Putting the social media furore over the title aside, the trailer for Total Control looks really good to me. We had 64 people involved with the shooting of Total Control and I bet any of them will be watching closely to spot themselves.
As part of a major event, some MCTV people played the role of convict and jailor (a little too convincingly IMHO) to a live audience. They had an absolute ball mucking around in-character (despite what you might think from looking at their faces). Well done to everyone the gig was a real success.
“Never work with children or animals.” is the famous quote by W.C. Fields, but this very cute picture of Penguin (The star of the movie Penguin Bloom) would have you thinking otherwise.
Of course it’s certainly not straight forward having a bird as the main star of your movie, so it was really interesting to see the casting board for the movie includes seven different magpies to play the role of Penguin. I’m sure it was a challenge finding birds that had very similar plumage. For once it makes our job of matching human talent to roles seem very simple.
Congratulations to Vicki, Buffy, Emelia and Dwayne who had a ball this morning on a live TV segment for the today show. You can check out their work in the clip below. Great work guys!
Already more than 30 MCTV people have been involved with Fallout which started filming in late August. It’s a six part drama series that covers the devastating nuclear tests held at Maralinga in outback South Australia. It’s fascinating to imagine the political environment that let another country detonate nuclear bombs on Australian soil. The series has already secured worldwide distribution rights from the French APC Studios.
This series is the biggest budget ($20M ) production by Stan yet. Almost 200 people from MCTV have already been on set for this production and we are still submitting more people each week. The Commons is a character-driven thriller which plays out at the intersection of climate change and the cutting edge of biotechnology. Part mystery, part relationship drama, it puts a very human face on what’s coming down the road and the heroism that lies inside us all when our backs are against the wall. The series stars Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey) and Damon Herriman (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).
Charlotte Best is playing Aria Wolf, who is trapped and kidnapped in the elevator of a super high-rise building at the mercy of tormentors in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Shooting started last week on this action thriller which is set in Shangai but shot here in Sydney under writer/ director Antaine Furlong. For more information see IF Magazine.
Eighty two of our MCTV kids were lucky enough to be part of The Unlisted which shot earlier this year in Sydney. Now the trailer has dropped and you can see the Orwellian nightmare that the main character has found himself in. This series has also been picked up by Netflix for international distribution so let’s hope it gets renewed. For now, if you are one of the lucky eighty two there’s a chance to spot yourself in the trailer and on iView from September 15.
L-R Dena Kaplan, Ronny Chieng, Josh Lawson, Rafe Spall, Zahra Newman
Written and directed by Josh Lawson (House of Lies, The Little Death), this romantic comedy follows Teddy (Spall), who wakes up the morning after his wedding to discover that every few minutes he’s jumping forward to the next year of his life. Lawson was writer/director and starred in The Eleven O’Clock too which was nominated for best short film at the Academy Awards in 2018. The full short movie of The Eleven O’Clock is included below for your pleasure. For more infor about Long Short Story, there’s a nice writeup in Variety.
Staying up late workin’ is more like it, with a long shoot that started mid afternoon and went into the wee hours of the morning. About 20 people in total were selected from MCTV to be part of a new campaign. Those long shoots paying pretty well and always with the chance of an upgrade to featured too.