The Magazine of St Aloysius' College ⢠'Men for Others' ⢠Issue XLVII ...
The Magazine of St Aloysius' College ⢠'Men for Others' ⢠Issue XLVII ...
The Magazine of St Aloysius' College ⢠'Men for Others' ⢠Issue XLVII ...
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almost thrown to our own devices to build the sets. <strong>The</strong><br />
Wiz was probably the most complicated from our side <strong>of</strong><br />
it - co-ordinating all the set changes. It was just big blocks<br />
that interlinked, all different shapes that spun around with a<br />
different scene painted on each face.”<br />
His experience at Aloys’ helped win Fergus a place in<br />
NIDA’s competitive Diploma in Technical Production. As part<br />
<strong>of</strong> the interview, he had to create a model theatre set. To<br />
the panel’s astonishment he presented a perfectly–scaled set<br />
– built from Lego. He was ahead <strong>of</strong> his time. Years later,<br />
Fergus would work on an international Peugeot television<br />
commercial, with a massive art department budget <strong>of</strong> a<br />
million dollars. It featured life size toy cars – one <strong>of</strong> which<br />
was made to look like Lego.<br />
In 1992 Fergus got his first pr<strong>of</strong>essional job, as stage<br />
manager at the Ensemble <strong>The</strong>atre, the place that had also<br />
given him his first student work experience. “I earned $342<br />
gross a week”, he laughs. “It seemed an awful lot at the<br />
time.” After that experience were stints with the Belvoir<br />
<strong>The</strong>atre and Sydney <strong>The</strong>atre Company, where he soon<br />
progressed to being a buyer <strong>of</strong> props and other design and<br />
construction materials.<br />
A talent <strong>for</strong> organisation and administration, combined<br />
with a broad-based knowledge <strong>of</strong> techniques from paint<br />
and plastering to carpentry and steel fabrication, and<br />
an ever-expanding network <strong>of</strong> technical suppliers, made<br />
Fergus a natural candidate as a construction buyer on film<br />
productions. “<strong>The</strong>y talk a different language – I fudged my<br />
way in!” So what’s the difference between set design in film<br />
and theatre? “Money!” he grins.<br />
<strong>St</strong>ar Wars III, made in 2003, employed around three<br />
hundred people in the construction department. “We spent<br />
a million dollars on timber alone,” Fergus recalls. Handling<br />
such major accounts has given Fergus considerable<br />
credibility among suppliers, who in turn will ‘go the extra<br />
mile’ in a crisis. Such contacts are invaluable in an industry<br />
where circumstances change quickly.<br />
On the day we meet, Fergus takes me through Fox<br />
<strong>St</strong>udios, where Baz Luhrmann’s epic, Australia, is being<br />
filmed. <strong>The</strong> movie has been plagued with problems –<br />
unprecedented rain on location in Kununurra flooded the set<br />
and equine flu has grounded the horses. With two hundred<br />
and fifty extras hanging around, new scenes will have to<br />
be speedily set up <strong>for</strong> shooting, demanding vast amounts <strong>of</strong><br />
supplies at very short notice – but whether it’s 700 kilos <strong>of</strong><br />
shellac, a natural product used <strong>for</strong> making paint, or bales<br />
<strong>of</strong> hessian scrim which he imports from India to be the<br />
substrate <strong>for</strong> scenery construction, Fergus will deliver, <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
overnight.<br />
Some people might be fazed by the unpredictability<br />
<strong>of</strong> the work, but Fergus thrives on it. On his first feature<br />
film, Kangaroo Jack (2003), starring Dyan Cannon, Estella<br />
Warren and Christopher Walken, the water in a huge<br />
swimming pool on set became discoloured. With a delay<br />
in shooting costing half a million dollars a day, it had to<br />
be emptied and refilled over the weekend. <strong>The</strong> problem<br />
was that it had taken a week to heat. Fergus located an<br />
industrial heating engineer who, by dropping in metal<br />
elements instead <strong>of</strong> using conventional methods, was able<br />
to have it ready by Monday.<br />
Fergus’s job description varies, from Production<br />
Coordinator and Construction Buyer to Logistics Coordinator<br />
<strong>for</strong> events such as the New Year’s Eve celebrations in<br />
Sydney, or the Opening and Closing Ceremonies <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Sydney Olympics and the 2006 Asian Games. Lately he<br />
has set up his own company, Scenery Supplies. But what<br />
doesn’t change is the need <strong>for</strong> good people skills, a sound<br />
practical knowledge <strong>of</strong> diverse trades and materials, solid<br />
organisation and a big dollop <strong>of</strong> lateral thinking – qualities<br />
honed in those long days <strong>of</strong> hammering and planning in the<br />
Great Hall at <strong>St</strong> Aloysius’.<br />
Back then, the thing he hated most about school was<br />
the uni<strong>for</strong>m. “I still wake up every day thinking, thank<br />
God, I don’t have to wear a uni<strong>for</strong>m!” says Fergus. <strong>The</strong><br />
film world is full <strong>of</strong> ‘misfits and outcasts’, a friend once told<br />
him. <strong>The</strong>y’re his kind <strong>of</strong> people. Everywhere we go at Fox,<br />
people call out a greeting. “How’s it going Ferg? How are<br />
the kids?” (He and his wife Elisabeth– ‘a Loreto girl’, he<br />
smiles sheepishly – have two children, Aidan, aged four<br />
and Imogen, sixteen months.) It’s a tight-knit world. “I know<br />
almost every film construction manager in Australia and I’ve<br />
probably worked with half <strong>of</strong> them”, he acknowledges.<br />
<strong>The</strong> boy who preferred being backstage may never see<br />
his own name in lights, but without him there would be no<br />
lights at all.<br />
Ms Siobhan McHugh<br />
<strong>St</strong> Aloysius’ <strong>College</strong><br />
A Jesuit School <strong>for</strong> Boys _ Founded 1879 aloysiad / page 43