Hurry Up and Wait

Well, just finished my first ever acting role, as Generic Safety Officer, in a government sponsored ad that won't air until March, and which may never see the light of day if Dr Gallop gets kicked out of the Premier's office.

It's a political/bureaucracy/accounting thing.

We filmed up at the Police Academy in Joondalup, in a delightful little pretend-town they call the Strategic Village, where we improvised an emergency scenario involving a transformer that'd blown up or something, and which was translated visually into smoke pouring out of a High Voltage room. It turns out everything in the Strategic Village - the Chicken Treat, the Guardian Pharmacy, the Shell station - is fake except for the High Voltage Room, and assorted safety officers and management types had to stand around making sure we observed all the safety protoccols.

Particularly when smoke grenades became involved.

Well, we had to improvise, didn't we. Very helpful, the police. I wonder if they'd rent out the Strategic Village for film shoots.

All in all, considering how the Downed Power Cable scenario had to be altered during the day of the shoot to the Fire In The Transformer Room scenario, with whatever props could be scavenged, sorry, I meant borrowed, at the Strategic Village itself, we did pretty well to film the required six second scene in just under three hours.