[3] In 1997, she was supported by Screen Australia's Indigenous unit to act as both writer and director of a short drama film, My Colour Your Kind, about an albino Aboriginal teenager attending a convent boarding school in Alice Springs.
MacLean wrote and directed Blown Away, released in 2014, an hour-long documentary about Cyclone Tracy which caused extensive damage to Darwin in 1974.
The film features Aunty Kathy Mills, Dr Ella Stack, General Alan Stretton, Mayor Tiger Brennan, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam,[7][8] publisher and writer Sophie Cunningham, and politician (later NT Human Rights Commissioner) Dawn Lawrie.
[10] MacLean collaborates frequently with Steven McGregor, and has also worked with Warwick Thornton, her cousin Beck Cole, Trisha Morton-Thomas and sound recordist David Tranter.
[11] McLean also wrote for the Australian TV drama mini-series, True Colours, which was produced for SBS Television and NITV and aired in 2022.