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Today is day 51 (of 88).

When we’re shooting in FNQ at Mission Beach, we go out to sea every morning at dawn and don’t come back till dusk.

We rarely shoot on land, just islands or beaches. However, when we come back down south we first shoot at a myriad of different locations – nearly 70 of them at last count. Sometimes we’re shooting three different locations in a single day. With a cast and crew of 70 people, a dozen trucks and countless cars, we’re a real travelling circus.

Where we stop and park we call ‘Unit Base’. That’s where big marquees appear (for two sit down meals), rows of toilets, make up and wardrobe vans, props trucks, buses and huge lighting, camera and grip trucks.

Our caterers Bronwen and Naz routinely deliver 200 plus meals a day (when you add in guest actors and extras). We also shoot lots of different smaller sets in the studio – ten in fact – in between all the locations. These we call ‘guest’ sets. For example perfect little breakaway sets of the below decks of a ‘SIEV’ (Suspected illegal entry vessel) or fishing huts or luxury cruisers or non-descript bedrooms, offices or hotel rooms. You would be surprised. Michael Rumpf our Production Designer’s job is to either find the right location (using our two Location Managers) or build a set to exactly match the scripts’ requirements. It’s quite a balancing act. Building sets and finding props is expensive, but enables us to shoot fast. Whereas locations actually exist so don’t usually require lots of building or props so that saves money. But they are slower to shoot in and all the travel time (plus packing and unpacking) is dead time and costly too.

So we strike a balance. Our measure is ‘screen time shot’ per day (which is the length in minutes and seconds of each sequence or sequences we shoot each day. Whilst at sea we average 6-8 minutes per day, on location we average 8 – 10 minutes per day. Whereas in the studio we can average 12-15 minutes per shooting day. That’s a lot of very fast shooting and that’s what we face after our Christmas hiatus.

To schedule all this is a very complex task. We ensure we have all the scripts finished and locked well before we shoot. They run per episode an average length of 55 A4 pages. They contain an average of 60 scenes per episode. That means there are nearly 800 scenes to be scheduled over 80 plus days. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. We shoot all the blue pieces (sea sequences) first, then all the green pieces (locations) next, then all the brown pieces (studio) last. That means it’s not uncommon for us to shoot scenes from five different episodes in a single shooting day. That’s quite a challenge for the actor and one of the reasons we rarely let anyone change dialogue too much. It’s too easy to make a mistake – then later in the editing room we could find the pieces don’t fit together. Hate that! When editing we rarely drop a scene – on average only one or two scenes get deleted in the entire season. That shows how unbelievably precise everyone is.

You can’t shoot a show as difficult and dangerous as Sea Patrol without a very clear plan (a script), a carefully thought through schedule, top professionals behind the camera and dedicated actors in front of the camera.

Just a final note on our wonderful actors. It’s very rare for an actor to be in the same room as the real character they are playing. Not so on Sea Patrol. Because when we go to sea we have a fully crewed real Navy warship (all her crew sleep on board). So our actors are working beside the real captains, radio operators, chief engineers, chefs, as they do their job. And these Navy personnel coach our guys every step of the way. It’s been a fantastic partnership that way. The actors are the bravest of all, as they have to stand up in front of the audience.

But it all sure is tiring, especially after these last two weeks with lots of night shoots. Everyone is looking forward to our two week break over Christmas.

All join us in wishing all our fans a very Merry Christmas and all best wishes for the New Year.

Cheers

Hal and Di

Please Note: Behind the scenes pictures from series 3 and 4 have been used for this production update.

Today is Day 26. We have 28 shooting days ‘at sea’ and it looks like on 20 of those it rained (we still have two more to go). In fact it poured – driving torrential rain whipped by strong winds, pushing up big swells and very difficult boating conditions.

When we’re putting 80 – 100 crew and actors out into those conditions, we have sleepless nights and not just from the roar of the rain on our roof! But cast and crew alike have risen to the challenge magnificently – and it shows.

The dark tormented skies, the black water, the hissing spray and the 3 metre waves look amazing on screen.

As our use of a fully crewed $60 m Navy Patrol Boat is limited, we shoot out of sequence. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle of 800 different scenes from 13 episodes. We have to shoot all the ‘blue’ pieces first then all the green pieces (land based locations), then last the brown bits (the studio). Meanwhile two editing teams thousands of miles away piece it all together by intercutting all these variously coloured pieces. We finish up with approximately 1,000 edits per hour of television, i.e. 13,000 edits for the 13 hours of the mini series.

Some days at sea we shoot pieces from five different episodes. The actors particularly have to be on their toes ready for anything. We have a saying in our business – the only certainty is that everything is uncertain. And it sure is when we’re at sea, which is roughly a third of our schedule.

When we get back on to land we shoot even faster. Maybe twice as fast because by comparison it is ‘easy’.

The pic attached shows our little flotilla (we call it our floating circus). The large ferry is our mothership, That’s what everyone travels out to sea on every day at dawn. We have all our camera, lights and sound gear on board, plus wardrobe and makeup. Even a kitchen and a chef, and we serve 80 – 100 breakfasts and lunches every day. The little boats are our taxi/courier/support boats that like sheep dogs herd all the floating pieces in front of camera.

With 6 tonnes of equipment worth several million dollars, it gets very difficult, scarey and dangerous very quickly in bad weather.

But we all love it. It’s crazy but fun, tough but rewarding. 92% of our cast and crew come back every year to ride the waves on Sea Patrol.