He was cinematographer for Australia's first Oscar-winning film, Kokoda Front Line!, an edition of the weekly newsreel, Cinesound Review, which was produced by Ken G. Hall.

However, finding a job as a photographer in depression-era Australia proved difficult, so he resumed his education at St Kevin's in East Melbourne.

He finished his apprenticeship in 1933 and, in mid-1934, obtained work with the director Charles Chauvel on the film Heritage, where he met and became friends with another up-and-coming filmmaker of the time, John Heyer.

Together with war correspondent Osmar White, he undertook an arduous journey by schooner, launch and on foot from Port Moresby to Wau via Yule Island, Terapo and Kudjiru, in order to document the efforts of the meagre forces then fighting on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea.

[5] Damien Parer shot footage during the Battle of Guam that won him a posthumous Headliner Award from the American Journalists' Association.

[6] Parer was killed on 17 September 1944 by Japanese gunfire while filming a United States Marine advance in Palau on the island of Peleliu.