Dr Susan Thwaites
Lecturer in Film Production
T: 6201 5720
E: Susan.Thwaites@canberra.edu.au
Building: 9C6a
Biography
Dr. Susan Thwaites trained as a cinematographer at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and has worked in the film industry shooting drama, music clips and documentary. Her cinematography work has gained AFI and ASC awards and nominations. Susan is a lecturer in Film Production at the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. Her PhD practice led thesis looks at the role of the screenwriter, cinematographer and director in the adaptation of novel to screen. As her creative practice she adapted a novel by Rodney Hall into a feature length screenplay. Susan wrote and directed the short film Bass Girl, which screened at the 2012 Canberra Short Film Festival. She was selected into the finalists for the Screen Canberra Low Budget Feature POD, her feature length screenplay, Small Town, was later nominated for the Australian Writers’ Guild Monte Miller award in 2014. She is a member of ASPERA, the Australian Writers’ Guild, and a credited member of AACTA.
Areas of Teaching
Short Film Production, Documentary Production, Screenwriting, Australian National Cinema
Research Interests
Screenwriting as practice, Cinematography practice, Screen Studies, Australian cinema.
- PhD Australian National University, (Screen Adaptation, practice led research) 2017
- MA Writing (Thesis) University of Technology, Sydney (Narrative Fiction)
- BA (Film & TV), Australian Film TV & Radio School (Major in Cinematography)
- BA (Comm), University of Technology, Sydney (Film Production and Screen Studies majors)
- Thwaites S. “Diving into film production process – in search of the ‘interpretant’ in screen adaptation” ASPERA Annual Conference Refereed Paper, 2015
- Thwaites S. Bass Girl, writer/director, tcupfilms, Canberra, 2012
- Thomas T. and Thwaites S “The Bass Girl Research Project”. (paper presented at the Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association annual conference Perth, Queensland, July, 2012) in press.
- Thomas T. and Thwaites S. “We want to make a film”, (paper presented at the Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association annual conference, Perth Western Australia, July, 2011) in press.
- Thomas T. and Thwaites S. “The Creative Researcher in Search of Outputs”, Proceedings of 'Creativity: brain, mind, body', the 2011 Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) Annual Conference, Canberra 2011.