I was born in Tasmania, Australia, and have lived in Hobart for over 45 years. This website began life as a way of showcasing the films I have produced since 2009.  But theatre has always been "in the blood" as well.  My grandparents performed in vaudeville acts following the First World War and as children, my brother, Martin, and I delighted in setting up stages and performing various acts for our parents and grandparents.  Since university days, my brother and I have been involved in theatre to varying degrees, so I've expanded the website to include my various theatrical exploits over the years.

My first adventures in film involved shooting a cowboy film on Dad's Super-8 camera in primary school with my brother. (This may have been a seminal moment, as my brother went on to produce several major films including Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge with Baz Luhrmann.)

In high school, I graduated to filming on a reel-to-reel video tape recorder - it weighed a ton and editing involved cutting the tape and joining it together with sticky tape.  By the end of Year 12, technology had advanced to a more portable VTR (only half a ton).  This allowed much more flexibility, so I took to the streets to shoot several news-style documentaries.

Fast-forward to 2007:  my next foray into film-making was to direct, film and edit a video made with my son’s Grade 5/6 class, Alice in Waimealand. The script was written by members of the class and included everyone “starring” in a role.  It was great fun, and I learnt lots about production management and editing.

In 2009, a mutual friend introduced me to Rebecca Thomson who needed a producer for a film she wanted to make for the Trasharama Film Festival.  Screen Tasmania said the film was too ambitious, but we made it anyway. Cupcake: A Zombie Lesbian Musical was the first and is (so far) the most widely distributed through film festivals and DVD sales. Apple Head, which Rebecca and I created for Tropfest 2010, won the Hobart City Council Award for Best Tasmanian Tropfest Entry in that year.  Also in 2010 I produced Slashed with Rebecca directing, funded through the Raw Nerve initiative. All three films have received festival awards.

In 2011, Rebecca and I were awarded the two inaugural grants by Screen Tasmania through their silverScreen program. This fund was designed to provide bespoke career pathway support and direct professional experience for emerging Tasmanian screen practitioners (like us!) in key creative roles.  This inspired us to produce another film together, The Jelly Wrestler, at the end of 2011.  The film was released in 2013, and is still receiving acclaim.

Also in 2011, I produced/co-produced another Raw Nerve film, Showing the Ropes, and a film with a somewhat higher budget, A Quiet Tomorrow.

Despite the COVID outbreak in 2020 (or perhaps because of it!) we were able to obtain funding through Arts Tasmania and crowd-funding to make the series.  Ella Watkins came on board as one of the producers.  Ella had been the star of Daniel's film Silence of Whitewater and had also played the lead role in The Red Chair, so she was the perfect match to star as Mia in Mia Culpa, the web series which we filmed over six days in my lounge room!  

Interspersed with all of this film-making, my involvement in theatre continued.  For more than 25 years, I had combined my professional life as a teacher and school counsellor with a wide range of roles in theatre production and management, magazine editing, graphic design and trod the boards more than a few times. Much of my earlier theatrical involvement was through Polygon Theatre Company which was Tasmania's professional theatre company in the early 1980s.  My brother was the Production Manager for the company and through him I began a long association with the Artistic Director of Polygon, Don Gay, and the Administrator, Stuart Heathorn.

Once state funding for Polygon ceased, Don and Stuart set up MainstageTheatre Company. I became a member and later Chairman of the Board of Mainstage, and managed several of their productions. I was Stage Director for the highly successful 60th anniversary “Carols by the Bay” (Hobart, 2009) and Artistic Director/Producer of Carols in 2010.  

Since around 2006, I have branched out into film and television, behind and in front of the camera. I appeared in Mark Joseph’s film promising in 2006, Barrie Dowdall’s documentary Exile In Hell (2007), as the RACT man in the “Win a Mazda” campaign (2007-8), as a frost-bitten fisherman in the feature film Arctic Blast (2009), as the Muster Clerk in Dowdall’s Convict Women (2010), and as Henry Solomon, Ikey Solomon’s father in the feature-length documentary The First Fagin (Wild Fury Productions, 2011). I also appeared (albeit briefly) in the The Kettering Incident (2016), and in Roar Film/Tile Film co-produced TV series Death or Liberty.  I have appeared in all five seasons of the TV series Rosehaven starring Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola, and as the dead mayor in Deadloch (2023).

I have completed Certificate IV in Small Business Management and a TAFE Certificate in Graphic Design, alongside my other Uni qualifications.For a few years, I also ran a business producing videos for use on the Web: Film Works Tasmania.

From 2020, I have been a member of the Production Committee of Hobart Repertory Theatre Society and, as you can see from the Theatre pages of this website, I continue to undertake backstage (and occasional onstage) roles in theatre in Hobart.

About Rogan Brown

Tropfest has inspired many filmmakers over the years, and also inspired me to make several films in 2012 for the competition including All of Me (made entirely on an iPhone), Dingleberry and Angel Cake. Sadly, my father passed away towards the end of 2012 so I was unable to be on the shoot for Angel Cake - thank goodness for co-producers, Dominique Hurley and Meg Bignell.

In 2014, I began working with director, Daniel James. Daniel had been a runner on Slashed and an Assistant Director on The Jelly Wrestler, and had had some success with his film Silence of Whitewater.  So we began work on Whispers in the Wind. Despite great initial enthusiasm, the film ran into logistical problems, and took several months to complete, but was eventually seen at St Kilda Film festival and at a festival in Slovenia!  

Prior to making Whispers, Daniel had directed a film for Tropfest called Wing and a Prayer, written by Adam Ransley. Adam was full of bright ideas and had come up with a concept for a web series set in a fast food restaurant.  This was to become American Grill which, despite our best efforts got stuck in “development hell”. The same fate was to befall the sequel TV series, Flip. Not to be outdone, Adam wrote Bloodgurgler which was generously funded through Wide Angle Tasmania.  Daniel directed it and I produced it and the film was released in 2016.

Jane Howard and I had worked together on several film and theatre projects since 2009.  Jane is a highly respected art teacher, designer and make-up artist, and in 2015, she decided she would like to turn her hand to directing.  On a shoestring we made Best Friends as a kind of trial run for making The Good Room, funded through Wide Angle in 2016.

In 2017, I had the opportunity to work as a Co-producer on a feature film, Into the Waves, made by AFTRS Masters student, Kyle Hedrick. This involved casting Tasmanian actors, arranging shooting schedules, travelling to Launceston, the Central Highlands, Franklin and Cygnet, and accommodating eight people at my house during the Hobart segment of the shoot!  An interesting experience!

I met Erin Graham when she was Admin Assistant at Wide Angle in 2016. We then worked together on Into the Waves where Erin was Camera Assistant.  After this we began working on an idea for a short zombie film, and in 2017 we filmed Doco of the Dead, funded through Wide Angle's Thrive initiative.

In between all of this, Daniel had been studying on the mainland and, as part of his AFTRS course, made a short film called The Red Chair.  Daniel was keen to expand on the concept of this film, so over many months we tossed ideas around and he worked on writing scripts for a web series. Adam Ransley also wrote a couple of episodes for the series.