Scooter crashes, vicious ants and rogue coconuts make for high drama on the set of Shortland Street in Rarotonga. REBECCA BARRY joins the cast and crew on location in the islands.
This is the longest emergency in history. Shortland Street is about to shoot a scooter accident scene in Rarotonga. The crew is poised on the side of the road, nervously tracking the approach of black rain clouds. The victim is lying on the grass, smeared in fake blood.
This needs to happen fast. But there are coconut trees - and potentially falling coconuts - to contend with.
"We don't want to clock anybody," says director Wayne Tourell as the island's safety officer steps in and insists on moving the scene a metre away.
There's a strong gust of wind, a sprinkling of rain and - "action!"
"I'm a doctor, she's a nurse!" yells actor Will Hall (Kip Denton) as he and Toni Potter (Alice Piper) run up the hill from the beach to attend to the patient. A trail of tourists - real ones, not extras - go by on scooters. One rubber-necker gets the speed wobbles and nearly recreates the scene for real.
"Cut!"
A local nurse steps in to explain, in script-altering detail, how the actors should tend to the victim. This is a TV emergency, Tourell explains politely.
"Action!"
"I'm a doctor, she's a ... ow!" Hall jumps up and down. He's cut his foot. The real nurse tends to the fake doctor.
Take five: "I'm a doctor ..." The victim, who has been doing some very good acting as an unconscious person, swats something away from his arm. He's lying in a pool of ants. The ants bite in Rarotonga.
"Take nine: Action!"
"I'm a doctor, she's a nurse!" This time Potter is limping. The real nurse gets the fake nurse a plaster for her blister.
"Cut!"
It starts to rain hard. The crew scramble to erect a shelter. Thirty seconds later, the rain stops. The sun beats down. The costume department races to replace Hall's wet T-shirt and shield Potter with a parasol. Just another day filming in paradise.
A week earlier, five Shortland Street crew members, including Tourell and director's assistant, Cook Islander Moe Hobbs, arrived in Rarotonga to shoot establishing shots, organise props and ingratiate themselves with the locals. The rest of us - Hall, Potter, 19 other crew members, two actors, the publicity team, and 750kg of equipment, arrive the following week. The only person missing is director Renato Bartolomei, (the former Dr Craig Valentine), who came down with the flu at the last minute, and line producer Tim Hansen, who is stuck at home dealing with faulty equipment.
Hansen justifies the cost of this one blockbuster episode - eight times more expensive than an average half-hour of Shorty - by saying it does justice to the plot.
Fans can be assured there's a good twist, even if the triangle between Kip, Alice and Alice's new love interest, Fish, sounds suspiciously X-rated.
"I thought about it when Toni and I were in the water, bobbing up and down," says Hall over a wine in the hotel bar later. "It must have looked like we were ..."
Given Alice has had at least four boyfriends in the past 12 months, this could be their chance to make up for lost time when they flatted together while at med school.
"When he started at hospital, we almost had a thing," says Potter. "But I was with Craig."
During the week, there's time to soak up the Rarotongan lifestyle: scooter rides around the island, snorkelling in the lagoon and a couple of late-night drinking sessions in the actors' beachfront rooms. "I think I deserve [this trip] because I worked so hard last year," says Potter, who suffered anxiety and exhaustion as a result. Hall was invited because "they knew I'd look good in boardies with my moobs out".
Mostly, though, it's an intense shoot: four days filming what would normally be achieved during one day in New Zealand.
Rarotonga was chosen for its proximity and familiarity to Kiwis, and to provide an appropriate backdrop for what Tourell calls, Shorty's "erotic episode".
"It's more cinematic. We're working with this lovely backdrop, so there's less need for close-ups like we'd do in the studio. It's like shooting a short movie."
But not without a few tweaks to the script first.
The scooter scene was originally a jetski accident thought up in the writers' room, until the team arrived and realised it wasn't a favoured pastime in Rarotonga. It was also decided it would be better to involve the locals as much as possible, rather than focusing on tourist activities.
"Rarotonga is such a beautiful, peaceful place and the locals are so lovely and warm," says Tourell. "We had to show our support and dispel any myths that we'd be doing a Joey serial killer storyline."
This isn't the first time Shortland Street has gone abroad. In 1994, Toni and Chris fell for each other on a working trip to Fiji; that was also where Ellen revealed to David she was pregnant. But it is the show's biggest shoot yet.
Shooting a short movie in the tropics isn't easy, even if they have former army member Jill Bailey as on-site line producer, highly regarded director Tourell and some of the most experienced TV crew in New Zealand. The skeleton team are working in 28 degree heat, an environment they can't necessarily control and enough humidity to warrant makeup going through a box of blotting tissues a day. Instead of the three cameras the crew usually use in the studio, this shoot has just the one, so each scene is shot from three angles.
"Last night in the pavilion it was freakin' hot, man," says Potter. "Especially under all the lights. They were trying to make night look like day.
"By that stage everyone was so tired we were all about to explode at each other."
Temperatures also rise during the bar scene. The hotel bar has been packed and tonight Shortland Street is daring to take it over. One drunk hotel guest is not impressed. He storms on to the set, demands a beer from the extra playing the barman and starts hurling insults. The crew have gone out of their way not to get in the way of guests but it's inevitable something's going to give. A New Zealand couple decide to move their wedding back by a day to avoid the show filming near their ceremony.
Mostly though, the reception in Raro is favourable. It's big news, all over the local newspaper and on the TV. When Potter goes to the supermarket, the check-out lady cries. Everywhere she and Hall go the locals giggle and ask to have their photos taken with the stars. Their best welcome comes from the hundreds of excited children at Avatea Primary School.
"After we shot the scooter scene, we were on the back of a ute taking the patient to hospital," says Hall, "and the streets were getting lined with more and more kids and more and more cars. There was some guy on his phone, and sure enough, someone he knows turns up, and then all of that guy's mates turned up. It was almost like we weren't shooting a scene. We were in a parade."
The hope is that the weather will hold out long enough to shoot a romantic sunset scene on the last day. But being the tail end of the rainy season, it buckets down for half the week. The schedule is rejigged so many times that on the final day the crew are forced to shoot scenes at the airport, the resort, in the mountains, by the pool and at the beach. When the sun finally comes out for the perfect sunset scene it's already too late - the crew have wrapped and are pretending not to notice. But after four days of intense shooting, it's hard not to get wrapped up in the drama behind the drama.
Even the red-eye flight home feels like part of the script. In the middle of the night, the air steward turns on all the lights, announces there's a medical emergency on board.
Somehow Hall somehow refrains from running up the aisle shouting, "I'm a doctor, she's a nurse!"
LOWDOWN
Who: Will Hall (Kip Denton) and Toni Potter (Alice Piper)
What: Shortland Street on location in Rarotonga
When: Weeknights, 7pm, TV2
