Bottle Rocket: Permission Problems

Just a brief post, this, touching on some problems we’ve had over the course of a couple of weeks.

Early on in the pre-production process, with stern words of warning from Paul ringing in our ears, we knew we’d need some permits to film in public. We needed someone from Yarra Trams to give us permission to film at one of their stops, and we needed a few from various councils to give us a thumbs-up to filming on their footpaths. Simple, right? Turns out, not so much.

For one thing, Yarra Trams was difficult. They needed a lot of information from us, and a lot of paperwork, which seemed a little silly when we literally only needed half an hour at a random tram stop. In the end we decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, given that we could film what we needed elsewhere (although in the end we didn’t cast a Liam anyway, so I guess all’s well that ends well).

Getting permission to film on a footpath was a different story. While this didn’t involve as much run-around as Yarra Trams, it was a little tricky because of specific it was. We couldn’t get permission in a whole suburb, we had to do it street by street, which was actually sort of restrictive.

Even though Matt wrote a beautiful, well-worded email to the Melbourne City council to get us permission, he actually sent it to the wrong council. So, there we were, slightly hamstrung, ready to film the next day but with no actual permission to do so. Not wanting to give Paul an ulcer, Matt took it upon himself to message to appropriate council and ask them to waive their 48-hour policy and let us film. Luckily, they were very reasonable, and gave us the permission we were after.

Even if that permission was only for three streets. All in all, it was a big lesson learned. In the past, when filming, I’d just go out there and film. Illegally, as it turns out. The level of organisation required for this project has been really eye-opening – you have to look out for everything, and it’s a good thing that our group was on the ball, or we would have been sitting around twiddling our thumbs on that Friday, no permission to film anywhere.