DRAMA & COMEDY
“We were all ready to go in early 2020. And we were in Australia, doing a pre-recce, just north of Adelaide as Trump banned travel to Europe. That signalled the start of the first lockdowns. So, we had to go home and the whole thing was put on hold for a calendar year,” Aird recalls.
The silver lining was more time to prepare. But when shooting did begin, in early 2021, the UK was in lockdown and Australia, though Covid-free, had closed its border, making it “colossally challenging” to get out and in. Then, by the time the Australian shoot drew towards its close, Covid had become a major issue meaning they had to film under severe restrictions and recreate one sequence in a studio when they had eventually been stopped from filming anything at all.
In other respects, however, time was an important production tool.
“Chris Sweeney, who directed the first block, is very visual,” Aird continues. “We all wanted it to feel epic and cinematic – the outback is an extraordinary place and Chris wanted time to shoot substantial, wide, establishing shots you don’t often have the time to do for TV. So, we built in time so he could do this, and it really paid off.”
Drama down under
Time was built in, too, to maximise the drama, tension and sheer spectacle of the opening chase.
“For the truck sequence, we shot four or five main unit days and ten or eleven second
unit days – just for that one sequence, which for a TV show is huge,” he recalls. “The sequence was shot in four different locations – including one where there had never been filming before. And we used a second unit action director who’d worked on, among other things, Mad Max. There was a sandstorm. And that’s not to mention the heat.”
SHOOT SUBSTANTIAL, WIDE, ESTABLISHING SHOTS
Then, at the end – where the car turns and skids: the kind of shot you can only do once – they ended up having to use footage from a standby camera when the movie camera they’d intended to use didn’t work.
SWEENEY WANTED TIME TO
FEEL EPIC AND CINEMATIC – THE OUTBACK IS AN EXTRAORDINARY PLACE AND DIRECTOR CHRIS
WE ALL WANTED IT TO
“After, there was tonnes of VFX work to paint out all the tyre marks on the sand, which took hours and hours,” Aird adds. “Just filming in that environment, let alone the logistics, was the most challenging thing many of us had ever done.”
It was elevated further by a great cast, with action punctuated by an original score while
commercial tracks delivered playfulness for each episode’s hard cut to black. The end result was a ratings and critical hit for the BBC in the UK, Stan in Australia and HBO Max in the US. So much so that a second series of The Tourist goes into production next year.
televisual.com
09 BD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36
