Monday, 2 July 2007
Week 7: She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain...
And so we come to the end of this little saga....
With the filming, or at least the Bowen section thereof, completed we can move back to normality. Now all we need to do is to work out what normality is....
One thing is for certain - what people in Bowen will be regarding as normality in the future will be substantially different from what we’ve known in the past. Not that the difference will necessarily be something you will be able to put your finger on and say There it is...
Or, on the other hand, maybe it will...
Looking back over the last week, even over the last three days’ filming the flow of out-of-towners continued, but I started to pick up a new theme in their comments...
I thought this was finished a long time ago....
In other words, in the initial wave of media exposure, the message that filming was going to run for six or seven weeks went missing in action.
In a way that’s hardly surprising. If the movie was being made under normal circumstances they would have been working on a closed set somewhere like Fox Studios in Sydney. There would have been the initial blaze of publicity and after that the crew would have quietly gone about their business and the outside world would have been none the wiser unless something totally out of the ordinary occurred.
And, under normal circumstances if the crew needed to venture out to a spot where they’d attract media attention they’d be out there for as long as they needed to put together THAT bit of footage before they bolted back behind closed doors.
As the song goes no one knows what goes on behind closed doors...
Given the set’s location at the bottom of Bowen’s main street, it’s hardly surprising that the time the film crew have spent here has created a plethora of memories, digital images, rumours, yarns, autographs and random sightings that will take some people months to collate and sort out...
Standing around at the end of Week Six, one of the other Volunteers mentioned that he had some more pictures I could add to the Gallery if I felt so inclined.
Sure, I replied. E-mail ‘em to me and I’ll throw some in there with Warbo’s stuff...
Can’t do that, was the reply. Too big...
And when Blue arrived on the doorstep Saturday morning, USB chip in hand, I found out he was right. We added over five hundred images to the little library I’d managed to accumulate. That’s five hundred items with obscure titles like “movieset270407 035.jpg” that need to be identified, sorted and figured out what to do with...
Talking to the Resident Media Tart and the Ace Star Spotter on Wednesday afternoon I found that they’d acquired similar quantities of digital data. Fiddling around with that little lot should keep them busy for a while, and heaven only knows what’d happen if they got to the I’ll send you mine if you send me yours stage...
They aren’t, of course, the only ones. Resident Media Tart pointed out one guy snapping away madly with the comment he’s got twice as many as me... so if people were going to start collecting and collating they could be at it for years....
For my part, if I’m short of something to do, I could probably keep on writing these entries for the next couple of weeks while the set is dismantled and the cleanup gets under way . There are, however, other fish to fry so, unless there’s something totally exceptional that goes down over the next fortnight this will be the last episode in this series, though there will be other entries about all the other interests indicated at the top of the page as time goes by....
The process of clearing the set away away probably started well before they’d finished shooting. On Monday the display boards that showed assorted visualisations of what the set would look like were packed up and despatched since there was a truck leaving for Darwin in about an hour and there’s no way that it’s load would have comprised three boards of artwork....
Lack of Volunteer commitments prompted ‘Er Indoors to suggest a road trip to Townsville on Thursday and, on the way back a Winnebago or similar vehicle emerged from the gathering dusk headed northwards. Whether it actually WAS Nicole or Hugh’s trailer, of course, I’ll never know. However, judging by it’s size it could well have been...
From that I guessed that the “Crew area” around the Bowen Band Hall would probably have been totally dismantled within twenty-four hours of filming being completed. After all, if they were going to start filming in Darwin on Monday, the trailers would need to be on the road ASAP....
Which is more or less the way it turned out. As we pulled into the supermarket car park on Friday afternoon the security fences were gone and there was nothing to suggest that the area had ever been anything other than a typical Bowen street, a touch on the wide side, but otherwise unremarkable. The area they’d been using for costumes and makeup still had tents in evidence, but today the fences had gone from there as well, so I guess the tents won’t be far behind them...
We had our final flare of media coverage last Tuesday when a crew from Channel 7’s Sunrise program were in town and filming the crosses to the weather reporter. That’s her standing beside Warbo in the photo....
The event also provided a chance to pay out once again on Resident Media Tart. And if Yours Truly looks somewhat less than totally gruntled, it’s worth bearing in mind that the footpath outside the Grand View is not the most desirable place to be at five-thirty on a cold wet Tuesday morning....
And as they crossed back for another weather segment every half hour or so the crowd grew, completely regardless of the prevailing meteorological conditions.
History of insanity in the family? What history of insanity?
Personally, once Wednesday’s Volunteer stint was finished, I would have been quite happy to have stayed home where it was relatively warm, but the prospect of action on the set provided the opportunity to join the Warbys for a drink in the Grand View while we watched the preparations for the final night shoot through the windows of the pub...
And we were back there on Friday for the Volunteer get-together. Officially we were there to say good-bye to Location Manager Mary but there would also, we were told, be an opportunity to sing some of the Volunteer songs that had been submitted for consideration.
Way back before the start of filming we’d been told that a Volunteer song set to the tune of She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain was needed, but no one got around to explaining why.
After some prompting from Warbo, I’d submitted one, though what it was actually going to be used for remained a mystery. I’d finished one version of it back in about Week Two, thanks to a long session with an online rhyming dictionary, but when I went back to it last week, I decided that I could do better, so a revised version went in...
And, apparently, the revised version won. At this point it’s not exactly clear what winning involves, but it won so I guess I can count that as part of my fifteen minutes of fame....
And, thinking about it, the song is probably the best way to finish off this little saga. So without further ado, here’s Hughesy’s Bowen Volunteer song. The tune, as previously indicated, is She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain...
They were going to make a movie in the town
And before too long the word had got around
They’d be filming on location
And Baz’s next creation
Would be bringing crowds of people gathered round.
They’ll be heading into Bowen in their hordes
And heading along Herbert Street towards
The set where Baz created
The movie that is fated
To be mentioned for Academy Awards.
So the call went out for some Bowen volunteers
Some people in retirement and their peers
to distribute information
to the wider population
And the tourists that the film brought into town
They’ve been coming down from Townsville and the flow
Of people was continuous and so
The tourists’ve been hearin’
From the people volunteerin’
All the info that they thought they ought to know
The crew soon numbered ninety-something strong
And for six weeks they’ve been talking to the throng
That’s been flowin’ into Bowen
Where the population’s growin’
Commutin’ while the shootin’ rolls along
They’ve been coming from all over as they swarmed
Towards a destination that transformed
A vacant lot in Bowen
To a movie set that’s showin’
Lots of detail, as the Volunteers informed
And when at last the filming’s finished here
The film crew might be leaving but it’s clear
All of Bowen will be waitin’
For the movie they’re creatin’
When they’re finished, though it’s going to take a year
.
So over the last two months there’ve been
A tidal wave of visitors who’ve seen
The volunteers explaining
What the film set’s been containing
And details about Bowen in between
And so here’s to the Bowen Volunteers
It’s something we can talk about for years
It’s something that we’ve lapped up
And the memories are wrapped up
With the shirts and hats we’ll keep for souvenirs.
