A few weeks ago, The Monkeys and Revolver produced a musical film with Australian director, Kim Gehrig, to mark 50 years of bravery, creativity and wonder at the world’s most celebrated cultural landmark, the Sydney Opera House. It was a huge and complicated production with the added prestige (and stress) of being for Australia’s world-famous performance space. The Sydney Opera House was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the World Heritage Convention in 2007, placing it alongside the Taj Mahal, the ancient Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China as one of the most outstanding places on Earth.
The film’s song, Play it Safe, was written and composed by Australian singer, Tim Minchin. Its message is about the important of defying conventions and taking risks. The film’s cast was huge – Sydney Symphony Orchestra, The Australian Ballet, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Ziggy Ramo, Zahra Newman representing Sydney Theatre Company, John Bell representing Bell Shakespeare, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Elma Kris representing Bangarra Dance Theatre, Kira Puru, Cathy-Di Zhang representing Opera Australia, William Barton, Courtney Act, Jimmy Barnes, Sydney Dance Company Pre Professional Year Students and Associate Artists, Lucy Guerin dancers and Minchin himself.
Revolver had to work around performances, rehearsals and meandering tourists as well as manage the logistics of a massive cast, archival footage and shooting to fit a song. Executive producer and producer on the project, Pip Smart, took The Stable behind the scenes.
The Stable: It is a beautiful film. And a colossal project
Pip Smart: It was up there with the most challenging productions. Kim [Gehrig] was on the ground with me and it really tested us. The Opera House is one of the most booked and in-demand venues in the world. So, despite the fact that we, in theory, had free rein to shoot there, the reality was obviously a little more difficult. But at the same time, the things that made it challenging were also the things that made it so exciting and so wonderful. Being in the space and prepping in the space was amazing.
The Sydney Opera House is also huge. The size of the infrastructure and the team that make that place work on a day-to-day basis is incredible. And we came blundering in with a film crew. Obviously, we had to work in and amongst them. They were really wonderful and really accommodating but it was tough. We scheduled around a lot of availabilities. There was a lucky last-minute cancellation for us in the concert hall, and that became the anchor around which we built the shoot. We had a whole day in that concert hall, which is almost unheard of so, we structured everything else around that. There were moments when we had a window. For example, three hours in the beautiful purple carpeted concert hall foyer. But then suddenly we had dancers and musicians and a thousand people coming out from the end of a Miss Saigon performance and walking through your set. It got tricky.
TS: And working with Tim Minchin?
PS: Tim’s a force. He’s incredibly intelligent. Essentially, he’s a genius. Obviously Tim, Sydney Opera House and the Monkeys had done an enormous amount of work on this project before we came anywhere near it. They had done all the work to get the song and the project up and running with a team on board. We came on board at the point where the song was pretty much locked. Tim worked with Elliot Wheeler, who did the arrangement and the music supervision and produced the song. But we had to start to work with the Opera House, the Monkeys and Tim about who the celebrity musical contributors were going to be, because there were a lot of people, such as Ziggy Ramos, Kira Peru, Courtney Act, Jimmy Barnes… We helped to workshop who those people were going to be and how they would balance out the song musically as well as in a film sense.
And it was amazing to watch Tim him work. In fact, it was a privilege to watch him work and to be there every step of the way. Kim and he were wonderful together. They bounced off each other and it was just a privilege to sit there in many three-hour meetings with the two of them, working things out like details of the lyrics and verses. We also had quite a complicated coordination job. The song and film feature the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Ballet, Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare. All those people needed a place in it, and in order to have a place in the film, they needed a place in the song. So it was quite complex in getting the song right structurally.
TS: Kim Gehrig has moved to LA. It was coup to have her directing.
PS: The song was what got Kim on board. It was always brilliant. From the very first time she heard it, she just said, “Well, How can I say no?” She’s an incredibly in-demand director around the world but it happened that her grandmother was turning one hundred, so she was coming out here for her birthday when the whole thing of was kicking off. It felt as though it was meant to be. Kim arrived and we did a whole lot of prep around her grandma’s birthday party, then she went back to LA because she was putting her kids into school and had a lot of life to get on with, and then she came back out for the shoot.
TS: There’s a lot of archival footage that you would have had to source as well.
PS: Yes. But to be honest, that was a real pleasure. One of the amazing things about working with the Sydney Opera House is that we had access to so many incredible people and so many doors were opened for us. Having worked in advertising for a long time where you kind of struggling when you’re finding things, for the Opera House’s 50th birthday celebration, suddenly it is actually really wonderfully easy. And the Opera House facilitated a lot of the archival footage. Kim is incredibly rigorous, though, and we did a lot of searching, but they were amazing at getting things cleared and helping us get access to different sections of the archive. I think we had a Dropbox of archival footage that was hundreds of hours of stuff and Kim watched every minute. A historian has put together put together the Sydney Opera House exhibition at Museum of Sydney, so we talked to him and saw all his content, a huge amount of it. Kim loves that kind of side of it, and it was really important to her, so we started collecting from day one, as soon as we knew the job was on. We were also working with rather limited resources in terms of scale. So we knew that the archival footage would give us the scale we needed.
TS: What does this project mean to Revolver?
PS: PS: It was enormously important to Revolver. Our relationship with The Monkeys is hugely important to us, and for us to be able to collaborate with them on something so significant. We work with The Monkeys a lot, but to do something that transcends advertising was special. For all of us, being involved with the Opera House and Sydney Symphony Orchestra and getting to be on Zoom meetings with Steven Page and these amazing people at the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Australian Ballet was just such a privilege. It really felt different, like we were participating in something a little bigger than the niche advertising world that we operate in. That was real treat.
We gave a lot at Revolver. I don’t normally produce that much anymore, so I came out of EP to produce the job. It was very labour intensive and everyone in the office paid the price for me not being around. From the people on the desk to Michael [Ritchie], sacrifices were made for me to be able to do it, and everyone at Revolver put themselves into it by listening to me and helping me, giving advice.
Credits:
Creative Agency: The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song
The Monkeys Co-founder & Group CEO, Accenture Song ANZ President: Mark Green
Co-founder & Group Chief Creative Officer: Scott Nowell
Chief Creative Officer: Tara Ford
Executive Creative Director: Barbara Humphries
Senior Art Director: Alex Polglase
Senior Copywriter: Jake Ausburn
Head of Production & Senior Producer: Penny Brown
Producer: Izzy Robertson
General Manager: Kezia Quinn
Senior Business Director: Fizzy Keeble
Experience Strategy Director: Tim Wilson-Brown
Strategist: Raghav Iyer
Production House: Revolver x Somesuch
Director: Kim Gehrig
Producer & Executive Producer: Pip Smart
Managing Director & Co-Owner: Michael Ritchie
Director of Photography: Stefan Duscio
Choreographer: Lucy Guerin
Production Designer: Steven Jones Evans
Costume Creative Director: Vanessa Coyle
Costume Stylists: Olivia Simpson & Nicchia Wippell
Editorial: TRIM x ARC Edit
Editor: Elise Butt & Tom Lindsay
Post Executive Producers: Daniel Fry & Noreen Khan
Post Producer: Kani Saib & Tatyana Alexandra
Colourist: Trish Cahill
Online: Eugene Richards
Music and Lyrics: Tim Minchin
Music Production: Turning Studios
Executive Music Producer & Arranger: Elliott Wheeler
Turning Studios Producer: Carla de Menezes Ribeiro
Music Mix Engineer: Jamieson Shaw
Musicians: Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra & Sydney Philharmonia Choirs
Bass: Jonathon Schwartz
Drums: Hamish Stuart
Guitars: Ben Hauptmann
Recording Engineers
Band and main vocal recording: Rose Mackenzie-Peterson
Assistant Engineer: Brad Hasiuk @Studios 301
ACO and SSO recording: Bob Scott
Sydney Philharmonia Choir recording: Carlos Arango
Individual Performers: Joshua Craig
Recording Assistants: Keens Brewer, Will Lobb, Benjamin Cauduro & Brianna Salisbury
Single Release Master: Leon Zerves @ 301
Audio Post Production: MassiveMusic
Sound Design: Simon Kane
Foley Artist: John Simpson
Executive Producer: Katrina Aquilia
Client: Sydney Opera House
Brand Lead: Joanne Been
Chief Customer Officer: Jade McKellar
General Manager Marketing: Stephen O’Connor
General Manager Communications: Kate Huish
Creative Director: Dan Ingham
Head of Brand and Marketing Campaigns: Rebecca Munro
Head of Digital Marketing: Paayal Dharmani
Senior Creative Content: Julia Kenny
Production Manager – Creative Studio: Natalia Scherer
Video Content Specialist: Amelia Jang
Senior Communications Manager: Melanie Wellington
Content Marketing Manager: Nicola Whiteside
Paid Media Manager: Jack Woodward
Event Account Manager: Daniel O’Connell
Production Coordinator: Emma Paterson
