Big Brother has left the building
What happens when Australia’s largest reality production wraps for the year? In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Brooke Hemphill visits the set of Big Brother for the final two days of the 2013 shoot to find out.
It’s one hour until show time on the Gold Coast set of Big Brother and an eerie silence has descended over the back-of-house production offices. After 101 days of filming the reality series that sees a group of strangers shut off from the outside world, it’s all over bar the shouting – the shouting of the fans during the live finale that will run more than 20 minutes over schedule, the shouting of the contestants when the winner Tim Dormer is eventually crowned and of course, the shouting of the many crew members behind the scenes that make the show come to life.
From seamstresses to directors, producers, publicists and everything in between, the 300 plus team have been working around the clock for more than three months to churn out more than 70 episodes and up to 90 minutes of television per night – the most of any series of the Australian version of Big Brother. And while many of the crew are planning to take a nice, long rest after the production run, others are off to the sets of shows including the UK version of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which is currently shooting in Queensland, and the new Working Dog series on Ten, Have You Been Paying Attention? Nonetheless news announced during the show’s finale that Big Brother will return in 2014 must come as a welcome relief to the dedicated team who eat, sleep and breathe Big Brother.
Chris Blackburn, executive producer and the man responsible for pulling together footage for the daily show for each weeknight, says: “To put it in perspective, when I started on this we used to do half an hour a day. We used to think it was amazing that we got that out.” The current series has seen the crew produce several 60 and 90 minute shows each week with the latter equivalent to 68 minutes of content plus ad breaks. Blackburn says: “Now we have eight segments, 68 minutes with pretty much the same team but we have much better technology. This year was the busiest we’ve been.”
