It’s been more than a year since I was greeted by an array of cheery garden gnomes at Melbourne Showgrounds, a few steps down from where they film MasterChef, and I’ve been patiently waiting for them to come to life in a murderous rampage ever since.
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them → greet → rampage
As Gnomes producer Richard Kelly jokingly told me on set when I visited, she actually doesn’t kill anyone – “out of respect”.
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she → tell → respect
But for the production team behind this “unhinged” new horror-comedy which just dropped on Stan*, the wait for on-screen carnage has been more than a decade.
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wait → drop → decade
“Gnomes is a big swing,” Kelly says.
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Kelly → say → ?
“You know, ‘killer garden gnomes’ is a fun pitch, and everyone goes, ‘Yeah, that’s fantastic’ …
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that → know → ?
But it’s an ambitious project.
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it → ’ → ?
It’s the kind of project that Australia doesn’t normally make.”
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Australia → ’ → that
“It is definitely one of the craziest shows I’ve worked on,” says Megan Smart (Class of 07, Black Snow), one of the series’ stars.
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Smart → work → stars
“But it’s good crazy! …
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it → ’ → ?
When I first read the scripts, I was laughing out loud.
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I → read → scripts
I thought it was so funny, and so unlike anything we’ve done in Australia.”
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we → think → Australia
Set in the fictional small town of Nompton, Gnomes follows the local police department in its attempts to save the community when an ancient “gnome queen”, last weaponised in WWII, awakens all the lawn ornaments in the midst of Nompton’s inaugural “Gnome-a-Palooza” festival.
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queen → Set → festival
That sentence should give you a sense of the silliness.
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sentence → give → silliness
Never mind the fact that the show opens with an eyepatch-wearing Nazi who is seeking world domination but draws the line at “slut-shaming”.
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who → mind → shaming
“I wrote these scripts with my husband [Paul Verhoeven], and a lot of our days were spent just trying to make each other laugh,” says writer Tegan Higginbotham, who also stars in the series.
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who → write → series
She’s been on board with the project since the start, first developing it as a web series with Joel Cohn (The Mirror), who came up with the concept in 2016.
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who → develop → 2016
“When we were initially developing it, Stranger Things had just had its moment – that’s how long ago it was – and everything that was being pitched was like ‘Stranger Things meets this, Stranger Things meets that’.
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Things → develop → that
I didn’t allow myself to watch it because I didn’t want [Gnomes, another ’80s-influenced show about supernatural forces in a small town] to become a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
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Gnomes → allow → photocopy
”
Billed as “Hot Fuzz meets Gremlins”, however, it is a show that wears some references on its sleeve.
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that → bill → sleeve
Megan Smart, who plays straight-laced senior constable Ellie McKay alongside her former flame Arnold Kipps (Asa Butterfield, Sex Education), says the former was a crucial influence in setting the tone.
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former → play → tone
She watched the film, a 2007 cop comedy written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, on the flight from London to Melbourne just hours after getting the part.
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She → watch → part
“The directors did a really good job of making sure everyone was in the same world, and giving that same brand of comedy,” she says.
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she → do → comedy
“I think I was the worst at breaking, though.
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I → think → breaking
I’m so bad at keeping a straight face, and it was such a funny shoot.
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it → ’m → face
There were times when I had to leave the scene because I was laughing so hard and ruining it.”
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I → be → it
Gremlins was much more of a reference point for the gnomes themselves – from the funny little noises they make to the way they were crafted.
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they → make → way
Any gnome that has close interaction with someone on the cast is a puppet, operated by an on-set puppetry unit.
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that → have → unit
“We always knew that we wanted the show to have that kind of analogue feel,” Kelly says.
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Kelly → know → feel
“Obviously, [Gremlins] was made in the ’80s before digital effects were as much of a thing.
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effects → make → thing
But [having a] practical puppet brings a tactile kind of feeling.
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having → have → feeling
You’ve got something there for the actors to react with.”
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actors → get → something
Crucially, however, Kelly had never worked with puppetry before: “Down the track, we realised, ‘Oh, when you want to shoot five seconds of footage with a puppet, that will probably take you half a day!’
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that → work → day
“I think Darren Gilshenan [who plays Nompton’s clueless mayor] spent about three days fighting a pirate gnome in a hallway.”
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who → think → hallway
“We found a way to make it all work, and the result was great …
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result → find → way
And that’s before you even get to the visual effects.
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you → ’ → effects
After shooting wrapped, the show took another year to come to life in post-production with more gnomes added via VFX from 3D scans of real puppets.
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show → wrap → puppets
“There are nearly 700 visual effects shots in the show, which is a huge number for a six by half-hour comedy,” Kelly says.
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Kelly → be → comedy
When he told the post-production team they had 677 shots to work on, he recalls them saying “Oh, so you’re making Mad Max: Fury Road?”
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you → tell → Max
For the record, that film had more than 2000 VFX shots, but it also had a budget of $US150 million ($215 million).
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it → have → million
“[Gnomes] is very technically ambitious, and that technical ambition comes at a high price point,” Kelly explains.
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Kelly → come → point
…and 36 more, not listed.
The Aporia
