Behind the scenes filming Australia

Mandy Walker, Australia’s leading cinematographer, recalls the first time director Baz Luhrmann asked her to lens his outback epic Australia.

“Baz Luhrmann told me about his vision for Australia about a year after I had been shooting a television commercial campaign with him that he directed in late 2004,” the film’s director of photography, Mandy Walker, ACS recalls. “The commercials were for Chanel No. 5 perfume. They featured Nicole Kidman. Baz said Nicole was set to play Lady Ashley and he asked me to shoot his film.”

Luhrmann conceived the story, co-authored the screenplay and directed the film. He was also one of the producers, along with his wife and creative partner Catherine Martin, who was also the costume and production designer. Walker, Luhrmann and Martin ventured to the outback to search for locations before the official start of pre-production.

“While we were scouting, Baz was listening to music that he was thinking about using,” Walker recalls. “I took 35mm still pictures of the locations he liked. Baz told me to think of them as characters that amplify the drama.”

Luhrmann and Martin gave Walker an array of visual references, including books and videos filled with images of the era and places in which the story unfolds. The filmmakers also watched projected prints of classic movies together, including Lawrence of Arabia, War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Hud, Giant, Out of Africa, Master and Commander and Satyajit Ray films.

“Baz wanted to make an epic film like those he saw during his youth, with elements of action, romance, adventure, tragedy and comedy,” she says. “Watching those films together was an inspirational experience for all of us.”

“Baz wanted to produce Australia with the best medium available, and film gave us the nuanced looks he wanted. We knew there would be big exterior scenes with extreme ranges of color, light, darkness and contrast that film has the capacity to capture. Our visual effects supervisor had plans to use some of the original negative from Tora! Tora! Tora!, which was produced in 1969. It still looks fantastic.”

They had just a few hours one afternoon to shoot initial make-up, hair and costume tests with the actors. Walker shot those tests with strips of different motion picture film stocks loaded in her 35mm Leica camera. She explains that this was a quick way to compare stocks and see how colors and skin tones reproduced.

“Catherine put together concept pictures that included my photos from the locations, her artwork, sketches and plans of the sets, and put the actors into the scenes wearing the costumes she and Baz envisaged,” Walker says. “Baz was still writing the script. He said that seeing the actors in their costumes and settings was inspiring for him. Later, we filmed more extensive tests with the motion picture stocks we decided to use.”

They decided to produce Australia in Super 35 film format composed in 2.4:1 aspect ratio coupled with digital intermediate (D.I.) post-production. Walker knew that they would be shooting scenes in very low-light situations where focus and depth of field would be critical elements of the visual grammar. Spherical lenses provided more creative latitude in those settings.

The camera package provided by Panavision in Australia included Panaflex Millennium and Millennium XL cameras with a range of Primo prime lenses and a few zooms consisting of 11:1, 3:1, a macro Primo and an Optimo 15-40mm. Walker also carried a set of old Panavision Ultra / Super Speeds and used them for an ‘old lens look’ when she felt it was appropriate. They also carried a few PanArri 435 cameras.

Walker chose to render images onto a modest palette of KODAK VISION2 stocks. She used (100T) 5212 for daylight exteriors, (200T) 5217 for blue screen shots and (500T) 5218 for live-action night shots and interiors. Walker overexposed the negative by two-thirds to one stop to gain more detail in the negative, but had the lab process it normally.

She estimates that they filmed about half of the scenes at practical locations in the Northern Australia outback and in Darwin, and the rest on sets and a blue screen stage at 20th Century Fox Studios in Sydney. The sets included interiors and the exterior of the homestead house with surrounding gardens, some desert day exteriors and all the desert night exteriors. The blue screen shots included close-ups of Kidman and Jackman on horseback that were intercut with film of them driving the herd through the outback.

“Nicole and Hugh are both really great horseback riders,” Walker says. “Both of them rode galloping horses for shots that were filmed from tracking vehicles. Nicole was spinning her horse around and doing tricks. We also shot close-ups of them sitting on their horses on a blue screen stage, which we composited with background plates.”

The first unit was working with two cameras all the time, covering scenes from different perspectives. Walker often used three or four, and up to six, cameras to cover the biggest action sequences. The second unit cinematographer was Damian Wyvill. Another second unit crew led by Greig Fraser spent four weeks on the project filming scenes with cattle and horses in the desert.

“The visual effects team was planning to shoot background plates in Super 35 because it provides a larger negative area than anamorphic format,” she says. “Since we were planning a D.I., there was no need for an optical blow-up. We would record the timed digital master out directly onto film.”

“We filmed scenes in Darwin around the existing wharf where the water is an incredible blue-turquoise color you see in the tropics,” Walker observes. “They have 30ft high tides, so the height of the wharf was built extremely high off the water at low tide. We shot a scene from underneath the wharf of Lady Ashley coming off the boat and arriving in Darwin. We also built a 300ft-long wharf top and a side of the ship on a stage, and filmed the same scene from that perspective and intercut the two.”

Luhrmann staged scenes with stand-ins before the actors came on set. “Instead of saying, for instance with lighting, that he wanted a warm orange light coming through a window, Luhrmann described to me what emotion that scene, and part of the story was meant to portray to the audience,” she recalls. He also gave Walker freedom to contribute.

“Baz got the right emotions from the actors at the right moments in the story, and he kept the crew emotionally involved in the creative process,” she observes. “He directed from right next to the camera with a mobile video monitor. Hugh Jackman noticed that Baz remembered everybody’s name by the second day. He compared him to a conductor who knows how to get the most out of a symphony orchestra.”

Walker says that camera movement was choreographed to the staging. Camera operator Peter McCaffrey followed Lady Ashley with a Steadicam when she walked into a house, through a hallway and into a room where there was dialogue. Other times, they would decide that a handheld, dolly or crane shot helped to evoke the right emotions.

She describes a scene where Kidman is dancing with Bryan Brown, who plays King Carney. Luhrmann asked the dolly grip to learn the dance, so his camera moves would be in sync with the characters. At one point, the choreographer was helping him push the dolly the right way.

“Lady Ashley is affected by the country, people and landscapes as well as by what is happening,” Walker observes. “It influences her expressions, body language, how she walks and talks, and how we covered her. I would say to Baz, ‘I think there should be a light sparkling in her eyes.’ Baz would agree, ask a question or make another suggestion. It was all about keeping the cinematography in tune with the emotions of scenes. It was always subtle, something the audience will sense subconsciously.”

Walker says that they couldn’t have ordered better weather than what nature provided. There are only two seasons in the Northern Australia outback – dry and wet. It never rained while they were in the outback. They shot for three weeks in Bowen, Queensland. It was supposed to be the dry season, but there was cloud cover and rain every day. She says that the locals were astounded by the out-of-season weather, but it was the right environment for the scenes produced there.

“Baz would talk to the key grip about the feelings of the scene, and explain to him when and how he felt the dolly or crane should move, the same with the focus puller and the timing and feeling of his focus pulls,” says Walker. “We had a storm scene with lightning and wind. Baz would talk with the gaffer about the feelings and mood of the scene, and how the strikes of lightning would punctuate certain moments, and the timing of the strikes heightened that mood. The crew loved it.”

Front-end lab work was done at Atlab in Sydney. They provided film dailies about once a week. Digital dailies were projected at 2K resolution the rest of the time.

“Generally, I watched dailies with the editor, camera operators, focus pullers, gaffer Shaun Conway and key grip Geoff Full,” says Walker. “Other people would come and go. The producers were also usually there. It was a bonding experience for all of us. Baz often watched dailies with us, but he also had an HD monitor set up at home because there were nights when he was writing.” ASIAIMAGE

Australia – the movie Think of Australia as a journey with an English aristocrat named Lady Sarah Ashley and a rough-hewn cattle driver who is called ‘the drover.’ Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are cast in the lead roles with an ensemble supporting cast. The characters have polar opposite backgrounds and personalities, but the relationship evolves and their friendship meshes like music in harmony with the emotional flow of the story. The film begins with Lady Ashley inheriting a sprawling ranch with a herd of several thousand cattle in Northern Australia. After discovering that cattle barons are plotting to steal her legacy, she and the drover begin driving the cattle across the outback on a several hundred-mile trek. Soon after they arrive in Darwin on the seacoast, the Japanese air force bombs the city. It is 1941 and World War II has come to Australia.