A Love Letter to Australian Production: “It’s the Joy of Getting Shit Done”

If you are ever in doubt that magic exists, look no further than a production set. 

From the runners to the director, everyone on set has a specific set of ‘special skills’ that are perfect for that project. When a production is good, it’s like a well oiled machine. A language spoken nowhere else gets formed between the people communicating. If you were watching from above, you’d see the most beautiful dance, a ballet set to the music of ‘speed, rolling, and… action.’ 

 

If the client needs a working waterfall in the middle of an office building, then it gets done. If they need 500 extras bouncing around like they are on the moon, then it gets done. If they need a winter wonderland in the middle of summer or a cabin in the woods in the middle of the city, it gets done. 

It’s “the joy of getting shit done,” as Playground’s producer, Nick Garner likes to say, that is the true magic of production. While Edward Pontifex, MD at Sweetshop AU, shares in the excitement of being able to solve any problem faced on set. 

“Ok” Edward said, “so you need to find an elephant…actually we need two of them….and we need to put them in front of a heritage listed mansion built in 1868…and we need to cast 30 extras…. who will be dancing around them.”

He continued to explain that apart from ‘a few branches being broken,’ no one was injured and they eventually got the shot.

“Who wouldn’t love production when you have these sorts of problems to solve?” he said. 

After working in agency land for 10 years before moving to production, Edward found the execution of the idea to be “so much more fun”, and enjoys problem solving and needing to find the “right people for the right job”. 

Olivia Hantken, producer from Collider spoke on the duality of the production industry and how exciting it can be to flit from one side of the spectrum to the next, sometimes within the same day.

“There’s not many lines of work with a job description like film production. So many extremes of the mundane to the exhilarating. Spreadsheets to helicopters, scheduling nightmares to shooting boat to boat, edit room spirals to building puppets, wildly imaginative sets or wirework - the trenches and the cinema magic.”, she said. 

The magic behind production is the ability to make anything a reality, whether you are using practical effects such as built sets, costumes, and make up or inserting a landscape in the editing suite or perhaps for those lucky enough to use a LED stage, having said landscape projected all around you. 

Nick summarised why the world of production is an incredible place when he said, 

“If painting is a plastic art, production is a watery one – from the pipelines and workflows, and putting out fires, to writing long chains of emails that generally boil down to “slippery when wet”… all while we slosh about with teeny weeny martinis. Yes, it’s a dapper affair, for ne’er-do-wells and dilettantes,”

But the passion for a producer is to be found in the middle of those moments, ‘in the PPM’ as Nick stated or “when we get to ride shotgun to the thousands of relationships, thousands of hours and the many varied ‘special sets of skills’, that each person huddling around has brought to the project’

The magic of production is in its people. Production allows for the imagination to run wild, it allows for the impossible, and most importantly, it allows for art.