Following the success of Liam Neeson film Blacklight being shot in Canberra last month, a question has been on everyone's lips: Does this mark the start of Hollywood blockbusters in Canberra?
The scenes — a fast-paced car chase through the streets of the city — were shot over six days and clocked up $2 million in revenue.
And as far as Screen Canberra CEO Monica Penders is concerned, it was the perfect project for the ACT "while we're building up our capacity".
"We need more of the right type of projects coming here to build our crew and facilities," she said.
"We have some really great competitive advantages in Canberra, we only had to shut off five roads — in the bigger cities they could be doing 20, and you can imagine the disruption that would have caused."
LoadingThe way Australia has managed COVID has also made the country something of a haven for international film production, particularly for America.
"It's one good thing, if you can be a bit Pollyanna about COVID, that's worked for the film industry and for Australia," Ms Penders said.
"We are very COVID-safe, and the number of inquiries has been phenomenal, not only at an Australian level but at our level as well.
"I believe we've had $2.8 billion worth of overseas inquiries since July. Lots of the really really big films are going through AusFilm, which is the organisation funded by the Federal Government and other state agencies, to encourage production in Australia.
"It's a very exciting time."
But with movies like Thor: Love and Thunder being filmed on the Gold Coast, and The Alchemyst being filmed in Melbourne, what role can Canberra play in the production scene?
'Our location is a great competitive advantage'
Working in Canberra's favour as a location for film production are its space and smaller population.
"Our physical location and proximity — 10 minutes from the airport you're at Parliament House one way, and 10 minutes the other way you're at a sheep paddock — is a great competitive advantage," Ms Penders said.
Kieran Cato is the managing director of Cato Location Services — the team used to manage the roads, pedestrian lockdown and security during Blacklight's filming.
He said that while filming Blacklight in Canberra was difficult logistically because of COVID-19 restrictions, it was easy in many other ways.
"I have always been an advocate for filming in Canberra, and for filming on the roads," he said.
"Sydney is very congested, and with the volume of congestion, you couldn't do something like this car chase on a Monday to a Friday — you'd have to do it on a weekend, and even then that can be somewhat challenging.
"Blacklight production came to me in the early days and I said, this was the spot. The roads are wider, there's a lot less traffic."
Indeed, Mr Cato has worked on a lot of car commercials in Canberra for that very reason.
"It's just a lot easier to manage, we can do long driving routes along Parkes Way, up and back," he said.
"In NSW, Queensland and Victoria we also utilise the police, two of their cars to two of ours, but in Canberra the Feds don't have the same sort of jurisdiction, which reduces the cost of production significantly."
LoadingThe ACT Government were also flexible with the logistics around filming Blacklight — something Ms Penders hopes other production companies will find appealing.
"The fact that we're a very flat structure with the government, we have a one-jurisdiction government, they just made things happen," Ms Penders said.
Infrastructure, costs, could be a barrier
However, Canberra does lack some of the infrastructure other cities in Australia have when it comes to making movies.
"We don't have studio space, which is an issue when you're looking at these mega productions, which is why we lose those to Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland," Ms Penders explained.
"I'm not saying they're something we should be looking to build — it takes a lot of work to keep them going — but could we have something that could be used as a studio space when required? That's the question."
Ms Penders said we "need to be thinking laterally about what we need at what stage", and suggested a pop-up studio, like the pop-up COVID-19 hospital at Garran, as an option to explore.
"In Wellington, Peter Jackson did Lord of the Rings in a sheep shed and a paint factory," she said.
"From an infrastructure point of view, we just need to be thinking creatively. [Like] a modular place that could be put together relatively inexpensively."
Another complication could be the cost of bringing crew into Canberra — an issue Mr Cato has run into while working on Secret City, The Code and Total Control in Canberra in the past.
"The key crew are coming from Sydney or Melbourne, so there's the cost of getting them down here, and the cost of accommodation can go up significantly one week to the next because of sitting weeks in Parliament," he said.
"It gets quite expensive to employ locally, there are only a few traffic management companies and labour hire company charges are quite high, it's a bit of a supply and demand.
Federally-speaking, the government have incentivised film and television production in Australia, in light of COVID-19.
They committed an additional $400 million to the Location Incentive screen program last year, in the hope that more and more international studios will choose Australia as their filming destination.
The program was also extended to 2026-27, and Ms Penders is hopeful Canberra will be one of the cities to benefit.
"I'm working closely with the ACT Government at the moment to work out what that would look like for us, as a smaller jurisdiction, and what we should be targeting," she said.
Ms Penders said they planned to meet with location managers "to show off our great local area" and things like the deep space station.
For now, Ms Penders said she would love to see a "staged approach" to building Canberra's film industry.
"I'd like to see Blacklight '23 in Canberra, for three or four weeks of the shoot, rather than six days," she said.
"The spend would be huge and we're building up our capacity.
"And the flipside of all this is, with all this international production coming into the bigger cities, the local productions are getting pushed out of the studios and they've got nowhere to go, so we'd be very happy to take those."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiXmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTAyLTEzL2lzLWNhbmJlcnJhLWJlY29taW5nLWEtbW92aWVtYWtpbmctZGVzdGluYXRpb24vMTMxNDc5NTLSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTMxNDc5NTI?oc=5
2021-02-12 21:18:00Z
CAIiEOZlqMVBLTRlgL-r2WkI9LgqFggEKg4IACoGCAow3vI9MPeaCDDM2g4
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