This Is Going To Be Big is a heart-warming two-part documentary unfolding as teenagers living with disabilities and neurodiversity share their dreams and confront their challenges while preparing for their high school musical. Their parents and teachers are with them, but the spotlight is on the teens coming of age wanting to show who they are and what they can do.
With unprecedented access to Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School (SMRSS) at Bullengarook, Victoria, the two-part series was filmed across 2022 and 2023 against the backdrop of classes, lunchbreaks and the auditions, rehearsals and performances of the school’s biennial musical production.
Chelsea, Elyse, Halle and Josh each have their own reasons for wanting to be in the cast of their high school musical. Music teacher Darcy Nolan and drama teacher Lori Nichols are co-writers on the script for this jukebox musical, The Time Travelling Trio, telling the story of three students doing a project on John Farnham when they find a way to go back in time to cross paths with the singer at key moments in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. School facilities manager Tony Rains is the producer of the musical which is staged at the local community theatre.
Writer and director Thomas Charles Hyland presents This Is Going To Be Big as a life-affirming and tenderly humorous insight into young adulthood, with universal themes of love, friendship, belonging and self-acceptance. This is not a series focusing on disabilities and differences, it is a slice of life exploration with complex characters who have the power to bind audiences through the commonality of shared experiences and feelings at a critical moment in time - and have them singing and cheering along too.
The documentary producers are Catherine Bradbury and Josie Mason Campbell for Fremantle Australia and Jim Wright for Truce Films, with Mason Campbell and Wright also operating as executive producers along with Abigail Hargrave for Abstar Productions.
This Is Going To Be Big is a Fremantle Australia and Truce Films production with principal production funding from Screen Australia, in association with Australian Broadcasting Corporation, VIC Screen, Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund and financed with support from Netflix and Abstar Productions.
Fremantle Australia and Truce Films partnered with Bus Stop Films, an inclusive filmmaking organisation, to develop and roll out the Disability Representation and Inclusion plan for This Is Going To Be Big. The plan includes ongoing collaboration through the production and launch strategies and a training attachment opportunity for a Bus Stop Films’ Accessible Film Studies Program student in the camera department. This Is Going To Be Big is certified as Inclusively Made.
Production Credit: This Is Going To Be Big is a Fremantle Australia and Truce Films production with principal production funding from Screen Australia, in association with Australian Broadcasting Corporation, VIC Screen, Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund and financed with support from Netflix and Abstar Productions. Writer and director: Thomas Charles Hyland. Producers: Catherine Bradbury, Josie Mason Campbell and Jim Wright. Executive Producers: Josie Mason Campbell for Fremantle Australia, Jim Wright for Truce Films and Abigail Hargrave for Abstar Productions. ABC Commissioning Editor: Kalita Corrigan. ABC Acting Head of Factual: Richard Huddleston
