Shane McNeil

Shane McNeil lectured in Film and Drama at various universities and colleges for over ten years, before co-founding the Screen Studies course at Flinders University where he was Head of Production.

Upon leaving academia, Shane was a writer on the children's TV series Chuck Finn (2000-01) before teaming up with producer Kristian Moliere to direct a series of controversial music videos for The Mark of Cain (2001-02). This collaboration led to them forming Smoking Gun Productions with Shane directing the AFC short feature, The 13th House (2003).

Shane then undertook an internship with Rolf de Heer at Vertigo Productions, working on the feature films, The Tracker (2002) and Alexandra's Project (2003), before writing & producing Kafkamêsto (2004) - an online game for the ABC inspired by the life and work of Franz Kafka.

Shane then wrote, produced & directed two one hour documentary specials - SA PoliceFile (2005) & The Ice Factor (2006) for Channel 7. He also shot & directed an episode of the ‘reality business' series Risking It All (2007) for SBS and was the series co-producer on mY Generation (2008) - a six part SBS documentary series examining all things ‘Gen Y'.

Shane was also co-producer on the critically acclaimed, low budget feature film Boxing Day (2007) and associate producer on Lucky Country (2009), both directed by Kriv Stenders.

Shane was one of only six writer/directors selected to participate in Screen Australia's 2009-10 IndiVision Script Lab with his feature thriller, The Last Day. He also wrote & directed the SAFC funded short The Bully (2009), which premiered at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival and won Best Short Film at the 2009 Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) Awards and Best Performance at the 2010 SA Screen Awards.

Shane now works at the Media Resource Centre as their Manager of Programs & Development specialising in direction and scriptwriting and is a reader and script assessor for the South Australian Film Corporation. He successfully facilitated the SAFC's inaugural TV MiniLab initiative in partnership with the MRC.

He is currently in pre-production on a low budget feature through the SAFC's FilmLab program, is writing/producing Monsters of the Deep - an online, ‘multipath' comic series, and is in post-production on an animated ‘virtual' short entitled The Moment - based on a short story by Shaun Micallef - all with investment funding from the SAFC.

He still believes Escape From The Planet of The Apes is the best one in the series.