A BACCHUS Marsh filmmaker and his artistic girlfriend have put Moorabool in the spotlight with a new TV series.
Matthew Macaulay, 25, and Hoppers Crossing’s Emily Gates, 22, pitched their series, This Terrifying Ordeal, to Channel 31. To their surprise, it was picked up.
“I had been studying for a while when I met Emmy and we started dating and had ideas on different things we wanted to make a short film or two, a comic. So we decided to combine all of it together and made a series,” Macaulay says.
“We approached Channel 31 and pitched the idea, made a pilot and they approved it.”
Macaulay studied film at Deakin University and is the prime writer, actor and director of the series. Gates, a trained teacher, takes care of the publicity and art.
“Emmy is great with design and creating props. She has natural artistic skills,” Macaulay says. He says the series is difficult to describe but it’s been inspired by Brothers Grimm and has been likened to The Goodies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Round the Twist.
“We’ve kind of made our own folktales. It’s a ridiculous anthology series and a presenter links it all together.
“We get inspirations from multiple sources and the feel of the show is quite childlike but strange … it’s a bit like the movie Pan’s Labyrinth but not quite as dark.”
Four writers and up to seven crew members have worked on the six-part series shot in Peppertree Park, a pine forest at Bostock Reservoir, Werribee River surrounds in Maddingley, Ballan, Pykes Creek and Portarlington.
Filming has finished but editing is continuing, with three episodes left to screen.
This Terrifying Ordeal screens Saturday at 10pm, repeated Wednesday at 1.30am on Channel 31.
