bertie's daily reports on the shooting of a scene for Superman Returns
The scene is being shot in my home town, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
Tuesday 22 November:
9am close for King St
King Street will close at 9am to allow for crews to set up a crane for the filming of the $400 million Superman Returns .
Producers of the film initially planned to shut King Street yesterday, from Darby Street to Aukland Street, but the date was pushed back to noon today.
But an eleventh hour request to bring in the camera prompted a rethink, and the road will now close at 9am.
Film Hunter spokeswoman Christine Armstrong said the time was chosen to prevent rush hour havoc.
[The above report is verbatim from The Herald, our local newspaper. It doesn't make perfect sense to me either. The $400m is Aussie dollars, of course ($1A = about 75cUS). King Street is the second-busiest street in the city. 'Film Hunter' is so named because Newcastle is at the mouth of the Hunter River which runs through the Hunter Valley. The Valley has two main products: coal (no.1 in the world) and wine (also doing well).]
Wednesday 23 November: Last evening my brother reported seeing a vehicle transporter carrying several 'black and white' police cars. We surmised that they were headed for the shoot because Australian cop cars are not b&w (they are mostly white with some blue and white checkerboard here and there).
In the paper this morning we find that the scene is going to be a bank robbery scene. A fake door has been fitted to University House which is apparently going to stand in as a 30s bank. The scene will involve "a lot of police cars". Aha!
Most of our city streets have a broken white line painted down the middle. Yesterday a member of the film crew spent the day painting out the white line in that part of King Street "so it will look more like an American street".
There were about 50 crew on site yesterday, and about 150 will be there at 7.30 this evening for a rehearsal and then some shooting, by which time it will be dark. Yes, it is reportedly going to be a night-time shoot. A bank robbery at night? It's in the paper, so it must be true :-D
Thursday 24 November 2005
"Wild Night in Metropolis"
With Newcastle Civic Precinct as part of downtown Metropolis, and University House transformed into 'Newhart Federal Bank', and hundreds of Novocastrians (= inhabitants of Newcastle) looking on, shooting began last night.
At about 9.00pm the King Street location flashed and echoed with gunshots and exploding police cars. It was brief, considering that rehearsals had been underway since just after lunch.
A local woman explained that she had brought her children there to give them first-hand experience of American culture. But she was anxious to get back home in time to watch an Australian tv comedy, Kath and Kim .
Friday 25 November 2005
Rain. Constant, drizzling rain. Started last night and hasn't stopped. Very bad luck, considering the state is officially in drought and we have had little rain for several months.
Not a word in the paper today about the shoot.
Saturday 26 November 2005
At he bottom of the column that used to admit to being the Editorial column in the Newcastle Herald today:
Making movies
A week of closed roads, nocturnal explosions, bright lights and hype: that was Superman in the formerly steel city, now pitching more and more often for cameo roles on the big screen,
It seems a lot of fuss and dislocation for a few seconds of screen time on a Hollywood blockbuster, but that's show business.
Even after a successful week of filming there wouldn't be too many people willing to fearlessly predict a big movie future for Newcastle. Still, on balance, the past week's efforts had to be good for the city, providing another reson to applaud the hard work of those who made it happen.
Unquote.
Let me be the first to admit that the Herald's reporting of the shoot has been poor to pathetic.
Just a couple of points: There might have been a week of preparation *and* shooting, but there was only one night of shooting. And has the shoot been completed now? Well, you wouldn't know from anything the Herald has published. The above quote, the above UNATTRIBUTED quote, reads as if the shoot is over, but why not say so? Don't they know? Piss poor reporting, Herald.
And we have to avoid the cutting room floor yet :-D
Oh, that reference to "the formerly steel city" is a reference to Newcastle's recent past as a steel-making city. The steel plant is closed and demolished now, and the prime harbor-side site is in limbo.
Monday 28 November 2005
Well, you swarms who have been hanging on my every word, nothing in the paper today, so I'll stick my neck out and hereby declare the shoot officially over . Thanks for not much, Herald.
