“It just opened up a whole new world for me,” says Jaye Rosenberg when we meet to discuss her experience of doing the Master of Arts Screen: Business [MASB] at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS).
“I started acting on Australian television when I was a child, and quickly moved into working in film and voiceover. I was a dancer for many years. Like most performers, I think in Australia, you tend to develop your own work. From my teen years, I was producing and doing choreography for productions and festivals. I worked as the assistant to the vocal coach on Australian Idol and a bunch of other live to television productions as well as HBO’s Masterclass.”
Among other productions, Jaye combined all of her worlds, writing, directing and producing a scripted podcast in 2021, Love, Sex & Frankie, which reached #1 on the GoodPods Dating and Relationships podcast charts and is placed in the all time top five dating podcasts on the platform. “I also submitted a feature film script to UCLA’s Advanced Writer’s workshop and got accepted. That same script placed quarter finalist at Cinestory. That started the cogs turning… ‘what can I do with this IP? How can I make it something else? How can I do it myself?’ The success of that and the enjoyment I got out of that… I was like, ‘I want to know more. How can I grow?’”
It was around this time that Jaye found out about MASB at AFTRS. “When I had my interview for it, I literally skipped across the road afterwards. It felt so good.”
And how was the actual course? “I learned so much! We’d do things and I’d think, ‘I might never have to do this’, and then suddenly, I am pitching and I’m presenting, and one subject in particular, really affected me positively, International Screen Media Finance with Nicola Dorling. It was a finance elective in which we learned to monitor the stock exchange and production companies. I never thought I’d love it as much as I did, and it really gave me this love of commercialising original IP.”
The MASB is a flexible and customisable course, built around a capstone project, a practical (and theoretical) application of your studies. “It’s a research project and it can be anything,” Jaye tells us. “My research journey changed drastically. What I started doing, I didn’t finish, I changed to a completely different topic, but my first project that I’d brought in to do as my capstone is now part of my slate and one of the projects I’m working on. My project became really research heavy and I was able to bring in that IP commercialisation interest I found through the finance course and developed that more. What’s interesting about this course is that it caters to you from all angles. There were people in our peer group that were already entrepreneurial, some that had bigger production companies, some that had never taken on anything entrepreneurial, but had extensive professional experiences as writers or directors or creative directors, but wanted to do their own work.
“Not everyone’s objective is the same, and it gives you the skillset to either go off on your own or join a bigger corporation or studio, and contribute and really know what you’re talking about. Since graduating, I have two series in development and have been approached by the licensees of major entertainment franchises and working on commercialising IP with them; how to commercialise the assets they already have and how to build.”
AFTRS is taking applications for Master of Arts Screen: Business for 2024, with applications closing 27 November 2023. For more information, head here.
