Queensland is home to a host of award-winning production companies, creating films and series that resonate with audiences around the world, employing thousands of screen practitioners and generating local IP that builds our cultural legacy along with the economy.
Screen Queensland’s $3 million, multi-year Business Enterprise fund was introduced to support homegrown production companies to expand their long-term prospects and Allstory Pictures is one of the recipients. In the first of our new feature series, we caught up with Co-Founder Helen Morrison to find out more about the company and what drives their success.
From award-winning documentaries to children’s television, Queensland producer Helen Morrison has built a career around one belief: the right story can change the way people see the world.
When Helen Morrison set out to produce Wik vs Queensland she had just one goal: change one person’s mind.
The 2018 documentary captured the story behind a landmark 1996 High Court ruling to shield the Wik people’s native title from pastoral leases—and the shameful backlash that followed.
For Morrison, who has built a career producing some of the nation’s most powerful First Nations stories alongside director Dean Gibson, the story remains one of the most important she’s told. Captured through the lens of the Wik people, it uncovered a story of collective community strength and the fallout that followed.
“I remember saying to Screen Queensland at the time that if I could just lay out the truth and change even one person’s mind about what really happened during this era, then job done,” said Morrison.
“And those people ended up being my mum and dad. Within three minutes of the documentary airing my dad called.
“He said ‘I just can’t believe the lies we’ve been told’.”
For Morrison, who grew up in a conservative household in Brisbane, it was job done.
Fast forward to now and changing hearts and minds—a story at a time—sits at the core of her most significant collaboration with Gibson yet: Allstory Pictures.
Launched last year after decades spent working together across children’s television, shorts and documentaries, Allstory is the pair’s answer to “if not now, when?”.
“We have been doing this for 20 years so we thought we might as well have one front facing company,” Morrison said.
As one of seven local screen businesses to share in Screen Queensland’s $3 million Business Enterprise fund, the pair has been able to hit the ground at a sprint and continue doing what they do best—connecting audiences and telling culturally impactful stories using the wealth of talent in their backyards.
Many of those stories were told under Gibson’s production company, Bacon Factory Films—the banner under which some of their most powerful work was made before Allstory Pictures brought everything under one roof.
Their joint CV spans the multi-award-winning Incarceration Nation, which clinched a 2022 Logie, to ABC Kids’ Tjitji Lullaby.
“The ABC called us during the pandemic and said ‘we are replacing the weekday bedtime lullaby Giggle and Hoot and we would like you to produce it’,” Morrison said.
“And we both thought, ‘Oh my god, no pressure.’ I mean Giggle and Hoot had been running for 12 years. But this ended up being one of the most beautiful things we’ve made.”
Then there’s Dance with Tom—one of their biggest projects yet. The ABC children’s dance series is supported by Screen Queensland’s Screen Finance and Development funds and filmed at Screen Queensland Studios, Brisbane. It was two years in the making, quietly radical and a smash hit. At its heart is the charismatic Minjungbal, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu performer Thomas E.S. Kelly, whose inclusive moves draw on First Nations culture, language and Country.
“The response to it is has been incredible,” Morrison said.
“I’ve seen people in nursing homes do the seated dances. We’ve been stopped in the street by families who have high-needs kids who can do the dance—sitting or standing.”
The road to all of it began, as a lot of great stories do, with a professional meet cute. Morrison was fresh from an acting stint and Gibson—a proud Guugu Yumithirr filmmaker—was a Creative Director at Brisbane’s Carbon Media. It was there that Gibson pitched her a story about the first sanctioned Indigenous cricket team in 1868. From the Ashes—a Carbon Media project—became their first joint project.
Over the years they’ve worked on dozens more, clocking milestones and accolades along the way. In 2013 Gibson launched Bacon Factory Films—and six years later became the first Aboriginal board member in Screen Queensland’s history.
“We got work because we always deliver what we say we will,” said Morrison.
Their shared MO is, at its core, about knowing the audience and getting out of your own way.
“A broadcaster once said to us, ‘When you two get together, we know magic will happen.’ It’s the way we can talk through things, divide and conquer and have each other’s back,” she said.
“Dean and I make things because we know there’s an audience. We don’t make things just for us. Your heart has to be 100 per cent in it—you can’t half-like a story and then go through what you have to go through to make it.”
On making it in what can be a challenging industry, Morrison says strong relationships are key.
“People say it’s tough now. But it’s always been hard. After I got a Logie, people said ‘you must get so much work now.’ But it’s the same for me now as it was before. We still put in the same amount of effort,” she said.
“And you decide whether to stay optimistic or buy into the doom and gloom. For me, I’m doing what I love.
“We’re not saving the world. But maybe we’re changing it a bit—one film at a time.”
Don’t miss Dance with Tom live at Brisbane Festival 2026in September.
Find out more about Screen Queensland’s Business Enterprise Fund.
Watch Dance With Tom on ABC iview
