Stanley Crick, who was Pathe Freres manager in Australia, and Herbert Finlay had enjoyed success producing a series of Australian films directed by John Gavin.
[3]) It was stated in the initial prospectus the aim of the company was to purchase Crick and Finlay's film manufacturing business.
[4][5] The initial directors of the company Philip Lytton, Stanley Crick, Dr Sherlock Mason, Arthur Upjohn, and Douglas Selkirk.
[7] And the company distributed four films that Gavin had made earlier, The Assigned Servant, Keane of Kalgoorlie, Frank Gardiner, and Ben Hall.
They produced an advertisement which claimed they were: The only real live Independent Australian Manufacturers, we make a specialty of the Australian made pictures, we do not run Shows and BOOM OUR OWN PRODUCTION'S whether they be WORTHY OR NOT; but we rely on the trade independently to say whether our goods are good or bad.
[9]The first four films made by the company were all different: Moora Neya, The Mark of the Lash, In the Nick of Time and a picture about snake catching in Australia.
According to film historians Graham Shirley and Brian Adams: The conventions of spectacle melodrama so favourited in late nineteenth century Australian theatre, with their realistic settings and real chases on horseback and train wrecks, played a large role in the films he made [for the company]...
The Australian Photo-Play formula was a string of sensational incidents climaxed by a chase, with actuality footage sometimes cunningly incorporated... Nearly all the APP films made use of popular conceptions of the bush, peopling their stories with marauding Aboriginals, vengeful settlers, English outcasts and shamed women.