The Weekly Roll / Six

Roll Six – The Superman Barn

Not many people know that I used to work in the film industry as a stage hand. My dad has always worked in the film, television, commercial and advertising business in construction. That pretty much involved him making crazy cool things with whatever they had available and making it look real. When I finished high school I had no idea what I wanted to do, an opportunity became available to work on the movie Stealth and so only weeks after finishing school I went to work. For the majority of the year I worked on Stealth, and then Superman Returns started production in Sydney so landed a job there too. As a stage hand you do all the non glamorous jobs cleaning.. cleaning workshops, bins, landscapes, studios, construction sites, warehouses and locations. It also meant that I assisted in putting film sets together, loading trucks and one of these sets was the Superman Barn.

It was on Superman Returns that I saw some truly amazing sets being put together, one being the Clark Family House and the Superman Barn which was built at Fox Studios in Sydney, but transported to Rural NSW to the chosen location (which was to resemble the same landscape of Kansas in the USA). It was mid way through my job on Superman that I had the opportunity to start study (in Video Production, 3d Modelling and Animation in a Screen Course) and so I decided to wrap up my job and head off to do that. One of my last tasks before I left was to load this barn onto multiple trucks with a forklift to be sent out to the location. I never saw it finished, I never visited the location and I never saw the movie (I am kind of bad like that).

Fast forward 10 years and I have this amazing opportunity to travel to Stanthorpe in Queensland to document the wedding of Dean & Tracey. Rather than fly and drive from Brisbane, I decided to make a roadtrip out of it and find this Superman Barn (which happens to still be standing in the field that it was put in for the movie). I knew roughly where it was, but had no real idea of where it was or how to get there. After searching around at dusk on my way up to Queensland, I think I found its location but ran out of time to shoot it. After shooting the wedding in Stanthorpe I rushed back the day after and made it in time to spend a few hours there at sunset and as the stars came out.

It was everything I had hoped it to be and more.

Camera – Fuji G617 6×17 Format Panorama Camera
Film – Fuji Velvia 100F
Scanner – Epson v700

The Superman BarnThe Superman Barn The Superman BarnThe Superman Barn

Last Week – The Weekly Roll Five

2 thoughts on “The Weekly Roll / Six

  1. Awesome pics mate. Just came looking for this thing due to a star-light shot of this on higgins storm chasing, June 2022. Your shots are like diametrically opposite.

    1. Hey John! Really glad you found my photos of the barn mate. I really enjoyed finding it (I didnt actually know exactly where it was when I went to look in 2015) so when I found it I was very stoked. It was a wonderful experience hanging out, taking photos with the barn and spending time from the late afternoon until the stars came out sitting on the plains there. Nice to capture it in a different light, I also took some night shots there and hoping to visit again one time again before it falls down.

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