The "Life" series is a collaboration between independent film-makers Jennifer Cummins (left) and Catherine Marciniak (right). Read more about them and their film-making credits below.
Catherine Marciniak - director/cinematographer
Catherine is one of Australia's leading independent documentary makers and cinematographers. As the Series Director and Principal Cinematographer of Film Australia's landmark cross-platform project in "The Life Series" Catherine blends together hard-hitting science programming with expertise of telling extremely intimate stories that explore what makes us who are. In the process of researching and directing the Life series, Catherine has become something she would never have imagined - "a science geek".
Catherine's other credits include: Who Do You Think You Are - Jack Thompson (Winner 2008 Best Documentary WA Screen Awards), Life at 1(TV & website) and Life at 2 (website) (Life at 1 awards include finalist 2007 Logies and winner Golden Dragon 2006 Beijing Science international Science Film Festival, Best Director Documentary Series 2007 Australian Director's Guild Awards), Steel City, Grey Voyagers, Hospital - an Unhealthy Business, Stories from a Children's Hospital, Beyond the Royal Veil, Aussie Animal Rescue and The Gamblers. From 2004-2005, Catherine was the Series Producer for ABC-TV's Compass program.
Jennifer Cummins - producer
Jennifer Cummins is the principal of Heiress Films, a boutique factual and documentary company, specialising in personal stories. Hotspell, a factual entertainment series for SBSTV tracked the hopes and spelling skills of thousands of young Australians. I, Psychopath,(E.P) takes a trip into the mind of a corporate psychopath. Life at 1, a 2007 Logie nominee, follows a group of children from their first year of life. We tap into the latest science to find out what it takes to give a child the best chance at life. Her story of parenthood, From Korea with Love was nominated for most outstanding documentary at the 2004 Logies. Before establishing Heiress Films she was Manager Factual Development at ABC Television responsible for fostering new projects covering factual entertainment, arts and entertainment, history and documentary. Prior to that she produced and directed programs for a range of networks in Australia and overseas.
The LIFE series awards and achievements
Life at 1 has been acclaimed as groundbreaking popular science television and on-line programming. It was: awarded a prestigious Golden Dragon at the Beijing Science Film Festival, a finalist in the 2007 Logie Awards for "Most Outstanding Documentary", invited to screen at the Oceania Pacific Film Festival Tahiti, a finalist in the 2nd International Science Film Festival in Athens, awarded a Silver Hugo for education documentary series 2007 Chicago International Television Competition, and Catherine Marciniak was awarded Best Director Documentary Series 2007 Australian Director's Guild Awards. The "Life at 1" website was a finalist in the 2007 Australian Multimedia Industry Association Awards.
Professor Stephen Zubrick, Chair, Advisory Group, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children
Stephen Zubrick is the Head of the Division of Population Sciences research at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and Professor, Centre for Developmental Health, Curtin University of Technology. His research interests include the study of the social determinants of health and mental health in children, studies of youth suicide, and large-scale psychosocial survey work in non-Indigenous and Indigenous populations. He is particularly interested in the translation of psychological and social research findings into relevant and timely policies and actions on the part of governments and private agencies. As chair of the scientific advisory group of the Longitudinal Study, Professor Zubrick is the spokesperson for the study findings in Life at 3.
Professor Gary Wittert, Head, School of Medicine, University of Adelaide
Professor Gary Wittert is The Life Series expert on the biology of obesity. He is Mortlock Professor of Medicine, Head of the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide, and Senior Consultant Endocrinologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He is a past president of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity, is Vice President of the Asia Oceania Association of the Study of Obesity and is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Obesity Research and Clinical Practice. Professor Wittert's research focuses on the relationships between dietary macronutrients, appetite, nutrient-oxidation, and energy expenditure, leptin, uncoupling proteins and the regulation of cellular energy utilisation and the relationships between hormones and body composition.
Professor Tim Olds, Director, Kids Eat Kids Play, National Survey, University of South Australia and CSIRO
Professor Tim Olds is Director of the Centre for Applied Anthropometry at the University of South Australia. He is conducting a national anthropometric survey using whole-body 3D scanning. His research work has been in mathematical modelling of sports performance, anthropometry, and secular trends in the fitness, fatness and physical activity of children. The research featured in Life at 3 brings together every national and international study that has ever been done on the fat and fitness levels of children. This is an Australian scientific first and combines information from 50,000 children from 50 countries since 1854. Professor Olds is Life at 3's expert on the fitness levels of children.
Professor Ann Sanson, Principal Scientific Advisor, Longitudinal Study of Australian Children
Professor Ann Sanson is a Professor in Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne and the network coordinator for the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth. She is a developmental psychologist whose main research interests revolve around the interplay of intrinsic child characteristics and family and contextual factors in the development of good and poor psychosocial adjustment. Professor Sanson has been an investigator on the Australian Temperament Project since its inception in 1983. She combines her expert knowledge on child development and her research as principal scientific advisor of the longitudinal study when she takes on the role of Life at 3's scientific guide in the experiments conducted in "Bad Behaviour".
Associate Professor Margaret Sims, School of Psychology and Social Science, Edith Cowan University
Assoc. Prof. Margaret Sims of Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, has focused much of her research on parenting and high quality community-based service delivery to young children and their families. This has included: looking at the impact of economic hardship, migration, Aboriginal families and the school system, parental stress and child rearing issues and the type of family support programmes that build resilience. A big focus of Margaret's research has been the role that childcare plays in the modern child's and parent's life. She has conducted a number of studies that have used cortisol as a biomarker for children's stress levels in the child care environment allowing her to make predictions on how these environments may be influencing children's outcomes. Margaret Sims is "The Life Series'" stress expert.
Professor Sandra Jones, Faculty of Health & Behavioural Sciences, University of Wollongong
Professor Sandra Jones is Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Health & Behavioural Sciences, Chair of the Faculty Research Committee and Director of the Centre for Health Initiatives. Her teaching and research interests include: alcohol advertising and marketing, influence of mass media on health behaviours, social marketing, health behaviour change, perception of cancer risk, screening and treatment, behavioural decision theory applied to lifestyle choice. Life at 3 website features the methodology and outcomes on Sandra's research on the "Paradoxical Buying Behaviour of Parents", which explores the behavioural science of why parents give their children unhealthy food when they know it's not good for them.
