fitzroyalty

I was walking up Napier St on Monday night heading south from Johnston St and saw a film or television shoot in progress. There were women in leopard print miniskirts and faux fur jackets. Must have been the obligatory junkie hooker scene. A new crime or cop drama, I thought to myself.

I then found out from a friend who lives on Napier St that she had recieved notification in the letterbox about the blocked roads resulting from the shoot.

UPDATE: Based on reader feedback, I’ve removed ‘Rush’ from the title of this post. A new police show called Rush was filming in Fitzroy (and Collingwood) at this time, but according to other locals another well known crime show that we are not allowed to watch here in Victoria was also filming in Fitzroy.

I don’t know for sure whether the shoot I saw on Monday night was for the same show as the one I saw setting up on Tuesday morning or the one I photographed on Tuesday night (though it did all seem connected by location and equipment (from Unit One). Perhaps the paranoia of the crew (see below) is more understandable if it was something Victorians are not supposed to see.

I saw them again yesterday morning setting up on my way to work and thought I should investigate when I got home. I like seeing places familiar to me on television. People in New York City must be so familiar with seeing their own city on the screen that they are immune to it, but Melbourne does not appear in dramas that I watch as often, and I can’t think of any obvious Fitzroy locations in recent series.

I stood on the road and footpath on Napier St just north of Johnston St, well away from fences, driveways or the crew themselves. I made sure to turn off the flash on my camera. After I took a photo of the terrace house being used as a set, one crew member came up to me and told me I was not allowed to take photos. I told him that I was in public space and had every right to take photos. He debated for a minute, then went away before coming back to argue the issue further. He didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.

I find it hard to believe that when filming in such a busy location that the crew have not been briefed on how to manage the public. This one obviously had not been to that briefing. He accused me of being a disturbance, which was ridiculous. I came no closer to the shoot than the many other people using the street. He was just another petty dictator with nothing better to do.

The vacant block bounded by Kerr, Napier and Argyle streets, soon to be filled with the cheesegrater building, is also being used as a staging space for the shoot. What I liked most was the flood of light from the set in what are usually quite dark streets.

Rush should be broadcast later this year on Ten. Hopefully it will be better than Banal Road! I surprise myself by how much I like police shows. I like the dry humour and goth eye candy in NCIS, and I also like the sardonic and weary worldview in the various Law and Order series. Australian ones can also be good. I loved East West 101 on SBS, which starred Don Hany who was also excellent in White Collar Blue. I was also probably the only person to enjoy Young Lions, which ended quickly.

While Canal Road has a crime element, the melodrama makes everything about it tedious, and all the Australian crime shows I have watched, including Water Rats, were made in Sydney. I have not seen Underbelly, but bogan gangsters don’t inspire me. I want Rush to be worth watching.

Posts you may find relevant and interesting

• Banal Road, 17 April 2008
• Yarra Council to spend OUR money so THEY can get pissed, 23 September 2008
• The event horizon, 18 September 2006
• full throttle, 15 October 2007
• crowd behaviour, 20 April 2007

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 12:05 am and is filed under Fitzroy, Melbourne, Napier St, intellectual property, media, social issues, television.
Visited 379 times, 3 so far today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.