I’m after the “countdown to Blue Heelers Live” program which ran directly before the Live Blue Heelers episode that aired on 21st April 2004.
The live episode itself was a historic thing that hadn’t happened in 35 years at the time with the whole episode being done out of the Melbourne studios fully live to air. It was quite an achievement,
So I’m hoping that someone captured the pre show of it which detailed the behind the scenes of it all prior to the episode. It was roughly 15 mins in length.
There is some very low resolution clips of it on YouTube, but I’m hoping one of our awesome members out there managed to cap it in a higher resolution. Example below:
TRIVIA
The live episode of Blue Heelers was directed by two different directors: Aarne Neeme, who has extensive theatre experience, and Simon Francis (as on-air director), whose credits include Rove Live and Enough Rope.
The action was shot with up to 8 cameras across two studios at Channel Seven’s former South Melbourne studios. There were three sets - the police station, the pub and the police cells.
According to Erik Thomson, who hosted the “Countdown to Blue Heelers Live” show prior to the live episode, here are the facts in terms of television production (and in regard to making a live episode of Blue Heelers).
The first assistant director cues the actors and acts as the floor manager.
The cameramen shoot the action with handheld cameras, and their assistants clear the cables.
The boom operator has to drop the mic near enough to hear the actor, but the mic itself needs to be kept out of shot.
The studio control room crew involves an on-air director, a director’s assistant, a vision switcher, a lighting director, an audio director and an audio operator. All the cameras feed the material from the studio floor to the control room and the vision switcher has to mix and switch all the camera shots which make up a live episode, according to the on-air director’s instructions.
I think Blue Heelers deserves a reboot assuming they can get John Wood (Tom Croydon), Julie Nihill (Chris Riley), Martin Sacks (PJ Hasham), Neil Pigot (Falcon-Price) and Peta Doodson (Monica Draper) on board.
A pilot plot could be PJ arrives in Mt Thomas for a meeting with senior police officers including a Police Commissioners office representative with a proposal for PJ to become the new Senior Sergeant and command lead. At the start PJ is met by Tom Croydon and after some friendlies, PJ asks Tom if he knows why he was requested to attend. Tom tells him that he was recommended as the person to lead after several other officers only staying short term. Tom warns PJ that Falcon-Price is still trying to close the station down. Also PJ has a surprise backer, Monica Draper.
Initially 13 episode signing which would have 2 alternate endings for the season.
Ending one - series continues with a Christmas party and drinks at the Imperial.
Ending two - station closing down with community protests which Falcon-Price using this kind of community interference is why the station is closing.
These are ideas as to how it might work. Nothing has been suggsted that it could be rebooted.
You need one person for continuity like PJ running the station or something. But agreed, kinda stunning nobody has bothered to try considering it’d be about the only local drama that would rate.
