Over the past four weeks we have covered consent, stereotypes, and risk assessment.
This last email is about something that runs underneath all of them: who holds the power in a production, and what that does to the content.
When an organisation commissions a video about the community it serves, there is a default assumption built into most productions. The organisation decides what story needs to be told. It hires a production company. The production company arrives, films the people the organisation has identified, and leaves. The community has been involved as subjects. They have not been involved as participants in the decisions that shaped the story.
Bond’s ethical guidelines for content production are direct about the structural reality of this: those with the most power and privilege in any production are generally white, and those with the least are generally people of colour. That observation was made about international development content, but it applies equally in Australia, where the majority of organisations commissioning social impact content are staffed and led predominantly by non-Indigenous Australians, and the communities most frequently featured in that content are First Nations peoples, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and people experiencing disadvantage.
Genevieve Grieves, a Worimi educator and filmmaker who leads decolonisation practice through GARUWA and Shifting Ground, draws a clear line between genuine co-creation and what she calls extractive production — taking knowledge, stories, and images from a community to produce something that primarily serves the commissioning organisation’s needs. The difference is not always visible in the final content. It is felt by the people who were filmed.
The consequence of getting this wrong is not only ethical. In 2021, when the Australian government offered COVID-19 vaccines to First Nations adults, there was no vaccine information designed with or for that priority group. A subsequent research project, in which First Nations leaders collaborated with researchers to co-design vaccine information videos in nine languages, found that the videos were valued by the target audience precisely because trusted leaders delivered information in a culturally safe manner. Content produced by the community, for the community, worked. The alternative had not.
The Dignified Storytelling Handbook describes the same dynamic in structural terms. Many productions are built not around what a community needs or wants, but around what an institution wants to appear to be doing. The difference between those two things is not always obvious from the outside. It is felt by the people in front of the camera.
This is not a dynamic that sits outside production companies. It includes us. What we can do is be deliberate about how productions are briefed, who is involved in shaping them, and whether the communities being filmed have genuine input into the story being told.
What this means in practice
- Ask who was involved in shaping the brief.
If the community being filmed had no input into the story being told about them, that is worth examining before production begins. This does not mean every production requires a full co-design process, but it does mean the question should be asked. - Consider who is behind the camera.
Hiring production crews with cultural fluency and existing community relationships produces better content, builds trust, and reduces the risk of getting the story wrong. For productions involving First Nations communities, Screen Australia’s protocols require written confirmation of willingness from both subjects and community before filming can proceed. - Be honest about what you are asking people to do.
Extractive production is not always intentional. It is often the result of a brief that was written entirely within the commissioning organisation, without any input from the community it describes. The antidote is not a longer consent form. It is involving the community earlier in the process. - Share the finished content with the community before it is published. This is an acknowledgement that the community has a right to see how they have been represented before that representation goes public.
