Category: The Series

Art Department

– The Art Department recreated a bright looking beachside town and surfing community where everything was ‘not as it seemed’. Flowers hung from the street lamps, surfboards were carried around like handbags and everything and everyone was abnormally happy! Fake seagulls hung from the ceiling in the school café, and weird and wonderful culinary delights were on display.

– Several rooms were ‘dressed’ as Headmaster Q’s office with large goldfish tanks, huge bookshelves as secret doors and a creepy crawly dark atmosphere. ‘Q’ sat at his desk spying on life at Sunset Cove and Atlantis High through his monocle.

– A unique and specially-equipped spaceship was made in the Cloud 9 studio. Its main feature was a global shell built with a large open screen at the front, to which special effects were added. The inside of the ship was made from a type of fluffy material and there were three special seats within the spaceship where the aliens sat while spying and flying through life at Atlantis High.

– The entire show featured a special image, as though manufactured from an idyllic magazine, where all was rosy/cheerful/bright and multi-coloured and where every member of the community displayed strange behaviour. This all stemmed from the fact that there was a covert spy network/alien force surrounding Sunset Cove which also ultimately affected the life of Giles Gordon.

– The school field was transformed into an American football field with huge plastic/rubber moulded goal posts flying in the breeze at either end. A couple of days the breeze was stronger than expected and the posts almost bent in half!

– The Props Department had the task of finding suitable props that were often meant to be tacky and fake, for extra special effects or for the purpose of making life at Sunset Cove look abnormally idylic! These included fake flower leis, birds, daisies and other such items.

– Many props were also required by the multitude of strange and eccentric characters, such as Commander Vermont, who because of his love of military style life, carried around big toy guns and huge spray hoses for protection. His wife, Mrs Vermont, had a liking for endorsing many products that also had to be carefully designed so as to be unique and original. This required many special computer graphics for the wrappers, signs, photos, posters and banners.

– A number of unique and often luxury vehicles were required on set, most of which are not readily available in New Zealand but were loaned to Cloud 9 by classic car collectors. These included US army jeeps, a jeep wrangler, a black Lincoln town car, a bright yellow bug VW, an old style Mercedes Benz and a classic Mustang. These types of cars were necessary to create a typical American-style beach life.

When all the cast have gone back to their normal lives, the crew are on “downtime” and the studio resembles a ghost town, the post production team are still hard at work in their darkened rooms!

First stop is with the editor who, along with the assistant editors, has the huge task of choosing shots from all the footage and piecing it together to form a rough cut of the episode. This rough cut gets sliced and glued many times in order to pull the story together in just the right way.

Next stop is with the music editor who chooses the right music for each scene. There is a vast amount of music for him to choose from on Atlantis High as the soundtrack was written specifically for the series and there is a lot of it! This editor has to watch each scene carefully in order to get a feel for it and to know which piece of music suits it best. The track is then cut together and laid down.

On to the sound designer who adds all the strange and wonderful noises and sound effects from the alien spaceship and the aliens themselves, to the running water in the shower. This designer works closely with the dialogue editor who has to make sure that the dialogue can actually be heard and that it fits in with the lip movement of the actors. ADRs (or Additional Dialogue Requirements) are sometimes needed and the dialogue editor re-records the actors speaking their lines. Other ADRs such as crowd noise is also recorded.

Across the corridor is the mixing suite where the dubbing mixer works his magic from a NASA style control board. All the levels are checked so that the music is not too loud, the dialogue too quiet, etc.
Last stop is with the post production manager who colour grades the episode and makes sure that the sky and sea are suitable for the high standards in Sunset Cove!