The £10 ticket to sunny Australia was a no-brainer for people looking to escape the post-war gloom and grey skies of Great Britain. However, the weather waiting for the cast and crew when they filmed Ten Pound Poms in Sydney last year was worse than what they left behind, writes Marlon Szczepankiewicz
By Contributor
Published: June 1, 2023
The £10 ticket to sunny Australia was a no-brainer for people looking to escape the post-war gloom and grey skies of Great Britain. However, the weather waiting for the cast and crew when they filmed Ten Pound Poms in Sydney last year was worse than what they left behind, writes Marlon Szczepankiewicz
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
The timing of the BBC's new Sunday night drama Ten Pound Poms couldn't be better. With Britain facing its own boat crisis and calls from some quarters to introduce an Australian-style point-based system , you wouldn't be far wrong if you thought the series from Eleven Film starring Michelle Keegan was exploiting the zeitgeist permeating 2023 Britain.
I think the specifics of an Australian-style points system being mooted was coincidental but the fact that immigration has been such a prickly and so much talked about topic over the last few years - that bit is quite deliberate, says director, Jamie Stone. I liked that it's an inverted immigrant story. It reminds us that we were economic migrants once.
For those unfamiliar with the subject matter, the Australian government introduced the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1945, which allowed migrants to move Down Under for £10, in a bid to increase the population.
The series looks and feels ridiculously authentic, making the viewer feels like it was shot in the era it is set. Yet despite the technology at their disposal, Stone and the DoP, Meg White, avoided blue and green screens where they could.
We tried not to rely on it as we wanted all of our thresholds between the hut and the outside to be real and to do some iris pulls to take us over those thresholds, Stone explains. All of the vehicle stuff is shot on low-loaders and car mounts because we didn't want to have any blue or green screen there. We shot on the Alex Mini LF because I like the larger sensor and what it does to the depth of field. We shot with some Panaspeed lenses that have quite vintage characteristics and they were slightly detuned, which I think helped us get away from an overly digital look.
The visual inspirations that Stone and White talked about early on were from films of the 1970s. The sequences on Terry's work site were inspired by the drilling scenes in Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, Stone adds. There's also an amazing Australian film from the '70s called Wake in Fright, which I hadn't seen before that Meg introduced me to. Again, it has this earthy, sweaty texture to it that we really wanted, especially for the pub scenes.
Stone says that in an ideal world it would have been lovely to shoot this on celluloid, but that wasn't impossible due to cost and lack of availability of labs. As far as I'm aware Australia didn't have the facilities, so we went with the digital workflow and tried to gear everything toward that kind of feel, he continues. It's just not practically possible anymore. However, we did all that we could to get away from an overly digital look, from the choice of lenses to wherever possible having atmospherics even very lightly in the air just to kind of give us a softer and more lived-in feel.
In the grade, Stone and his team used a heavier film grain than he'd done in any job before. It felt right, he says. The nice thing about the Alexa is having the latitude to play with that as well. It's also the first thing I shot properly in HDR, too. That helps give it a slightly more celluloid-like range in the image.
The team was mostly based around Sydney at Scheyville National Park, which was once a prisoner-of-war internment camp and latterly used to process migrants. The rationale was to use as many existing structures as possible.
Most of the huts were gone so we rebuilt them on the footprints of where the old ones had been, Stone says. There are two remaining huts there and ours were indistinguishable. We also filmed in a town called Carcoar a five-hour drive from Sydney across the Blue Mountains. Once you get across the Blue Mountains the landscape just opens up and becomes a lot more rural, open and empty. It had the colours Meg and I wanted.
At the camp, a number of 2D wooden huts were built for wide shots to get the hut numbers up. Australian VFX vendor Slate expanded the camp further in aerial shots using digital huts and crowd simulation, which was also employed for the boat arrival sequence. But outside of these moments, VFX were kept to a minimum. However, such was the unforeseen bad weather in wait for it Australia, a lot of sky manipulation and other weather-related chicanery was deployed.
The weather in Australia was pretty horrendous, so we had to work quite hard on the shoot and in post to try and keep it as a sunny show as that was a huge part of the pitch, he explains. Most of the shoot was in Australia and we had biblical floods and hailstorms, snow and high winds, thunder and a lot of rain that we had to dance around the whole time.
That said, the production team managed to use the inclement weather to its advantage. My philosophy has always been take what you can with the weather, Stone says. If you don't have cover then you just have to forge on through and work with the weather you're given. It was hard on this job because the dialogue referenced the sun the fact they were coming from rainy Britain to sunny Australia.
To remedy this, the decision was taken to supplement overcast exteriors with
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
08/10/2026
Modern venues have come a long way since the tinny, echoing audio of the mid 20t...
08/10/2026
ESPN's first Super Bowl production will stream in English and Spanish on Disney+, while the ESPN App carries the full slate of game, ManningCast, studio, an...
08/10/2026
From high-school videoboards to War Eagle Productions, the Opelika native is learning how to lead shows and capture big moments
The future of live sports produ...
08/10/2026
The Television Academy and Prime Video have announced a six-year agreement making Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards beginning with the 20...
08/10/2026
Techex will exhibit at NAB Show New York 2026 (Booth 623, Javits Center, October...
08/10/2026
X Games has announced the appointment of Steve Rogers as Chief Operating Officer. Rogers previously served as COO of World Supercross and spent nearly a decade ...
08/10/2026
Fonn Group has appointed Trevor Spielmann as Sales Director for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Spielmann joins from EVS, where he held sales and business de...
08/10/2026
The flagship program will originate from major PG events with a four-camera production, live distribution across PGTV, social platforms
Perfect Game is bringin...
08/10/2026
Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. More often, it happens at the point of collision: when worlds that have run on separate tracks begin to converge. That is...
08/10/2026
For decades, the production and broadcast services business has run on a familia...
08/10/2026
Uplynk, Zixi, BroadView Software, and Grass Valley have published The IP Converg...
08/10/2026
The NFL has announced the return of the Big Data Bowl, the league's analytics competition, now in its ninth year and again powered by AWS. Registration is o...
08/10/2026
Eutelsat has renewed its partnership with T l diffusion d'Alg rie (TDA), Algeria's national broadcasting network operator, for continued distribution of...
08/10/2026
Disney will livestream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, alongside the game's broadcast on ESPN and ABC. All Disney subscribers in the United States wi...
08/10/2026
RHStv and Red House Streaming have announced an expansion of their partnership w...
08/10/2026
Gray Media has announced a distribution agreement with TEGNA and DAZN to simulca...
08/10/2026
SVG readers can save 10% on registration and receive a complimentary Solutions H...
08/10/2026
PROTON Camera Innovations GmbH has been named a recipient of a 2026 Technology a...
08/10/2026
Industry leaders discuss real-world cloud workflows for live game production, pl...
08/10/2026
The next-gen audio technology joins Dolby Vision as part of Apple TV's immersive F1 experience...
08/10/2026
David France, Jesse Short Bull, Mato Wayuhi, N. Bird Runningwater, Jodi Archambau, Jhane Myers, Paul McGuire, Amber Morning Star Byars, Holly Macarro, Nick Tils...
08/10/2026
Dynamic panning plug-ins get an upgrade
Sound Particles have just announced major updates for two of their popular dynamic panning plug-ins. Energy Panner 2...
08/10/2026
New expandable instrument boasts full DMNO engine
UDO Audio have just announced the upcoming release of a new, expandable synth that packs the power of the ...
08/10/2026
Two new subwoofers added to monitoring line-up
ADAM Audio's monitoring range has just been expanded with two new DSP-equipped subwoofers, the Sub8 PRO a...
08/10/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
08/10/2026
Calrec gives broadcasters freedom of choice at NAB Show New York We're looking forward to meeting up with you all at NAB New York on 21st-22nd October.
Cal...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its next generation of media orchestration services at NAB S...
08/10/2026
Clear-Com played a critical role in the production communications infrastructure for Rock in Rio 2026, one of the world's largest and most recognized music...
08/10/2026
Sohonet Launches ClearView Rush: A Leap Forward in Studio Review, Built for Crea...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Ikegami announces a major expansion to its range of broadcast-quality live production cameras. Scheduled for introduction on Ikegami booth 708 at NAB New York, ...
08/10/2026
Calrec will be located at Booth 444.
Freedom to choose
The media landscape is evolving quickly, and the broadcasters best placed for what comes next will be...
08/10/2026
LiveU has announced that CRD Audiovisuel relied on LiveUs LU900Q intelligent production unit, with built-in native LiveU IQ (LIQ ) connectivity, to deliver live...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Marshall Electronics, a globally recognized provider of high-performance video solutions for broadcast, streaming, AV and professional production, will exhibit ...
08/10/2026
14-hour package also includes A Remarkable Place to Die season 2 as well as libr...
The £10 ticket to sunny Australia was a no-brainer for people looking to escape the post-war gloom and grey skies of Great Britain. However, the weather waiting for the cast and crew when they filmed Ten Pound Poms in Sydney last year was worse than what they left behind, writes Marlon Szczepankiewicz
