by FilmInk Staff
As Western Australia’s screen sector grows, the next generation of filmmakers will need more than creative vision and technical knowledge. They will need to understand how a professional set moves, communicates and responds under pressure — before their first day on the job.
Screen production is intensely collaborative. Every person on set must know their role, respect established protocols and understand when to step forward and when to make space for others. These are difficult skills to develop through theory alone.
That is the thinking behind Edith Cowan University’s Set Ready Program, available to postgraduate and selected undergraduate screen students. Working with professional mentors in environments designed to closely reflect industry practice, students experience the pace, expectations and teamwork of a working set while still having the time and support to learn.
For Master of Screen Production student Alana Spencer, that practical experience has been essential.
“When I first came to ECU, I had limited professional on-set experience, and having this provided as part of the master’s course was really important,” she says.
“At ECU, we work with professional mentors on sets that match real-world environments, and that enables us to be set ready.”
Alana’s experience reflects a broader challenge for emerging screen practitioners. An academic understanding of screen storytelling matters, but employability also depends on being able to translate that knowledge into action in a fast-moving professional environment.
Professional director David Vincent Smith describes practical experience as the screen industry’s version of building “match fitness”.
“You can’t replicate, just in a classroom, what it’s like to be on a film set,” he says. “It’s a high-paced, sometimes high-stress environment, and having a sense of what to expect and what those roles look like means that you’re ready to fit in.
“It’s like talking about going to the gym without ever lifting any weights. You’ve got to get there and put in the reps so that you actually have the match fitness to step onto a real set.”
The Set Ready Program gives students space to put in those reps. They learn how a set operates, how departments work together and how professional behaviour contributes to a productive shoot. The training also extends beyond technical execution. Students complete risk assessment training and explore how cultural awareness and accessibility can help create safer, more inclusive working environments.
Professional assistant director Claire Blake says the teaching environment closely mirrors a professional set, with the key difference being that mentors can pause and take more time when needed.
“Students learn what the protocols are, how a set is run, the time to step in and the time to take a step back,” she says. “When they go into that real-world scenario, they’re not caught off guard.”
This combination of advanced study and practical preparation sits at the heart of ECU’s postgraduate screen production courses, delivered from ECU City Campus. Students can enter through the Graduate Certificate in Screen Production, which develops production skills across formats including scripted work, documentary, broadcast, news, sport and entertainment, or focus on short-form drama through the Graduate Certificate in Scripted Screen Production.
The Graduate Diploma in Screen Production offers further development across areas such as storytelling, documentary, post-production, leadership and industry careers. At master’s level, students can work in professional production environments across short dramas, documentaries and episodic web series, undertake a substantial screen production project and choose an industry internship through the Master of Screen Production.
The courses also create a pathway for students to build their qualifications over time, with eligible graduate certificate and graduate diploma study able to contribute towards further postgraduate study.
At a time of growing opportunity and continued competition being set ready is about more than knowing how films are made. It means knowing how to contribute from the moment the cameras start rolling.
Explore postgraduate screen production at ECU.
