In their quest for better pictures I gather that they made enough of a nuisance of themselves to be allowed on the set to film when the drew broke for lunch. That didn’t seem to be on the agenda when Mary Barltrop briefed the first lot of volunteers at five-forty-five on Monday morning.
And after that, there were still little groups of media people hanging around on Wednesday morning when I talked to one group who were figuring out how they were going to get pictures of the cattle run next week. Since you can stand on the edge of the set and see (more or less) what’s going on, all of those journos/photographers/whatever have been able to cover the shoot in ways that just wouldn’t happen on a closed set.
We’re told that the crew numbers something like four hundred people.
Four hundred people wouldn’t begin to put a dent in Sydney’s hotel accommodation, and would have absolutely no impact on the number of people in the city. Here, the film crew alone represents something like a 5% increase in the population.
Throw in the reporters, people from out of town who’ve landed an extras gig, assorted other interested parties and the influx of tourists who’ve heard about the shoot, and you’re looking at the same impact as you’d get by suddenly throwing, say, fifty or sixty thousand people into the middle of Sydney - the sort of impact you get with something like the Olympic Games. Doesn’t happen very often...
They’ve accommodated some of the crew and most of the stars in private homes and the rest of the accommodation in town is (predictably) booked out. They’ve apparently had problems with this weekend’s Bowen Open golf tournament because there’s nowhere for the golfers from out of town to stay...
The media coverage, of course, is all about the stars and the movie. If you’re looking for something along those lines, this might not be the best place to go - there are plenty of places where you can find that sort of stuff (once I’ve figured out how to do it I’ll have a few links to other sites where you can get that sort of info, assuming you haven’t done so already....
From now till the end of filming, what you’ll find here is more along the lines of the musings of someone who was inveigled into putting his name down as a Volunteer to let people know what’s going on on the movie set, explain some of the story line, point out relevant landmarks on the set, answer questions and, most importantly, promote the community.