The Bazura Project: Calling all Cinefiles
Author: CBOnline | Source: CBOnline | Date: 10-04-08
Caffeine donations welcome
What did Rolf De Heer really intend with Bad Boy Bubby? What are the secrets behind a cinema projectionists endurance in a windowless void? How does one ensure survival of an epic film festival? These answers and more can be found out on Channel 31’s guide to cinefile alchemy, The Bazura Project.
Writer / Presenter team Lee Zachariah and Shannon Marinko, along with Producer Tim Egan, are the cerebral clout behind the hit series about film. The shows second season had a peak of
74,000 viewers in Melbourne alone throughout 2007.
Now gearing up towards third series, set to commence in June 2008, CBOnline talks with Lee Zachariah.
How did the Bazura Project get its start?
Bazura has multiple origin stories. Thankfully, all of them involve me.
I'd started up a production company with two friends from high school, and we were always on the lookout for new projects, though mostly we stuck to TV commercials and corporate videos. At the same time, Shannon and I were working on a TV show idea. See, we were both at Bond Uni up in Queensland (but we're both Melbourne boys). We had hosted the annual film festival there, and done it all via video, with the two of us sitting at a desk, a la Bazura. It went over extraordinarily well, possibly the best reception we've ever had to anything.
So, Shannon and I were struggling with different ideas for shows, including a mock breakfast show called Wakey Wakey Australia. Around that time, I begun writing the regular AICN-Downunder column on the ridiculously popular Ain't It Cool News website. A guy in Sydney who worked for 20th Century Fox liked my column and wanted to do a TV show in that vein, so I collected all of these people together and we filmed the Bazura pilot.
It's worth noting that other people involved in the show probably have a different version of events, but theirs won't involve me as much as mine has, so we'll stick to this one.
Worst and / or best interview?
This will be very subjective, as I think Shannon has a very different list to mine. We've been pretty lucky with our interviewees on the whole. My favourites, so far, have probably been James Hewison and Sue Maslin, mostly because their energy and ability to chat easily on camera makes up for my deficiencies as an interviewer.
Not sure what the worst was. Possibly Jack Sargeant, but that was partly because I hadn't prepared enough, and partly because our sound equipment conked out. Gotta love community TV (actually, I really do).
Oh, and Jason Schwartzman was awesome. Really friendly guy. Very un-Hollywood.
What was the most challenging segment to shoot and why?
There'd be a few contenders for that one. I'm tempted to say the Back
to the Future opening, because we shot that continuously over three
months, but it wasn't as difficult as it was cumbersome.
For the Season One finale we shot the massive Oscar Etiquette feature story on the same day we were shooting the Graduate opening. Both were the most ambitious segments we'd attempted to date, and we also managed to shoot it on what I think
was the hottest day of 2007. And there was a lot of running involved. And a couple of dozen extras. A cinema location. A church location. An actual bus. About eight or nine costume changes. I nearly passed out at one point from exhaustion.
Job hazards? (eg. film festival over saturation, over zealous fans, etc)
No film festival over-saturation (we're too busy making a show about us watching films at a film festival to find time to watch films at the film festival) or over-zealous fans (no matter how many ads I put on Screen Hub). Mostly, it's sleep deprivation. We have an extremely ambitious show for community TV. Any individual episode will include a location interview, a location review, a night of studio shooting, an incredibly complicated opening sequence, and feature stories that include lots of graphics, location filming, or -- more often than not -- both. Then add editing and said graphics onto all of that, and you've just filled an entire week for four people working full time and about a dozen other working part time.
During Bazura production period, I average three to four hours sleep a night. The night before an episode, we usually work thirty-six hours straight, with people sleeping in shifts. You've got to love what you do.
Where did The Bazura Project get its name? Find out
here
In withdrawal mode for the start of Bazura's new season? Don't fret, Shannon and Lee currently grace the Channel 31 screens as hosts of Saturday Night Cult Movies at 10pm.
