Paul Mulraney
Senior Lecturer, Film
Paul is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Film and Television, teaching general film practice across all levels, with supervisory specialisms in production design and documentary.
His research interests lie in vernacular filmmaking – the use of existent people and places in the writing and production of independent, low budget cinema that spans the divide between narrative and documentary forms. This practical research is related to a thematic interest in the examination of inequality through storytelling, in the telling of stories about peripheral places and the people who live there.
His documentary films From the River and From the Culch have had a wide international distribution across film festivals and conferences. Academic papers have been published by the View Journal of European Television culture, with an upcoming chapter Beneath the Visible Evidence set to publish in Bloomsbury's Handbook of Global Documentary. As an executive producer of short films including Against Your Nature and Hip-hop Dar es Salaam, Paul applies these skills in an advisory capacity within the industry.
Prior to academia Paul worked in the commercial film and media industry. Starting life as a scenic artist on pop videos (The Spice Girls, Sheena Easton) he moved through advertising agencies (AMV, BBH, CHI, Do) and production companies (BBC, Endemol, Nat Geo Channel), art directing both traditional and ‘future’ film projects with budgets that could fund 100 independent shorts.
External Links
Qualifications
Qualifications
| Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | PGCHE | Falmouth University |
| 1999 | PgDip Creative Advertising | University College Falmouth |
| 1998 | BA (Hons) Fine Art | Sheffield Hallam University |
Honors and awards
| Year | Description |
|---|---|
| 2010 | Webby Awards - Best Integrated Media Plan - Lynx Lounge - Senior Art Director |
| 2009 | Revolution & DMA Awards - Best eComms Campaign - Knorr, Marco Pierre White - Senior Art Director |
Membership of external committees
WGGB - Writer's Guild of Great BritainResearch Interests
Research interests and expertise
Paul's films have screened at film festivals in Ireland, France, Italy, the US and across the UK. Screenings and papers delivered at national and international academic conferences including Leisure Studies (2022), Haunted Landscapes (2023), Visible Evidence (2023), FIAT/IFTA/BFI Media Studies (2023) and DeathxDesignxCulture (2024).
Paul's documentary work includes the festival hit From the River (2022) which was shortlisted for Best Documentary in the 2023 This is England festival. The documentary From the Culch (2023) repurposes the bin cuts of a 1975 BBC Nationwide film to cinematic ends. Upcoming project Redfish (2026), the third of Paul's Vernacular Films trilogy, is an experiential documentary set on the Russian factory fleet in 1995, exploring exploitative factory fishing through VHS archival footage. Both films are rooted in marginalised communities and are built around analogue film archives, finding their production value in lost - or forgotten - footage.
Hip-hop Dar es Salaam (2025, in partnership with Imetoka, University of Johannesburg and Bristol University) charts the emergence of Tanzanian rap music, as told by a collective of Tanzanian rappers and producers.
Aware of the limitations of visual storytelling as a means of developing and pitching film projects, Paul’s creative practice has recently taken on screenwriting, with historical drama series Freeman (2021) reaching the semi-finals of international screenwriting competition Shore Scripts, and Fledglings (2020) reaching the quarter finals of Screencraft.
Alongside his traditional filmmaking work, Paul is the research lead for the Virtual Production strand of the School of Film and Television's Screen Technologies group, and a member of the BFI Lab to Slate research project.
Research topics
- Vernacular film
- Environmental film
- Documentary
- Production design
- Screenwriting
- Film development
- Virtual production
- Artificial Intelligence
Research Outputs
Publications and research outputs
Externally funded research grants information
| Collaborators | Currency | Funder | HESA Category | Project title | Value | Year ending | Year starting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ | Creative England/ Feast | From the River | 1,000 |
Teaching
Areas of teaching
- art directors
- Business and Applied Technology. Transmedia and Convergence. Future Cinema in Film Practice. Philosophy in Film Practice. Globalisation in Film Practice. Project supervision of directors
- cinematographers
- copywriters
- screenwriters. Professional contexts in writing.
Courses taught
- Creative Advertising MA
- Creative Advertising BA(Hons)
- Creative Writing BA(Hons)
- Filmmaking BA(Hons)
- Film & Television MA
- Television & Film Production BA(Hons)
Professional Engagement
Independent professional practice
- Creative director of communications agency AltShift
- Non-exectutive director of production company Seamonster Media Ltd
Social, community and cultural engagement
His films From the River and From the Culch featured in the centre of multimedia programmes in the Cornwall Mor Media Festival in 2022 and 2023. He is a frequent guest speaker, presenter and panel member at local community events and screenings within maritime and environmental contexts, including holding screenings and talks at Falmouth Yacht Club, Flushing Sailing Club, the Porthtowan Marine and Conservation Society Film Festival, presenting the Poly's screening of Chris Morris's A Year in a Field with director Q&A.
His expertise in storytelling and visual production is complemented by 30 years of experience working with sound. An encyclopaedic knowledge of underground music attests to a lifetime of crate digging and dj'ing. You can hear the results of this on his radio show Sound Travels (), a repostiory of three years of radio production for The Source 96.1FM.
Engagement with professional associations and societies
- HEA - Fellow
- WGGB - Writer's Guild of Great Britain
- DocSociety - Member
- Production Design Research and Education Network - Member
Professional esteem indicators
| Year | Description |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-2024: Student supervisees won 3 RTS awards |
| 2012 | 2012-2016: Student supervisees won 7 D&AD awards |
