Play It Safe
Kim Gehrig
Play It Safe paid homage to one of Australia’s greatest landmarks, an architectural feat that defied convention and pushed the limits of innovation. Brought to life by visionary director Kim Gehrig and Tony award winning comedian and songwriter Tim Minchin, the film was a four minute celebration of creativity, fearlessness and fifty years of Australia’s house.
Revolver’s Managing Director and Co-Owner Michael Ritchie shared some of the process behind the work:
“Kim, by nature of her situation, is very careful with what she does and doesn’t do. However, when presented with Tim Minchin’s unforgettable song celebrating Australia’s architectural jewel in the crown, it became an opportunity that she simply could not refuse.
With Kim’s vision being breathtakingly wonderful and enormous, we then had to figure out a way to make it.
Furnished with a budget to only shoot one large day, Pip Smart came on board to make the production logistics meet the vision–somehow extracting a four day shoot to make it all work.
Between the two of them and the wonderful support from our brilliant crew, we came away with a film that still brings a tear to my eye, in both pride of the house and pride in the film itself.”
The production was a complex logistical challenge, as while the project was given unprecedented access to the opera house as a location, it also remains that the venue is Australia’s busiest arts venue. To navigate this, an intricate dance of sorts was choreographed to move the crew and considerable cast seamlessly around large scale opera performances and other uses of the space throughout the four days of the shoot.
The cast featured a veritable who’s who of the Australian arts world, with the final film ultimately featuring around 260 musicians, 50+ dancers and a cavalcade of Australia’s biggest stars, led by Tim Minchin.
The final film is a testament to the tireless work of all involved and the vision of Kim Gehrig whose creative bravery continues to inspire all that work with her.
Agency: Droga5 (formerly The Monkeys)
Production: Revolver x Somesuch
Director: Kim Gehrig
Producer: Pip Smart
BTS Photography: Damian Bennett, Stefan Duscio & Madeleine Pattison
“Growing up in suburban Australia, the culture of playing it safe is something I definitely understood. The message of the piece really rang true to me. For me, the brown suit became a visual metaphor for ‘fitting in’, growing up in the 70s.
I love the Sydney Opera House and all the things it offers: dance, theatre, orchestra, ballet. I wanted to weave together all those elements into a visual journey: from the restraint and conformity of the brown suit and what it represents, towards the vibrant celebration of creativity at the end. When suit jackets are dropped we reveal the expressive and colourful individuals underneath.”
– Kim Gehrig (Black T-Shirts Podcast)
Director of Photography Stefan Duscio alongside Kim Gehrig spent time early on scouting the Sydney Opera House in detail. As Duscio shot stills and showed Kim different aspect ratios, she gravitated towards the squarer 1.43:1 format. With so much of the film composed around the building’s geometry, they chose to shoot on the Alexa Mini LF in open gate mode with spherical Panaspeeds, allowing a real importance to be placed on the architecture.
As the photo boards and scenes took shape, Minchin’s lyrics about ‘building walls’ and ‘finding a box that makes you comfortable’ led to the idea of expanding the frame for the final chorus. The choreography was designed so an action would physically push the frame wider to 16:9, a visual metaphor for breaking free. For this final exterior sequence, Duscio used Ultra Panatar II anamorphics.
Play It Safe could have gone one of two ways: either pointing a finger at people, or empowering them to come along for the journey. “My overwhelming feeling was that I wanted to bring people along naturally, and lean into the celebration.”
“The biggest job I have as a director is to listen, really listen, to the creatives and their ideas. For the Opera House, the team had a brilliant seed of an idea and brought it to Tim Minchin, a tour de force of creativity. My role was to catch that energy and shape it.”
– Kim Gehrig (Black T-Shirts Podcast)
“I never do a directors cut, because I want people to enjoy the work, to understand it and to feel something. It really matters to me if a piece of work resonates with people, if an ordinary person recognises it and gets something out of it. It’s always about the mission behind the work, and the mission of this film was to inspire people.”
– KG
Pip Smart, executive producer, unpacks some of the rigorous production process.
“Throughout the development process, we needed to involve partner companies who worked with the Opera House – people like the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra – they all had to be brought into the creative approach. We had to work out how they were going to fit into the schedule and what their part in the film was going to be, based on their availability and the slots we had for different locations in the Opera House.”
“The archival component of the job was really important, and really fun. Kim is a huge fan of archival material, and she always wanted it to be a part of the film. From doing proper research, with the help of the Opera House and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, we started to build a bank of footage well before we started shooting. This helped us understand what existed archivally and what was going to work in the edit.”
– Pip Smart
