Australia – Historical Inspiration
Pre-empting the free to air screening of Australia on local television, bazmark.com have published these words direct from Baz Luhrmann about the historical inspiration for the film.
“The plot of ‘Australia’ is a work of fiction…a romantic epic. While not a documentary, the historical canvas on which we paint the love story is drawn from fact. In constructing the story, we had a set of rules which were strictly adhered to: as long as it does not fundamentally change the truth, if it’s better storytelling achieved through a conjunction of time or a changed circumstance, then we would do this this if it was better storytelling and clearer to the audience. We were aware at all times that the audience is there to have an emotional experience. Although the events in the story are imagined, each one of them has a factual reference that we unearthed during an extensive two year period of research.”
- Baz Luhrmann, January 23, 2011
In addition they’ve added a very extensive section on their website detailing how factual events in history have influenced certain parts of their movie magic.
January 25th, 2011
No Man Hires Me, No Man Fires Me
As the lead VFX company for Australia, Animal Logic was awarded the task of designing and creating the key VFX shots that take place within the port town of Darwin. This entailed creating a CG Darwin, complete with harbour, wharf and ships that had to be re-dressed across the three time periods seen in the film: ‘Cattletown’, ‘Militarised’, and ‘Post-bombed’.
The Animal Logic team brought to life a CG Wharf modelled from lidar scans of Darwin wharf as well as various larger-than-life ships, creating the “heightened reality” of a romanticised Darwin. Referencing colour palettes from vintage photographs and classic epic films, the splenderous 1930s landscape provided an exciting canvas for the wide aerial shots and set extensions created.
In addition, CG cattle were added to boost the numbers in the cattle yeards, the cattle race and during the “triumphant return” when Sarah droves cattle into Darwin. These shots involved the combination of multiple plates shot accross three locations: the cattle town set in Bowen, Darwin harbour and the bluescreen wharf set on a stage in Sydney. The CG FX work includes the harbour water, huge burning smoke plumes, burning oil tanks, funnel smoke, fog, clouds, wakes, flames, atmos and cattle dust.
Unfortunately Catherine Martin did not come away with an Academy Award this year but Australia definitely was in the spotlight, and host Hugh Jackman certainly couldn’t let them forget that mentioning the film in his opening dialogue and generally doing the movie and the country proud as a great host. In addition to Catherine Martin’s nomination, Australia star and Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman was on hand to help pass torch in the Best Actress category.