Broome Time Behind the Scenes
Five crew, a sun-drenched coastal outback town and one Shane Jacobson!!
“Thrown into a crazy world of making movies! Part of this new gig they told me. We need a new Broome Time Campaign and we have a pretty good fella who has agreed to be the star of the show…”
As the new CEO for Australia’s North West Tourism, I found myself thrust into the creative world of scripts, storyboards, VO’s (Voice Overs), shoot reccies, understanding the light – it’s always about the light, and of course the sound while filming… “hang on…cut…we need to wait for that plane to fly over…”! And…naturally we had to film everything around the good ol’ Broome tidal movements.
I was blessed to be able to work with a couple of super heroes in their field. Brendan Fletcher and Paul Bell (Belly) have done some pretty amazing projects in their careers. We’re talking AWARD WINNING cinematography and a very handy director, fresh off the “Your ABC” campaign! Only the best will do 😉😉
It didn’t take terribly long for the fun to begin, creative minds developing script plots and what we believed amongst ourselves anyway, to be hilarious scenes… “Shane should talk to a Mystery Lady in the Sky” … “Shane should get stuck in a Pearl Divers Helmet…” “Shane should do Yoga at the Buddha Sanctuary” …. “Should it be a triple shot decaf latte with skinny milk…too much?...too much” ….and so the script developed as did the story board and the reccies (reconnaissance missions)…. “Do we have enough light to shoot this scene after the cocktail scene” …. “Which shirt do we need Shane in for this scene?”… “In Broome Time or Not in Broome Time”?.
Shane Jacobson is not only gifted in his craft of acting and really funny, I mean really, really, wet your pants laughing funny…he is also one of the nicest, most genuine blokes you could ever want to meet. He’s polite, thoughtful, respectful and will make time to talk and have selfies with all who he encounters, upon their request. He’s genuinely the real deal and an absolute pleasure to work with.
The mornings were early…before sunset early, waking up in the dark early. We had an ambitious schedule over a two and a half day shoot for 12 scenes…WHAT!…it was totally hectic, crazy, exhausting, tiring but oh so much fun. We filmed under a bright sun lit Broome sky – it was warm! The Matso’s Brewery scene was sheer relief, and Shane would often come out with some cracking non-scripted one liners… “Geeee…making beer out of fruit…that’s smart!”.
Belly would always pull a sneaky little refreshing ale at day’s end to cheers what a splendidly fine job we all did! Ahhh the small joys. A few “that’s a wrap” drinks and pizza, and suddenly we were done…over and out…finito. Hours upon hours of footage showing Shane Jacobson wreaking havoc 😉😉 in Broome…resisting “Broome Time” then Slipping right into “Broome Time”.
You would think that was the ACTUAL end. It wasn’t…“The Great Broome Shoe Heist” occurred the next day - the unscripted hilarious real-life adventure I had with Shane Jacobson the morning before he flew home to Melbourne.
