Picture courtesy of Encore Magazine
Excerpt of a story by Colin Delaney, Encore Magazine (shortened version)Filmed on the Gold Coast, Steven Spielberg’s latest TV offering, Terra Nova is the most expensive show ever made.
Between floods, inflation and fired staff, the production has had as many dramas off screen as on.
Confidence was suitably high for Fox when the bankable Spielberg wanted to tell a story that blended an apocalyptic future with time travel and dinosaurs. Spielberg was in his element.
It began strongly. Fox, rather than commissioning just a pilot, went ahead and commissioned an entire 13 episodes. Emmy-winning director/producer Jon Cassar (24), is one of a multitude of executive producers on Terra Nova. He says it was a smart thing to do on Fox’s behalf. “When you’re making a sci-fi show you don’t just find a set, you have to build it and if you’re going to the expense of building it you may as well commit to 13 episodes.”
The decision was made to film on the Gold Coast and in its Hinterland after a major scout of locations around the world.
Filming has injected a lot of money into the region. Cassar doesn’t have an exact figure but, “a good percentage of our total budget has been spent here, minus post and things we’re doing in the States. Obviously you’re biggest expenditure is production when you’re doing any TV series and because our production is 100 per cent in Australia, a lot of it is spent here.”
Rumours abound the Gold Coast nearly lost Terra Nova after Queensland’s heavy flooding that struck as the pilot was in full swing in December and January.
The rainfall caused damages and delays. “Luckily we were on higher ground with our sets,” says Cassar. “It blocked access to some of our sets but what did hurt was the rain that came with those floods. That was tough. When they were shooting the pilot it became very difficult dealing with that amount of rainfall.” The rainfall caused the shoot to stop temporarily but the rumours to totally abandon Queensland were false. Says Cassar, “the only reason we would have left is if the sets got destroyed, then that question would have come up but it didn’t happen so we were okay. We’ve had unbelievably great weather since we’ve been doing the series.”
Terra Nova premiered on Channel Ten on Sunday, 2 October.
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