Immaculate realities: Style, craftwork and collaboration in Bazmark Productions

This dissertation discusses the work of the Bazmark Films production house, an Australian filmmaking collaborative headed by director Baz Luhrmann and costume/production designer Catherine Martin. Bazmark works are sometimes dismissed by scholars and the popular press alike due to their overwhelming amount of style, which can be said to operate as a disengagement from reality. I argue instead that many of the chief elements of style across the films and television shows of this company—production design, costuming, prop management, and use of popular music—are in fact the elements that tie the productions to specific historical moments. By focusing on cinematic craftwork in this collaborative, I offer an evolution on what could be a standard auteurist study. Rather than collapsing the labor and specialty expertise of many into the brand name of the director, I redirect attention to several important craft workers who assist with the creation of Bazmark’s film worlds—what Luhrmann has referred as “immaculate realities.” It is my contention that Bazmark’s elaborately constructed diegetic worlds only appear self-contained. Despite their unreality and seeming ahistoricism, they speak quite directly to their historical and industrial contexts. This project excavates those histories and roots them in Bazmark’s collaborative processes behind the scenes.