Day 22 – The beach and the National Park
We arrived at the Kingsford Smith OPORTOS restaurant, with only a few of the crew needing to be there, myself (Alex), Kate, Ryan, Art and Jess. We setup the gear and had breakfast in the restaurant while we waited for our actor to arrive.
When Greg Jacques finally arrived on his motorcycle, we began to shoot. With Art helping out on the boom pole and 15 minutes later the shoot was finished. ‘Our actor’ had got it spot on with his lines and performance, only a few takes were needed. The scene ended up being one of the easiest and fasted in the entire production.
The team then headed out to the RoyalNational Park and we arrived to find that the day had put on some amazing weather, after a dismal rainy morning. While waiting for more of the crew to arrive, some of us went to inspect an old railway station. There the crew where compelled to pretend that they were tied to the rusty tracks.
Our crew had now grown, with Big Tom, Tim and Tracey arriving. From there shooting commenced from the back of Arts car, with Kate sitting backwards in the boot. ‘Luckily enough, Kate didn’t fall out and end up under the Kluger.’ We drove through the National Park with Ryan’s Kluger following behind, the footage looked real nice as I directed with Art from the front seat with the monitor, and some of the best shot was when the leaves began to fly up.
Soon after leaving the National Park, we arrived above our beach location at Oxley and took some happy snaps of the crew with the view of Wollongong in the distance. Jose and Moises turned up out of the blue; they had been searching the Park trying to find us.
We continued to head down to the beach at ‘Stanwell Park'. I stayed behind with some of the crew, while the others went to film the Kluger crossing some fancy bridge.
It wasn’t long before the crew, who stayed behind, went down to the beach where they had a ball. They drew a 10 metre “Green Fire Envy” in the sand, ran and swam (Jose in particular) in the water. We went completely bananas!
Cat was late arriving with ….Sarah. Art was just about to have kittens, when she called saying that she was at the wrong beach. (I now can imagine what he was saying when I turned up late at an earlier date in the production).
She finally arrived and shooting began soon after, with some joyful actors running in the sand. It wasn’t long before the entire crew was running through the sand like crazy, all caught on the HD camera. At the wrap, storms began to roll in.
We returned through the National Park just as the storms hit, there was some cool lighting to be seen.
The day fell to a close with the team arriving at the ATP and helping out in cleaning the production equipment. Everyone was involved, including some of the cast and the directors.
By Aleksei Vanamois
24th October 2007
Day 21 – DeeWhyBeach
This shoot was meant for a skeleton crew. Only the best of the best!! Ha ha!! Not at all. Being with the Director Jess earlier that morning, as the creative producer I said : “Let’s check it out first and go early so we can plan it while waiting for others”. Great idea. Met up there also with Jess Arapi, one of the leads, and Moises, the sound guy. We enjoyed lunch by the ocean while talking about what we were going to do.
Time went by and then I got “the phone call” from the executive producer saying: “But Magali where are you guys?” Guess what?! we were at the wrong beach. We drove 1 beach too far. We finally manage to find the rest of the crew (we were only 7) to have a quick chat about the fact that the beach wasn’t what we were looking for. Also the other main character was meant to be there, wasn’t. So we went for a swim. Naaaa!! Of course not! We just had to move along to another location.
Magali Gillon
Creative Producer
art of multimedia