What a strange year it has been and continues to be. But I am sitting here on my laptop, which means I am alive and well and – presumably safe – for which I am truly grateful, given how many people world wide have lost their lives to COVID-19. Absolutely awful.
It was Halloween recently, not that I particularly encourage that. It’s not an Australian tradition. Only my opinion. But it also means Christmas is just around the corner. And there seems to be a baby boom in our family, with one due on Christmas Day itself. 
And, HOPEFULLY, ‘No Looking Back’ is starting to look good for next year. The WA border has been softened ‘conditionally’ – and that lasted two whole days when SA suddenly had an outbreak. Now SA has been banned from WA, except for people with exemptions which are very rare. With huge concern about SA’s outbreak and people from there having already travelled far and wide throughout the nation, it is looking increasingly likely that our premier could close the border tightly again, to the whole nation. And it seems this could happen very quickly – with a moment’s notice.
As I said, things can and do happen at a second’s notice and this is the case currently. NSW is now battling a cluster outbreak, which appears to be growing – so premiers of the other states are watching intently and borders are changing as the outbreak grows. And Christmas is less than a week away – wow – what a year! The other issue that I can see is complacency – so many people across the nation (and world I think) have become quite complacent and this is a worry – that virus is still out there.
When I first heard that the border was going to be opened, I thought that we would be able to bring in actors from South Australia, my home state, after all. But I think if I tried to do that, I would be jumping the gun a tad. Disappointing still but the risk of this virus is just too high.
And, sadly, with COVID behaving the way it is nothing can be guaranteed, so we also had to rethink the production companies that are working on NLB. This did mean that the one in SA has been taken off our list and we are now sticking with two WA companies: Rodman Pictures (Owner/Producer: Rod Manikam) and Media Productions – Australia (Owner/Director: Steve Fitzgibbon). However, I do plan to work with the SA production company as well as many of the SA actors on our list and the few from the eastern states, in the future. And the project in mind is already being planned. I am, therefore, including all the SA actors (and some from other states) whom have indicated that they are still interested, given the chance, in the recipient list for this. This list includes a few Indigenous actors too. But I really have no idea what is going to happen – who does???? – I just live in hope and still do want to give all aspiring and rising actors in SA and WA a chance, as well as a lot of other people in the industry.
I have been receiving emails from quite a few actors from other states recently – while I will respond to them individually I am hoping that by receiving and reading this you will get some idea of what I am still trying to do – all the time remembering that COVID seems to be ruling the world at the moment and everything could change so quickly. Thank you so much to those people whom are still showing interest. That is really appreciated.
Most of NLB will be shot in WA – we have three stations involved with two others as backups. We have a good list of extras and I am now working on ‘bigger’ names for the more major roles.
Ok, it’s now Tuesday 17th and it seems ‘things’ have changed again. Obviously I didn’t finish this in one sitting, which is something that is becoming increasingly common these days. I am hoping that NLB will start shooting pretty early next year, but nothing – absolutely nothing – is guaranteed.
My goodness, life is confusing at the moment. I keep thinking I will finish this and get it out – then I get interrupted and leave it for a couple of days and in that time, several things have changed. And things continue to change. It’s now December (what in the heck happened to the rest of November – actually, what happened to the rest of the year????) and Christmas is just there. And more and more things keep happening and changing.
See? Told you. I left this yesterday and already things have changed. Not sure for the better or not. But we have now set out date for our first pre-production for our meeting in January, which is a big step forward at the moment. Just so exciting and much to do.
However, I am going to leave this here and get it out. I do plan to get the next blog post out after our meeting in January.
In the meantime, I will take this opportunity to wish everyone a very merry, albeit a tad different, Christmas and may the coming year be a heck of a lot better than the current one.
And please stay well and safe – and if you are not well, I hope you recover quickly.
