't trans.
(19:37):
And so when you go to a familyfunction, some families would insist
that they were dressed back in theirold gender at those family functions.
But you know, for me, I guess, Iguess I am a borderlands person
in that, you know, I look quitefemale, but you know, when I go to
the supermarket, I don't wear a signsaying, you know, I'm transsexual.
(19:59):
Mainly because I justwanna do some shopping.
I don't actually want to spend my wholeday talking about gender to people.
And to an extent I find it a bitboring because I've thought about
it so much, mainly because I had to,
One of my first ways of experimentingwith how the workplace would, would
(20:19):
deal with my gender nonconformity atone level, I suppose is that when we
had parties, particularly if therewere fancy dress parties, I would
nearly always, if it was a theme.
For example, I remember there wasa, um, one of the themes was, you
know, international and everybodyhad to dress in international style.
I dressed as a Spanish woman, you know,with a mantilla and you know, big,
(20:43):
big dress and all that sort of stuff.
And you know, I was verypopular at that party.
And I went, oh, okay.
that's interesting.
And you know another one.
We had to go as superheroes, and so ofcourse I went as Wonder Woman, which I
made the costume myself, was quite good.
So to an extent I wasexperimenting a little bit with
how people would deal with that.
(21:06):
What I realised as I, in my twentiesand early thirties was I had done
is I'd separated my emotions andmy logic, my logical brain, my head
was saying, you're really a bloke.
Just get over it and deal with it.
My emotional brain, and this came froma very, very young age, like when I
(21:27):
was, you know, three or four, I justthought my parents were dumb for not
realising I was a girl, that'spart of my emotional brain.
My heart just felt that I'm a womanand they were in conflict, and the way
I dealt with that was just by my headand heart, just not working together.
So it became very, verystressful in my late thirties.
And what happened was that, um,effectively, I, I had to go to
(21:50):
mediation between my head and my heart.
And so the way I dealt withthat was my head said, okay,
you can live as a woman.
Whereas my heart said,I can live as a woman.
It's the same sentence.
And to that extent, we agreed with abit of a different emphasis, isn't it?
And so what that meant was Igot to a point where once I had
(22:14):
dealt with it, I went, well, ohwell, I'm gonna transition now.
One of the ways I dealt with my emotionsduring my twenties and thirties was
by trying to turn them off, not havethem, and logical me said, well, the way
to get have emotions is to do acting.
And so I went and did acting classesand I was of course useless at first
(22:35):
cause I couldn't express any emotionor I didn't want to express emotion.
But once I started to express emotion,I realised what my emotions were,
and all of a sudden went, shit, Ihave to do something about this.
Anyway.
So I ended up after the mediation going,okay, well I'm going to transition.
So initially I thought, well, I justwanna disappear into society as a woman.
(22:56):
Um, because you know, I'mfairly slight and probably,
you know, and probably can.
And so I actually went backto uni and finished my degree.
I did a science degree in genetics.
Unlike electrical engineering,there's a lot, a lot of women in
genetics and I went, you know,I could be a lady scientist.
(23:18):
When I told the ABC what Iwas doing, one of the managers
offered me a redundancy packagewithin about 30 seconds.
And, and I went, oh.
He said, well, don't you wanna go away?
And so nobody knows you your pastand just deal, deal with it that way.
And then I went, if I did that,that means I'm being transphobic.
And I realised I did have a bit ofinternalised transphobia and I thought
(23:41):
it would be really healthy to getover my internalised transphobia.
Dunno quite how justmostly by just staying.
Now I, I've got a lot of angstin those first couple of years
from, from straight guys.
And you remember, um, um, thishappened in 1990, so I was
32 years cuter than I am now.
And one of the guys look in thiscanteen queue stood back and looked
(24:04):
me up and down and said, "you ought tohave transsexual tattooed on your head.
So blokes like me aren't trickedinto being poofs", and I told
him he was an idiot , of course.
But I realised that was actuallyin many ways the case in that.
Straight guys, particularly we'retalking in, in the nineties,
if they found you attractive,felt they were being tricked.
(24:27):
But then I realised that if, um,a gay guy found me attractive,
you know, people would feel Itricked him into being straight.
And if a straight woman found meattractive, people would say, I've
tricked her into being lesbian.
But if a lesbian found me attractive.
Um, people would say, I'vetricked her into cis normativity.
So I realised that only thosewho can see me beyond gender can
really relate in a healthy way.
(24:47):
But once I got through
this difficult stage.
And you know, the first stage, I firststep, I suppose was just, you know,
portraying myself as a, as a womanat work and you know, some of the
women were really lovely when guysgave me a hard time in the canteen.
A lot of the women will go up, willgo up to them and give them a hard
time for giving me a hard time, whichI thought was really lovely too.
(25:09):
Some of the guys just werethought it was, I was now sexually
available to them anytime theywanted, which wasn't the case.
So even though part of me feels Ijust want to rest and, and trans
(25:29):
isn't such a big deal, what,what's everybody carrying on about?
But then everybody is carrying onabout it particular, and you're
seeing, we're seeing it in theUK, in the US and, you know, we
are seeing, um, anti-trans peoplerunning for parliament in Australia.
There's an old saying, which I thinkis a Daoist saying actually you catch
more flies with honey than vinegar.
(25:52):
And so basically when, when there'sa lot of negative stories, um, being
about trans, rather than go andargue with them, which I'll just get
stressed and they'll get stressed,I rather than that, I go and try and
do a positive story somewhere else.
I try and do a positivestory, um, to try and counter.
(26:18):
You've been listening tothe Prima Donna Podcast.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
In the olden days, one of myjobs back in, ooh, that was
the, the early seventies.
I was on the lineup crew and whenwe had something like, um, you know,
Kamal and the ABC show band, we putout about 60 mics and you know, sort
of basically one for every instrument.
And you know, it took ages of course,and I dunno how they actually mixed it.
(00:22):
Cause of the desk onlyhad about 30 inputs.
Welcome to season seven ofthe Prima Donna Podcast, Sonic
Portraits of Australian Artists.
This audio was recorded andproduced on Wurundjeri Country.
I pay respects toelders past and present.
The first episode in this seriesfeatures the infamous Julie
(00:45):
Peters, legendary in media.
Having worked at the ABC formore than 50 years, and tireless
advocate for trans rights.
To find out more about Julie, about theproject and to hear more episodes like
this one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
(01:07):
Well, I fell into the ABC byaccident because, well, I was
already uni dropout, you know, soI'm, I'm very advanced at my age.
I dropped out of uni at 19, I thinkit was, and what I was finding I was
enjoying at uni was student theatre.
Then I saw this ad for you know anoperations job at the abc and I went,
oh, maybe I could just learn abouttelecine and stay six months or so and,
(01:28):
and you know, then I go back to theatre.
But anyway, it turned out thatI stayed 52 years, but when I
joined in the early seventies,telecine was still black and white.
I felt like there was a lot ofhistory because nearly everybody,
particularly the production people andthe actors, had all come from theatre
(01:51):
because telecine was still very new.
And it felt like in many ways you'reworking in theatre, uh, rather
than how telecine feels today.
Shows were done either live or as live.
In that you'd actually recorda segment with four cameras.
We did a, a ki's showcalled Adventure Island.
(02:13):
And, um, a soapy called Bellbird.
So if you were doing Bellbird, they'dactually roll the opening titles.
Then they would just cut to thestudio and do the first scene.
And once they were happy withthat, they would then rearrange all
the cameras and go to a differentset and do the second scene.
And we'd do it as an add-on edit,and there was no post-production.
(02:34):
So we had somebody in the telecinebooth who was playing the dogs
barking and the, and the birdstweeting and that sort of thing.
And on Adventure Island, we actually hada little small band over in the corner.
And, uh, what I remember aboutAdventure Island, the Celeste, the
Celeste, gave it a very differentfeel to a lot of other kids shows.
So anybody had an idea it'd goding, ding, ding on the Celeste.
(02:56):
And it gave it a quite a cute feel.
When we started color, most ofus didn't know much about it.
Cause most of the guys hadcome from the PMG, you know,
postmaster general's department.
And so we actually brought somelighting people over from the BBC.
(03:16):
They'd give us basic lighting training.
And what was interesting at firstwas that when people first get into
colour there, there's a tendencyto get really bright colours.
But the BBC guy, was very quick inemphasiding, particularly for drama,
we have to be subtle because that's farmore natural, and particularly in that
first say five to 10 years of color,we had to assume that most people were
(03:36):
watching it in black and white anyway.
So we had to be blackand white compatible
in my first couple of years at the ABCthe first thing they'd actually let me
do, which was related to performance,was I was a boom operator, and this is
way, way before people had radio mics.
So when you had six actors in a room ina set, it was always a three wall set.
(04:00):
The cameras were then sittingon the side of the wall so
they could get closeups and
people looked across the room and inthe middle pretty well usually was the
microphone boom, an extendable poleI can still remember just turning.
You can't see on the radio,but I'm, I'm turning my hand.
It was quite performative in thatyou actually had to fit into the
(04:23):
flow of the actor's performanceto get the audio correct.
The other thing, which I also learnedabout was that, that if somebody was
in a wide shot, you could actuallybring the microphone back because
that would give audio perspective.
(04:47):
Camera was much the same.
The flow of your camera work, becauseyou're a team of three or four camera
operators, usually had to totally fitwith what the performers were doing.
And so, for example, if an actor lookedto the right, that was a cue to either
pan the camera or cut to another camera.
The bit I found difficult initiallywas absolute sheer concentration
(05:09):
of getting the simple things rightevery time because in a way they
didn't really care if you coulddo very complicated effects.
They're more far more worriedabout whether or not you cut to
the right camera on the news.
You know?
Because yeah, if you made a mistakeon a lot of those proteles, unlike
today when we were pre-recordingcause we were live to air, the
whole East coast saw your mistake.
(05:32):
We hardly do anything live to air.
Although, I suppose proteles like Q andA feel like they're live, but normally
what happens, which the viewer doesn'trealise that we record an hour and a
half for an hour and then, you know,try and use the more interesting bits.
When we started Recovery, I realisedthat we owned about 220 parcans, which
(05:57):
are a thousand watt narrow lights.
That was what was used inall the rock and roll venues
around Melbourne pretty well.
But you know, lighting was movingon at that stage and they were
now moving lights and protelemablelights and things like that,
but we couldn't afford those.
So, uh, I managed to find, you know,just lots of really interesting ways of
(06:17):
doing patterns with all these parcans.
And normally I would pickthe colors based on how I
emotionally related to the music.
But what was interesting, one ofthe lighting crew told me that, um,
the looks I had created, becauseI was trying to be as imaginative
as possible, and I'll come back tohow I chose the colours in a sec,
is that, um, those looks were beingpretty well copied That following
(06:41):
week on, Hey, hey, it's Saturday.
I took that as quite a compliment,but I must admit I didn't actually
watch to see if that was true.
Around about that time, I was also doinga little bit, a few acting classes.
And some singing lessons as welland I realised that, that, uh,
particularly in Bel canto singing,that they talk a lot about,
(07:03):
there's really only three emotions.
Mad, glad, and sad, youknow, happy, angry, and sad.
Yeah.
Sort of in my head I said, well,you know, sad is blue, angry
is red, and happy is yellow.
So what I would tend to do iswhen I was trying to decide what
colours to use for a band, it becamea bit of a formula in my head.
(07:24):
I would listen to the music and.
Okay, what emotion do I feel?
That means I'll use those coloursand then depending on the rhythm.
you know Cause a lot of pieces startedoff with, they're really loud bit at
the start and, and they might do a lotof fast light changing, or maybe it
started off very slowly and then partwaythrough the song, the emotion changed.
That's how I would choose my colors.
(07:47):
In the early nineties, one ofthe women who was sort of working
as a casual in ABC operationsjust sort of said casually to
me, how do you get into lighting?
How's a woman get into lighting?
And something clicked a few dayslater and I thought, well, I should
run a lighting course for womenbecause you know, most of the
people who are, you know, totallyat that stage, except for me, nearly
everybody in lighting was a bloke.
(08:09):
They're all camera guys onparticularly doing news and 7:30
report and those sort of shows.
And so I went to the trainingofficer who totally by coincidence,
is now the managing directorof the ABC David Anderson.
And I said, I wanna run lighting coursefor women, and he looked at me and
and said, okay, let's look at this.
And it possibly was, it looksgood on the figures to run
(08:32):
a lighting course for women.
I don't know.
I don't know the logic of how Igot it up, but what happened was I
managed to get studios for 10 days.
So it was a 10 day course.
Because what I realised that a lotof women didn't have is they didn't
have like basic sub electricity interms of, you know, how many lights
can you plug into the one outletwithout, um, you know, blowing a fuse.
(08:53):
And they didn't quite get optics becausemost of 'em didn't do physics at school.
So I gave them the basicsof electricity and basics of
optics and basics of colour.
Because if you're gonna light, youneed to understand colur temperature
and the fact that, you know,different likes are different colours.
And if you want somebody to, tolook consistent or look good, you,
you've gotta actually at leastunderstand what you're doing.
(09:19):
You can use some, you know,really ugly fluorescent lighting
to make some for a baddy or,or to make something look ugly.
Under a lot of circumstances,you don't wanna do that.
You just want them to look like them.
And it's interesting when we look at ahuman face and the human face is moving
in lighting, we remember the shape.
We don't remember the way thelighting is on their face.
(09:40):
And so that, you know when when there'sreally steep lighting above a face,
there's actually quite deep shadowsaround the eyes and that sort of stuff.
And I, I remember reading about, youknow, some of the classic portraiture,
um, painters from the 17th and18th century, and I looked at the
lighting they use and I went, ohyeah, that, that's quite interesting.
(10:01):
You know, and, and in many ways Ifelt that that was one of the best
ways to start to learn lighting,was to look at paintings and, and,
um, then I also start to look atadvertising photos and things like that.
Photos in magazines.
I like the look of, and so I, Imight have been doing that for
fashion as well, but I was alsodoing it for lighting to see
Okay, how did they light thisparticular, yeah, woman in this pose
(10:30):
Where I can play the most in terms ofjust looking at an individual face,
because to me, the, the individualface and lighting an individual
face is the key to lighting.
I did it on news readers, so you know,I would adjust the light up and down,
physical height and sideways, and thenI'd possibly put in three back lights.
The reason I often put in threeback lights is because some people
(10:51):
had black hair, some people hadwhite hair, some people had no hair,
and so I tended to put one in thisdead center on top of the head and
the two to the side of that on theshoulders, but not the head, which.
If somebody had, you know, white hair,I could not light the hair and light the
shoulders and make that the back light.
(11:11):
Whereas other people, I might put allthree up, particularly in the eighties
with a lot of women with big hair.
I could go crazy.
But then what would happen is youhad to then take into account that
particularly in the early eighties,we were still going crazy with
chroma key or green screen or bluescreen as it's now caught, and they
weren't very good in those days.
You get really rough edgesaround here, particularly if
(11:33):
somebody with really curly hair.
It was really hard to get a good key.
In some studios, we couldonly do one colour because
the studio was wired that way.
So if somebody came in with blue eyesand you had a blue screen behind them,
you then had to be really carefulabout, you know, not having the
picture showing through their eyes.
(11:53):
Because of the era I was in, we wereall expected to do out, you know,
outside broadcast as well as studiosas well as the news, as well as
spending a bit of time in telasinicrolling films to air or whatever.
I mean, the first OB I went to was,was a running carnival, but they
wouldn't trust me with anything.
So all I got to do is the graphic.
Which sort of said ABC at the endand the name of the swimmer, or the
(12:13):
name of the presenter or something.
In those days we didn'thave a graphic generator.
We actually had cardboard graphicslike letraset on black card, which
cameras pointed at, and then thevision mixer would, would combine them.
And we did that live and we even, youknow, we did the news that way too.
Each camera in the newsroomcould pan to a graphic standard.
And so, you know, the graphicspeople were making, you know,
(12:34):
letraset graphics all afternoonfor, for whatever stories were on.
With the lighting courses forwomen, I, I took the attitude
that a lot of it wasn't about themgetting into lighting necessarily.
(12:55):
Look, some of them did and some ofthem were like documentary makers.
And what that meant was that, you know,they were very much on minimal budgets
where they were, you know, if theycould help with the lighting, it meant
that they could do it with just twopeople rather than three or four people.
I think they were theones who used it the most.
And you know, that certainly happened.
(13:16):
Documentary makers used it becausethe way I started, I always, I
started with with portraiture ofa human face and we, we could all
practice on each other as well.
And then, then I managedto get studio crews.
Yeah, we had a full, a full TVstudio with four cameras and so we
used it a little bit for training
(13:38):
you know, camera operators,but also training directors.
So we had, you know, young womenwho wanted to direct for camera
coverage, who would then directthe piece we were doing as well.
So we had a rock and roll stage.
We had a piece of classicalmusic, which was a lutist and
(14:00):
two singers, and we had a drama.
So we did a three wall soapysort of style thing, which
was, you know, four cameras.
And it was a scene from a play wherethere was three or four people and,
and we were able to cut between allthe cameras in, in an interactive way.
So my crew lit those three events.
(14:27):
In the first version, it wasonly a ABC women who did it.
And, um, we had people come in from ABCDarwin, ABC Sydney, and do the course.
What I thought was also interesting,a number of the, um, people in, in
news said, well, how come you're notdoing a, a lighting course for men?
I went, I said, look around.
(14:47):
I can't help it.
If you, you, nobody'steaching lighting except me.
I get a grip.
You know, you totally, uh,control the industry anyway.
But what I thought was just asvaluable is that I was actually
giving people who wanted to be adirector, for example, language
for speaking to a lighting personbecause of the way I approached it.
(15:10):
And I, in many ways, I think thatwas how it was used the most.
In the end, it gave these womenlanguage, Which meant that they
could get a look they liked froma DOP or a lighting director in
the future, and I certainly hada good feedback about that.
In fact, one, one of the womenwas a member of WIFT Women
in Film and telecine, and shewent to the WIFT committee and
(15:32):
said, wow, look what Julie did.
Can we get her?
Anyway, cut a long story shot.
We did it a year later again,but this time it was half ABC
and half external industry.
WIFT organized AFC funding.
Yeah, to help bring external people in.
And we, we had some, um, a lot ofin, you know, uh, industry people
(15:52):
come and do that course, which,um, I was quite pleased at that.
And again, I think the people whoappreciate it the most were people
who were, who weren't using it forlighting, but using it to understand
lighting so that they could get thelook lighting looks they wanted from
their DOP or or lighting director.
(16:13):
I have seen things change in some ways.
And it nearly always myopinion for the better.
But for example, There's stillvery few women I see on camera, but
I remember the ABC hiring youngwomen in mid seventies with the idea
of trying to get women on camera.
But, but in the end, they tended todrift into other jobs like editing
(16:36):
and telasini rather than camera.
But you know, certainly a couplewere on camera for a long time,
but, you know, camera can becamera in broadcast telecine in
many ways can be limiting in that.
It was broader when, when I was ayoung youngster because a camera
operator could be doing football onSaturday, divine Service on Sunday,
(16:58):
and then an opera on Wednesday, oryeah, Wednesday and Thursday, and
they were good at all those things.
Whereas now nearly all crewstend to be far more specialised.
You have people who specialise indrama, people who specialise in sport.
And even though to me, I go, what?
It's not that different.
And, and, and I feel just ascomfortable doing drama sport
(17:20):
and rock and roll, but it justdoesn't really happen these days.
That's one way thatindustry's changed a lot.
One of the reasons I, I don't thinkmany, I I've seen like a huge increase
in, in the number of women, forexample, on camera at the a ABC,
is that we've got so few becauseindustries change, so dramatically.
(17:41):
I remember probably in the early to mideighties, we would've had 45 people on
the camera roster, and I think maybewe had one woman for at that time.
Whereas now we've got sixpeople on the camera roster
and all the rest are casuals.
(18:10):
Part of me is really surprised.
I'm still being activistand in fact activist at all.
When, when I was particularlygrowing up in this, you know,
uh, when I was trying to thinkabout being trans in the fifties,
sixties, seventies, it seems that.
There weren't many choices.
If you are going to be trans, you hadto pass so well that nobody would ever
(18:31):
realise that you were trans and that,you know, people call that going
high, stealth, or, or basically if youlook, think of it in a sociological
terms, there's three choices.
Either you can , try andconform to gender norms.
For example, a trans woman wouldportray a very stereotypical,
you know, version of womanhoodrather than just be themselves.
(18:54):
Another possibility is, which MaryDouglas talks about, is like pollution,
where you just push the edges ofgender and say, I'm, I might have a
beard, but I'm gonna wear a dress.
You know?
And occasionally you see people whodo that, it's really high stress
to be, to in sense, polluting.
That's Mary Douglass'sversion of the word.
But then, then there's a way ofsort of being a bit in between
(19:16):
where in some circumstances yousort of pass and other circumstances
you are activist or are out.
When you live in the borderlands,there are some parts of your life.
Whereas, you know, for, formost trans people, they have
lots of family who aren't trans.
(19:37):
And so when you go to a familyfunction, some families would insist
that they were dressed back in theirold gender at those family functions.
But you know, for me, I guess, Iguess I am a borderlands person
in that, you know, I look quitefemale, but you know, when I go to
the supermarket, I don't wear a signsaying, you know, I'm transsexual.
(19:59):
Mainly because I justwanna do some shopping.
I don't actually want to spend my wholeday talking about gender to people.
And to an extent I find it a bitboring because I've thought about
it so much, mainly because I had to,
One of my first ways of experimentingwith how the workplace would, would
(20:19):
deal with my gender nonconformity atone level, I suppose is that when we
had parties, particularly if therewere fancy dress parties, I would
nearly always, if it was a theme.
For example, I remember there wasa, um, one of the themes was, you
know, international and everybodyhad to dress in international style.
I dressed as a Spanish woman, you know,with a mantilla and you know, big,
(20:43):
big dress and all that sort of stuff.
And you know, I was verypopular at that party.
And I went, oh, okay.
that's interesting.
And you know another one.
We had to go as superheroes, and so ofcourse I went as Wonder Woman, which I
made the costume myself, was quite good.
So to an extent I wasexperimenting a little bit with
how people would deal with that.
(21:06):
What I realised as I, in my twentiesand early thirties was I had done
is I'd separated my emotions andmy logic, my logical brain, my head
was saying, you're really a bloke.
Just get over it and deal with it.
My emotional brain, and this came froma very, very young age, like when I
(21:27):
was, you know, three or four, I justthought my parents were dumb for not
realising I was a girl, that'spart of my emotional brain.
My heart just felt that I'm a womanand they were in conflict, and the way
I dealt with that was just by my headand heart, just not working together.
So it became very, verystressful in my late thirties.
And what happened was that, um,effectively, I, I had to go to
(21:50):
mediation between my head and my heart.
And so the way I dealt withthat was my head said, okay,
you can live as a woman.
Whereas my heart said,I can live as a woman.
It's the same sentence.
And to that extent, we agreed with abit of a different emphasis, isn't it?
And so what that meant was Igot to a point where once I had
(22:14):
dealt with it, I went, well, ohwell, I'm gonna transition now.
One of the ways I dealt with my emotionsduring my twenties and thirties was
by trying to turn them off, not havethem, and logical me said, well, the way
to get have emotions is to do acting.
And so I went and did acting classesand I was of course useless at first
(22:35):
cause I couldn't express any emotionor I didn't want to express emotion.
But once I started to express emotion,I realised what my emotions were,
and all of a sudden went, shit, Ihave to do something about this.
Anyway.
So I ended up after the mediation going,okay, well I'm going to transition.
So initially I thought, well, I justwanna disappear into society as a woman.
(22:56):
Um, because you know, I'mfairly slight and probably,
you know, and probably can.
And so I actually went backto uni and finished my degree.
I did a science degree in genetics.
Unlike electrical engineering,there's a lot, a lot of women in
genetics and I went, you know,I could be a lady scientist.
(23:18):
When I told the ABC what Iwas doing, one of the managers
offered me a redundancy packagewithin about 30 seconds.
And, and I went, oh.
He said, well, don't you wanna go away?
And so nobody knows you your pastand just deal, deal with it that way.
And then I went, if I did that,that means I'm being transphobic.
And I realised I did have a bit ofinternalised transphobia and I thought
(23:41):
it would be really healthy to getover my internalised transphobia.
Dunno quite how justmostly by just staying.
Now I, I've got a lot of angstin those first couple of years
from, from straight guys.
And you remember, um, um, thishappened in 1990, so I was
32 years cuter than I am now.
And one of the guys look in thiscanteen queue stood back and looked
(24:04):
me up and down and said, "you ought tohave transsexual tattooed on your head.
So blokes like me aren't trickedinto being poofs", and I told
him he was an idiot , of course.
But I realised that was actuallyin many ways the case in that.
Straight guys, particularly we'retalking in, in the nineties,
if they found you attractive,felt they were being tricked.
(24:27):
But then I realised that if, um,a gay guy found me attractive,
you know, people would feel Itricked him into being straight.
And if a straight woman found meattractive, people would say, I've
tricked her into being lesbian.
But if a lesbian found me attractive.
Um, people would say, I'vetricked her into cis normativity.
So I realised that only thosewho can see me beyond gender can
really relate in a healthy way.
(24:47):
But once I got through
this difficult stage.
And you know, the first stage, I firststep, I suppose was just, you know,
portraying myself as a, as a womanat work and you know, some of the
women were really lovely when guysgave me a hard time in the canteen.
A lot of the women will go up, willgo up to them and give them a hard
time for giving me a hard time, whichI thought was really lovely too.
(25:09):
Some of the guys just werethought it was, I was now sexually
available to them anytime theywanted, which wasn't the case.
So even though part of me feels Ijust want to rest and, and trans
(25:29):
isn't such a big deal, what,what's everybody carrying on about?
But then everybody is carrying onabout it particular, and you're
seeing, we're seeing it in theUK, in the US and, you know, we
are seeing, um, anti-trans peoplerunning for parliament in Australia.
There's an old saying, which I thinkis a Daoist saying actually you catch
more flies with honey than vinegar.
(25:52):
And so basically when, when there'sa lot of negative stories, um, being
about trans, rather than go andargue with them, which I'll just get
stressed and they'll get stressed,I rather than that, I go and try and
do a positive story somewhere else.
I try and do a positivestory, um, to try and counter.
(26:18):
You've been listening tothe Prima Donna Podcast.
To find out more about this projectand to hear more episodes like this
one, visit prima donna podcast.com.
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