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Science Friction: The ups and downs of Terra Nova

Filmed on the Gold Coast, Steven Spielberg’s latest TV offering, Terra Nova is the most expensive show ever made. It goes to air in Australia this weekend.

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.”

Sci-fi fans are optimistic yet anxious. This is a series that was due to air in May struck by a multitude of problems. But Cassar assures that with Spielberg at the helm the end result will satisfy. The master filmmaker is very hands on, from casting choices to script notes and advice about the dinosaurs and special effects. “He has a level of expertise that none of us can parallel so we listen when he speaks. Another thing Spielberg did was assign us Jack Horner. He is the dinosaur expert who consulted for Spielberg on all the Jurassic Park movies. No dinosaur gets designed without Jack’s consent.”

However, to build an entire colony in a jungle on the other side of the world only to have it ravished not only by dinosaurs but torrential downpours and financial upheaval meant this Jurassic tale wasn’t to be a walk in the park.

Hollywood on the Gold Coast
The decision was made to film on the Gold Coast and in its Hinterland after a major scout of locations around the world by director Alex Graves and original production designer Carlos Barbosa.

Ten weeks into pre-production Barbosa was fired. Art direction and style was already locked in whenJoseph Hodges (24) replaced him. Hodges says, “The best was to describe it as was an arranged marriage I’d eventually fall in love with.” He got the job on the grounds he didn’t change anything, however, explains Hodges, “After three weeks I persuaded them the location was wrong. The first location was very difficult to build there and the first thing I had to do was find a new location. The location I chose was where one of my mentors, who I worked with on Space Above and Beyond, had actually shot Roar.

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.”

Likewise, the Southern Queensland filmmaking community is benefiting. “We’ve got about 150 regular crew members depending on the scenes for the day. We can get up to 300 on a big extras day. We haven’t brought a lot [of Americans] over to be honest – about 75 per cent of the departments are keyed by Australians. We were very happy with, and still are very happy with what Queensland has to offer,” says Cassar.

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.”

Inflating budgets
Terra Nova hasn’t only suffered from a physical strain on the production. Producer David Fury (Lost, 24) left because of ‘creative differences’ with writer/exec producer Brannon Braga whose last creation was the high concept FlashForward that never secured a season 2 due to convoluted storyline and dropped ratings. The other major problem behind the scenes came as the whole writing team was fired before being rehired again.

The pilot alone was rumoured to cost $US20m while the show has been deemed the most expensive program ever made – Britain’s The Independent has the entire series at $US70m, with each minute on screen costing $200,000.

An over-achieving Australian dollar hasn’t helped. “When I first I arrived,” says Hodges, “the Australian dollar was at 80 cents to the American. It shot up to 110 cents, so that’s 30 per cent of our budget gone.”

Hodges felt the pinch in his department. “I had the same amount on 24, despite Terra Nova being rumoured the most expensive TV show ever made. It’s supposed to be a futuristic show and I had about $100,000 to do the vehicles, which was enough to buy four jeeps and paint them green. This is our Batmobile and I’ve got to compete with someone with a million dollars… and we’ve got $50.”

The show will access the location offset to help ease the burdon, but Cassar agrees, “When you’re spending the kind of money we are spending, it adds up.”

Cassar won’t give a price per episode, but he downplays the costs. “Believe it or not, as difficult as our subject matter is, we’re still equal to what a high end network show is doing. In our case, we have a big 
outlay in the set-build which, spread out over 13 episodes becomes cheaper, and over another season, cheaper again.”

That’s a wrap
As proud as Cassar is, he isn’t counting his pterodactyls before they hatch for a second season.

“There hasn’t been any official announcement and there won’t be until we air. It will be all based on the numbers we get and we’ll know that in the next couple of weeks. The network will make that decision and we’ll all have our fingers crossed and hope it gets picked up for another year.”

Despite all the trouble in the background, Cassar is sure it will strike a chord with an audience. “It’s more than what it seems on the surface, of a lot of dinosaurs running around. There’s a deeper adventure than that, with a good family at its core so it becomes this interesting mix of family adventure, dinosaurs and sci-fi as an unusual hybrid that no one has tried before. Give it a try.”

Terra Nova premieres on Channel Ten, this Sunday, 2 October.

  • Colin Delaney

This article appears in the October edition of Encore magazine. You can subscribe via this link.

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