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Location Shooting

Shooting proceeded in the Powerhouse as we began to expand out into our location shooting as well. These ranged from the heights to the depths - quite literally.

Our first major on-location shoot took place at the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, heralding the first of many examples of extreme generosity on the part of institutions towards the Company. This expansiveness would eventually encompass, by the end of shooting Richard III,  helicopters, submarines, trains, dungeons and TAFE grounds - all lent to us in their entirety by the various governing bodies! For Macbeth, the kind people at the Botanical Gardens administration let us take over the greenhouse Pyramid for two hours before opening time. The Pyramid was our version of the witches cave. I wanted a contrast to the usual vision of a cave with a boiling black cauldron. In this post-apocalyptic vision, the Weird Sister were supposedly the keepers of technology, and had constructed their domain as a kind of bio-dome/eco pod thing. Its beauty was designed to be set in contrast to their supposed and arguable evil. 

Despite shooting in winter, the greenhouse was quite warm, and - understandably, dramatically humid. Macbeth's plastic and vinyl costume become even more uncomfortable for poor Julia, but she didn't complain. The Weird Sisters were more comfortable attired in their flowing white gowns, but as the costume had a tails which flowed onto the ground, they quickly became grimy and saturated around the base. I also found that my glasses and the camera lens fogged up quite regularly.
Shooting proceeded smoothly, despite Jessica's giggles (I could hardly complain about that - it was the natural companion of her extreme vibrancy, which is why she was so excellent in her dual roles).
The potion that the witches squeeze from Macbeth's glove was a concoction of various soft-drinks and cordial. The brown colour matched the muddy glove-squeezings, and was quite tasty. These scenes were shot in reverse order, of course, so that done of the dregs of muddy water would be left in the drinking scene.

A note of Trivia: Julia was reading The Miracle Worker in the car heading out to the location. A little while later I lent her a tape of the Patty Duke/Anne Bancroft version which had been on TV not too long before. I'm still waiting for the tape to be returned!

Our next city location was deep in the depths of the storm water system: the Tank Stream. Mr Paul - father of Glenn (Macduff) worked for Sydney Water and offered to take us down to shoot there when he learned of my desire to shoot in tunnels under the city. The inspiration came partly from The Third Man, partly from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and partly from a book that Glen had given to me at the end of Year 3, which had lots of pictures related to the history of the Water Board.

We were lead down into a small waiting area though a virtually anonymous door off a side street next to Australia Square. There we suited up and got a briefing about emergency evacuation procedures. Basically, we were told we had thirty seconds to evacuate up the spindly ladder in the event of a storm water warning, otherwise we'd be washed down to Circular Quay. We were also alerted to the gas alarm before pulling on the big gumboots and heading down the ladder.

At the bottom of the ladder we were greeted by - the gas alarm! Fortunately, there was no actual gas, just the alarm. It was quite a cool sound, and I left it in the final cut. The Tank Steam itself was just a trickle along the groove set into the old sandstone. In addition to the Macbeth shots, I shot some generic stuff to show the kids studying the First Fleet. I never use it, though. I usually put in the Macbeth tape instead.

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Macbeth running down the long tunnel is really Julia running down the same bit of short tunnel with the shots  cut end to end. It's entirely believable and effective. It's a shot I first noticed done when watching Lost in Space's "The Anti-Matter Man" for the twentieth time or so. Julia's running scene was then attached to a model shot of water/smoke pouring down the tunnel. 

This is my single favourite moment because of how perfect that model shot turned out. The model was just a cardboard mail tube cut in half. The inside was covered with sheets of stone-printed card from Hobbyco. The tube was then taped to a sheet of transparent plastic so I could light the tube in the same way as the tunnel had been lit (with bright lights courtesy of Sydney Water). I experimented with pouring beer down the tube, which turned out to look horribly unconvincing. It also wasted a lot of beer (it was, though, lite beer and just about at its expire date). Then I made up a few match-head smoke bombs to see how they might look. As I was shooting the model stuff a capella, I couldn't watch the scene as I filmed it, as I was at he opposite end of the tube with the smoke bomb. I started the camera and let off the smoke bomb. I then rushed around to play back the scene on the camera's LCD screen! I couldn't believe how absolutely perfect the shot was! The smoke just rushed right over the lens in a torrent! And because it was smoke, it moved at such a speed as to covey just the right amount of weight to give the illusion substance. This shot - amazingly - is now even better, thanks to a superb moment by Jessica Nakkour in her interview segment with Danielle Logan and Elizabeth Tupola. At the end of the interview Danielle asks Jesica to perform one of her lines, and she did "Double Double" with such breathtaking brilliance and sparking dynamism that I borrowed it for the redux (took a while to erase the library from behind her - totally worth it!!).

By the way, the match-head smoke-bomb is made by cutting off the heads of a couple of boxes of matches and stuffing them in a tube of rolled newspaper, about 6 cm long and 1 cm in diameter. The top layer has all the match-head oriented upwards, and a final, longer match is stuck into the centre as a kind of wick or fuse. Holding the tube with a clothes peg, you simply light the wick, wait until the tope layer of heads ignite, and in a few seconds, you'll get a jet of smoke.
From the depths to the heights: Thredbo.

Since Year 5 was going on a excursion to the snow as part of the "Trip to Canberra" experience, I thought I might take advantage of the epic possibilities and film at the top of a mountain. Unfortunately, the vision exceeded the ultimate reality. The powerful gust not only made the sound recording disastrous, but it made filming there positively dangerous! It was also hell hauling all the costumes and gear up the mountain on the chair lift, and there was an interminable delay buying tickets while some dissatisfied customers at the counter absorbed at least fifteen minutes bickering with the sales staff (and we only had about an hour to shoot!). I patiently waited with the kids in tow, without complaining. I'm sure it'd be a different story today. Then I had to fork over about seventy bucks in ticket money to get them all up the mountain, and then had to leap onto the chair lift thing with kids and equipment to shoot. Some much potential for disaster!

Once up on the mountain the wind and ice made it a hazard to even walk. Once, when something flew off with a sudden gust (I forget what), Julia raced after it, towards a dramatic and slippery declination in the tight-packed ice. It scared the hell out of me! One slip and she'd be tumbling uncontrollable away, down the side of the mountain! I screamed at her to stop and told her off, giving her an orange card (the biggest sanction at the school). The thought of what could have happened to her - just a hair's breadth away - sent my heart pounding. Later, after we'd done some shooting (under the glum cloud of this near tragedy), I recovered to the point where I regretted the threat of the orange card. I told her that I wasn't going to giver her one after all. It was just that she scared me! We shook hands, and Julia seemed to rise within herself to a place of great maturity, apologizing for running off in the way she had (as I write this, I may be recalling the events in the wrong order; it may have been she who approached me first to say sorry for running off. Maybe if Julia reads this she can let me know).

Although the vision from this scene had some moments, the sound made was essentially unusable, and it was later extensive re-shot at the tip, the only local environment which in any way resembled the mountain top (picture). An added problem with the re-shoot was the absence of Banquo (Sarah Azer), who had been pulled out of the production by her parents due to a misunderstanding over finishing times for one of the shoots at the Powerhouse. Fortunately Julieanne Horsman (Lady Macbeth) was able to stand-in for Banquo for the re-shoot, as she looked quite like Sarah from behind (picture). It's a kind of irony, if I may tell this story, as Sarah and Julieanne were hardly the best of buddies. Julieanne was a great actor, but watch for the scene where Lady Macbeth gives Banquo a dirty look after Macbeth's coronation. Very realistic, but no acting there!

This scene was ultimately saved by Ian Weddell at Ridgi-Digital editing, who made it very eerie and weird, which allowed a lot of the mountain-top shots to be used. I am hoping to do a total re-cut of Macbeth one day, where I will do something quite different to Ian's version. I hope it will be as good! Well, I did. I went back to my original thought of revealling the scene only in flashes of lightning. I also fully lip-synched the dialogue for the whole scene with the Wirra-Willa studio recording, despite the fact that only a few moments will be lit up enough to see the characters talking. Consequently, the sequence has gone from having the worst sound in the movie to the best.

Big Scenes

The biggest scenes were the two battle scenes. The first was part of the opener where Cawdor (Steven Crow) steals and smashes the glowing rod things from the Power Core in a scene straight out of the long version on Superman: The Movie. This cuts to another shot (filmed months later but you'd never know it) where the hoards on mutant Norweyans pour into the Powerhouse to battle the Thanes. The mutant Norweyans where created with giant hessian bags from Reverse Garbage (a few doors up in the same building, then run by the fabulous and generous Christine Francis). The entire Year 5 of Glenwood portrayed the Norwayans, and then later the legions of Malcolm as they enter the seemingly deserted Dunsinane in search of Macbeth.

Filming at the Casula Powerhouse involved us in a variety of memorable experiences. Apart from the interruptions from the trains, the security system that we were obliged to activate and de-activate was at times a source of fun. One early morning start  (to catch the direct winter sunlight beaming though the windows) saw us setting off the alarm when looking for a suitable door for Macduff to go through in order to discover Duncan's murder. We found a nice door at the top of some concrete steps, near the place where Macbeth had looked out over Duncan when contemplating his murder. While our keys worked in the door without a problem, our security code did not clear the area beyond the door, so shooting hunkered down under the screams of the alarm while security was called. We later used another door on the lower level to stand in for the upper door. The editing was sufficiently skillful to make it look like was that same upper door.
The kids were very patient when shooting ran beyond the advertised two hours. The scene where Macbeth is confronted by the ghost of Banquo was an especially long shoot, over three hours. This contrasted with the coronation scene, which, because it played largely without sound, went very quickly and smoothly. I could even call directions out while shooting in the manner of D.W. Griffith.  
The coronation scene was another example of serendipity: just prior to shooting the Powerhouse had installed some space heaters which glowed a rich red when activated. The light from the heaters conjured an extraordinary atmosphere, only a breath of which was able to be captured by the videotape. The heaters also featured in Julieanne's big moment with Lady Macbeth's "out damn spot" scene. Julieanne was wonderful as the mad Ophelia the year before, even bring tears to the eyes of some promiant audience members! The range Julieanne goes though in this scene clearly illustrates what a magnificent performer she is.

It was sometime prior to this that we auditioned for the Sydney South West Drama Festival with the scene involving Banquo's ghost. Julia did a stunning turn in the confrontation with the ghost and its aftermath, alternately calm and hysterical as the apparition plays with her fears. As developed by Julia in the rehearsal in the AV Room, Macbeth ends up curled into a tight fetal position from which she rises with slow agony as she strives to recover her wits to the consternation of her guests and the horror of Lady Macbeth. It was a tour de force, and is a highlight of the video. It failed the audition.

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Now, I have to say after directing that same festival since 2000 (though maybe not much longer if someone reads this), that I have never seen a performance from primary students which approached that Macbeth scene for power and skill. Yet we failed the audition. I was naive enough at the time to think that the standard of the SSW Festival must be out of this world for us not to get in. Though we did not get to see the SSW Festival that year, I did take the kids along to see the State Drama Festival - surely the creme-de-la-creme of Primary school drama. Just what was the competition like?

We came away from that afternoon's entertainment appalled. To say that the performances lacked drama is to be generous. One particular item - which frankly left me flummoxed as to how something so empty could have been presented to a paying audience let along selected competitively - involved kids dressed up in lots of bright colours saying "I am yellow, I am the sun, I am happiness" and "I am red, I am fire, I am anger." The performance ran on in this vein for about six minutes. It was very - colourful.

Like I said, as a body we were shocked, and so were our parent helpers and the other teachers. There was more drama to be had in a postal delivery than in that item. And that was better than Julia and Julieanne as the Macbeths? Methinks not! Please order the video and put my word to the test. Have you seen a better primary play scene that our ghost scene? If you have, I'll eat the cassette!

Another scene which Julia invigorated with her creativity was the famous "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." sequence. For our two-bit production values it was quite technically complex. After giving her soldiers the orders to man the battlements, she hears the screams of Lady Macbeth, is then approached by Seton and informed of Lady Macbeth's suicide, and then goes into the famous speech of futility. The entire shot was done as a single take. It involved tracking with Julia as she gave the orders, whereupon she would hear the scream and walk a few steps to encounter Seton, approaching from a dark corridor. Then she had to turn towards the camera looking distant and dejected, while at the same time grabbing the camera tripod which was folded together and bent towards her so that the camera could turn with her and she rotated 3600 whist doing her speech in order to reveal the flurry of activity behind her. Julia did extremely well, and even managed to push the scene by ad-libbing extra "nothing"s at the end when releasing the tripod and walking off for the fade-out.

The final shot to be photographed is the first live-action shot in the film: the Weird Sisters saying "Macbeth", which leads into the title. We didn't have all the costumes that day, so you'll see one Sister mostly concealed by her sorority! This shot was filmed in 1996, about a year after shooting began!

Post Production

The Christmas holidays of 95/96 were taken up with post-production stuff. One project involved building a large scale model of the Powerhouse. It was a slow and painstaking process to make it look detailed and accurate enough for filming, but the results look very good on video. The model was a necessity due the real Powerhouses setting in a river valley along a railway line, when our Dunsinane was supposed to be in the middle of a wasteland. I also built a desert out of an old door and sand, with some small twigs as dead trees.  For a backdrop, I back-projected some slides of an especially stunning sunrise onto a white sheet tacked over the garage door. The lamp of the projector looked like the sun filtered through grainy clouds - exactly as that environment should have bee. Serendipity had found its way to the production again, helping to produce completely real-looking models shots. Even the Powerhouse staff wondered how I got those fantastic sunset shots! All the redux shots of the Powerhouse are now computer models. I have saved a section of the orginal model as a souvenir, though.

Another happy accident came with the shooting of the Earth from space. The idea was to travel through space, intercepting radio and TV broadcasts about the disasters and environmental collapse which devastate the Earth (influenced by Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds") (this diea was used - though in reverse - by the movie Contact in 1997). Then the Earth appears - dry, barren and scarred. The zoom though space was accomplished very primitively by videoing the Space screensaver from Windows 95. The barren Earth was a plastic ball on which was painted the dried-out oceans and burnt continents. This was accomplished by spraying on a succession of dark colours left over from the Thanes armour, then wrapping the wet ball in newspaper, then pulling the paper off almost immediately. When dry,  cut-outs of Europe and Great Britain were taped in place, and a light spray of tan applied. When the templates were removed, dark, scarred looking land and dry brown ocean beds were left. Not too bad. But what really helped to lift this model was the dust belching from the surface of the Earth into outer space. This shot - which looks quite fab on the video, was simply an artifact of shooting the dusty AV room at Glenwood. The lamp used to create the crescent sunshine on the Earth's surface managed to catch the dust in such as was as it looked like it was pouring up from the surface. Serendipity again. And is now out of the movie. This whole sequence, which was done more or less in the movie Contact (which I can't match budget-wise or effects-wise, has now been replaced with a sequence depicting the deterioration of the Earth as it slides into the post-Greenhouse setting of the movie. The catastrophe is shown via a series of newspaper headlines over the oroginal voice-over. There was no shortage of real headlines to use, though all but one that are seen on screen is a fake.

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I myself provided the voice of the apparitions. I used the skull from Hamlet dressed up in Macbeth's cyber-armor and operated remotely by puffs of breath through a long tube. A little bit about the armor. In the apparitions scene (which consisted of intercuts between the witch's greenhouse and the FX shots filmed in the back yard), Macbeth finds himself (herself - I don't know which pronoun is applicable!) cybernetically enhanced with Borg-like implants fused into his armor. The implants were made from plastic packing sections and a voice-activated water pistol, and enhanced with LED meters which bobbed up and down with Macbeth's voice. Dick Smith kits again. I added a robot arm toy, and by the time everything was hooked up and in place, Macbeth really did look Borg. It took several minutes to attach and connect all the devices, but it looked cool! (picture) I remember the first time Julia put it on. It was at at school, and after it was all plugged in, she headed up the ramp outside the library towards the admin block on a tour! I was really chuffed to see her take to the material so well. I have to say that at this point, the armor is packed in the garage and is still in perfect working order. It did a turn in 2000 at one of the book character parades with one of my Year 5 kids participating as Macbeth. He won! But I made him split the prize!

By this time I had also put together a short trailer to be shown at the presentation night. It was three or four minutes long but took a week of editing, simply going from camera to VCR. By trial and error, I worked out that the insert edit on the VCR wiped the last four frames of the previous shot, so I was able to get the scenes to change on the beat of the music. I was immensely proud of this achievement! The music used was "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana. A bit of a cliché I suppose, but it seemed to fit the mood and style too well to be ignored. In my own artistic defence, I have to say that at least I used the last refrain of "O Fortuna" instead of the first one, which is more common. The trailer had stills from Henry V and Hamlet with 1993 and 1994 respectively intercut, which came on on the dying strains of the chorus, then stills from Macbeth on the big drum beats just before O Fortuna, then the titles on the first choral sequence, then a sequence of shots from the film which changed on each bar. I love that trailer, despite all the noise on the tape from the primitive editing methods.

Through the first part of 1996, depending on the mechanical whims of the video camera, I made a rough cut to show the composer, Glen Opdenbrouw, who  was going to write our first original score. I wanted an original score because I wanted total ownership of the final product and the right to charge for copies of the tape. Glen came up with the first of many great scores. His stuff is the equal to any I've heard for the stage in this country, and surpasses a lot of scores for big Hollywood productions. We ended up selling copies of the score on CD and on tape! It's a pleasure to listen to the music, and really enhances the production.

The final phase was the editing. 

This was going to be expensive, because I knew it had to be done professionally. It was shot with a view to frame-exact cutting, and with the mixing of the sound and the re-dubbing I knew we'd have to do, I thought a computer based system was the way to go. At first I was going to buy one, but at that time, before iMovie, this was still an expensive proposition. However, luck was with us again. I signed myself up to a seminar at the Menzies Hotel (where I had once been to a Star Trek convention and met Mr Sulu) on digital editing, and though the prices were beyond me, I found in the little "showbag" they handed out at the door a brochure for Ridgi-Digital on-line editing. I sent a fax to them outlining the project and got into contact with the wonderful Mr Ian Weddell - the Saviour of Macbeth!

Ian was unbelievably fantastic! One of the most patient and professional people I've ever worked with. He basically worked for nothing - and on the weekend - for about ten hours each day, with a tiny break for lunch. He was very enthusiastic about the project and extremely patient with me and my piles of tape. Ian re-worked scenes that didn't work (such as the unusable mountain sound) and tolerated the noisy camera and essential re-dubbing (from a tape we made for a "radio version" which was never finished). Ian made many interesting comments about the production. One was about how often the music seemed to slot right into the edits he'd made. There was something about editors and composers that coalesced; they thought the same way, in beats. Another comment he made was about Orson Welles' version of Macbeth. He called ours "a hundred times better"!

The editing took seven day spread over four weekends. It was killing! Teaching all week, then all weekend in the edit suite with Ian cutting Macbeth. I don't think I've had a more exhausting period in my life. The final day of editing was about thirteen hours long. We just wanted to finish this thing! When the credits rolled by on the credit machine at about nine o'clock on the last Sunday, I was so depleted it felt as though I was an animated husk.

But it was done!