GLOBAL STREAMING POWERHOUSE NETFLIX HAS PARTNERED WITH TALENTED VICTORIAN CREATIVES TONY AYRES AND CHRISTIAN WHITE ON ITS LATEST ORIGINALS PRODUCTION, CLICKBAIT.
Written, co-created and produced in Victoria, Clickbait is an 8-episode crime drama following the story of a murder announced on social media.
The creators are making the most of Melbourne’s versatile locations which will double as a US city, with seven months of production activity to commence in September. The show will film at Docklands Studio Melbourne and various locations around the city.
Film Victoria has been a longtime supporter of Melbourne-based production company Matchbox Pictures, and Clickbait offered an opportunity to produce Victorian content on a bigger canvas.
However, even though it was created in Melbourne, Clickbait could have been filmed anywhere in the world. Film Victoria had to prove that the state could not only offer competitive incentives and meet the creative requirements, but that Melbourne had the skills, facilities and locations the production needed.
For the locations, the Victorian co-creators, Tony Ayres and Christian White, had every confidence their home city could provide the perfect setting for the US-set series, but the challenge was to assure production partner Heyday Television, the studio NBC Universal, and Netflix that Melbourne could convincingly double for the key US city.
Film Victoria’s Location and Production Services team worked with the producers to suggest US cities that could be easily doubled in Melbourne, delivering location galleries and production services for the project. With the support of federal and state incentives, and bolstered by the quality of the state’s talent and crew, Victoria successfully secured the project.
The city’s ability to represent other places and other times has long made it a popular destination for filmmakers – from 1900s San Jose in Winchester and 1930s Shanghai in The Longest Shot, to Cleveland and New York in science fiction thriller Predestination, and Texas in superhero film Ghost Rider.
US TV series Hunters took its audience from Baltimore to Turkey to Colombia without leaving Melbourne, while Killer Elite – set in the UK, Oman, Dubai and Paris in the 1980s – was also largely filmed in Melbourne.
Recently, AMC’s Preacher filmed its entire fourth season in and around Melbourne, recreating ‘Masada’ less than an hour’s drive from the city.
For more information on Victoria’s production incentives and filming locations, contact:
Joe Brinkmann
Manager, Production Attraction & Support
joe.brinkmann@film.vic.gov.au
www.film.vic.gov.au