109 replies to this topic

[bacco007]

Brilliant production although I have zero interest in cricket. Who played the part of interviewer David Frost? You could swear he was the real thing.

It appears that some of the archival footage was used as is and they just inserted the actors in the movie.

[Big Dan]

Some of the video production techniques used were done quite well. Especially the bit towards the end where they are playing the first Supertest at VFL Park.

[IanG]

Good cliff hanger too where the sightscreen falls down

[MillerT1]

Really good telemovie. Didn't think it would happen: Lachy Hulme is a better Kerry Packer than Rob Carlton (who was really good too).

[Johnson28]

Also noticed that Nine actually ran the end credits with no advertising, promos, voiceovers, squishing text, etc etc. Very odd in this day and age but was nice to see.

I was quite surprised by that. Showing some respect to its former owner.
According to TV Week, next week's part 2 will be two hours and not one hour.

Edited by Johnson28, 20 August 2012 - 06:22 PM.

[nyblonde]

2.097m last night.

Brilliant - I thought it would be a total winner - next Sunday will be bigger when they get into more interesting storylines....

[triton]

As a cricket fan and viewer of WSC at the time (and I was actually in the crowd the night Wayne Daniel hit that six) it would have had to be pretty bad for me not to like it, but I thought it was superb, including the Packer character (though I wonder if the real Packer would have made that admission that he was hurt by the criticism, or would have been the least bothered by insults about being overweight).

I remember that the first game got a really small crowd but I don't remember the sight screen falling over. Did that happen?

Somehow they had the actors in the middle at Lord's without that awful flying saucer building behind the pavilion that's there now.

[Big Dan]

Somehow they had the actors in the middle at Lord's without that awful flying saucer building behind the pavilion that's there now.

That would've been edited out. They'd know where to cut out the building.

[triton]

That would've been edited out. They'd know where to cut out the building.

But what was behind it?

[feralflea]

This show is well worth watching, and it is quite entertaining, but, I don't think it warrants the extreme praise its getting.
With the exception of Lachy Hulme as Packer and Damon Gameau as Greg Chappel, most of the characters don't have much of a resemblence to their real life counterpart, nor do they inhabit the characters' persona. I spent most of the program trying to remember who was supposed to be who.
Other than that, the production values were high and script was good.

Edited by feralflea, 21 August 2012 - 10:34 AM.

[bacco007]

But what was behind it?

According to an article in one of the weekend papers - the background was computer generated and they only generated enough to cover each shot

[chrisb]

Somehow they had the actors in the middle at Lord's without that awful flying saucer building behind the pavilion that's there now.

The flying saucer media centre is on the opposite side to the old pavillion at Lords so i assume they filmed either from the 'flying saucer' or in front of it.

[feralflea]

If we laid the months of promo time for Howzat end to end, I suspect it would exceed the actual running time of the two part series by a long margin.
One wonders if they had scheduled half the promo's and sold the freed-up airtime for normal ads, would the ratings for the program be any different, and would the network be financially better off.

[Johnson28]

Just saw part 2. A great series overall, although the use of digital technology could have been better. For example:

Spoiler

When David Hookes resumed batting after he had hit jaw fixed, he faced Andy Roberts and belted the ball to the boundary. Then Andy said "welcome back" and you can see the background crowd was unmoved.

Also I don't quite understand the final scene

Spoiler

After Packer secured the broadcast rights from the Australian Cricket Board, there was another party at his office. When John Cornell walked in to see Packer, Packer was talking on the phone about a new casino. When Packer finished his call and turned his head, Cornell was nowhere to be seen. Packer had a long glimpse at the door.

Edited by Johnson28, 26 August 2012 - 11:28 PM.

[newtaste]

That's how you make great television. Just like Nine used to do, and can still do when they put the effort in. Memories of the great days of Nine with Don Lane on one of the televisions in Kerry's office.

A couple of memories ... Even though Packer made WSC for television, there was still a TV blackout sometimes in the cities where the games were played. In Sydney, the Fairfax owned 2GB had the radio rights for WSC and the great John Pearce was the main commentator. 2GB only covered WSC for the times that TCN was blacked out.

Plainly Kerry Packer didn't get all the exclusive television rights he wanted. For some years after, Nine had the capital city rights to test cricket while the ABC retained the rights in the rest of Australia. Nine and the ABC both had their own cameras at each test, with the ABC continuing to show the play from only one end rather than switching ends and always being behind the bowler as Nine did.

[TelevisionAU]

Plainly Kerry Packer didn't get all the exclusive television rights he wanted. For some years after, Nine had the capital city rights to test cricket while the ABC retained the rights in the rest of Australia.

Aggregation pretty much spelled the end of ABC's involvement in Test cricket as the eastern states all became covered by Nine affiliates. I seem to recall the ABC's commentators did acknowledge the day of their last Test cricket coverage which I guess was 31 December 1991 as Victoria and NNSW were being changed over in aggregation as their respective Nine affiliates took over from 2 January 1992.

And to all those people whinging on Twitter about the amount of ads played during the program... umm, yeah, that's how commercial TV is made. If you want less ads go and watch The Shire that's how cheap TV is made.

And while I'm not always one to nitpick about historical anomalies in these things... although sometimes it is fun, and because I accept it's not strictly a documentary... but it looked like Nine used a more modern variant of their dotted logo rather than the 1970s original which would have been in use at that time. It looked like the Nine logo depicted was a more modern version that was adopted around the time of digital, which had the "9" presented in a slightly thinner type and the dots more widely spaced, while the original was thicker, bolder type.

[newtaste]

Also I don't quite understand the final scene

Spoiler

After Packer secured the broadcast rights from the Australian Cricket Board, there was another party at his office. When David Hookes walked in to see Packer, Packer was talking on the phone about a new casino. When Packer finished his call and turned his head, Hookes was nowhere to be seen. Packer had a long glimpse at the door.

Spoiler

It was John Cornell, not David Hookes.

[Dr. Keats]

And while I'm not always one to nitpick about historical anomalies in these things...

There was an an absolute howler about five minutes into the second part - colour footage of Swanston St, Melbourne at night in "1977" is clearly from the early 1960's. A few others - Betacam SP being used in the 1978 OB van, John Cornell ordering that an ad for Ruffles chips be dumped (as I recall, they didn't exist until well into the 80's), "Driver's Seat" by Sniff & The Tears featuring in a 1977 scene when it wasn't released until 1978, etc.

Overall, though, the period detail was pretty good - and in any case, nowhere as bad as in "The King"...

[MillerT1]

Is it just me or is the composer of Howzat way too big a fan of Moneyball? Most of the score sounded very similar.

[Mike.S]

Encore of last nights episode on this saturday night.