The Rush identity

Television crews are always at the mercy of the elements. 90km winds and torrential rain were bearing down on the cast and crew from Rush yesterday. It was the last thing director Andrew Prowse needed when all he  wanted to capture was a crucial scene of a gunman taking potshots at his lead characters. But Prowse was pragmatic, and with over two decades of television under his belt it wasn’t hard to see why.

As a director who has worked on Wildside, Heartbreak High, All Saints, McLeod’s Daughters, Farscape and even Wonder Woman for CBS, he was instrumental in setting the tone of Rush -a cop show that takes pride in being “in the moment.”

Yesterday, he was filming a scene with Rodger Corser, Catherine McClements, Josef Ber and guest actors Don Hany (East West 101) and Alyce Platt. Surrounded by cameramen, make-up artists, gaffers and explosives experts, they were shooting an episode to air in November.

“It’s a meeting between a prominent Melbourne bad guy who we’re about to take to court and his lawyer girlfriend who meet on a rooftop in a South Melbourne carpark,” explains Prowse, “and someone takes a shot at them.”

Filming this single scene of about 90 seconds required about two hours of rehearsal and shooting. Capturing one moment may require cameras from several vantage points, a directorial device, he suggests, to keep pace with an increasingly-educated audience.

“Reality shows and docu-dramas have changed the way people look at television. We see so many pictures that you have to keep reinventing the way you present things, so that audiences believe it.”

Prowse’s style, and that of the series, is to subtly capture drama so that the audience feels like they are watching something realistic via incidental cameras. He achieves this with an “arms-length” approach.

“You don’t try and sell the big moments, we throw things away a whole lot more. And to do that we use the idea that we stay back from things with a long lens and try and catch them.”

Prowse references the Matt Damon ‘Bourne’ films as an inspiration for this kind of storytelling.

“The Bourne Ultimatum in particular I thought was a masterpiece of action and direction,” he said.

As one who also worked on the late 90’s Wildside, he is also conscious of the need to modify directing styles for modern audiences.

“You can look at Wildside and Blue Murder and you can see what they were trying to do, but the conventions have shifted even since then. Blue Murder was made about 15 years ago, Wildside’s at least 10. But the amount of access we have to reality shows and docu-dramas, that cross-over kind of thing has altered our perceptions.”

In seeking to discern itself from other crime dramas, the cops of Rush are always in the middle of the action rather than being post-procedural. At this early stage of the series’ life it has even stamped itself with ‘downer’ endings. At the end of the second episode a teenager succumbed to a suicide attempt -not the sort of move many TV dramas would attempt.

“In one sense our characters are only interesting when we fail,” Prowse theorises. “If we succeed it’s not very dramatic, is it? The interesting thing is when our characters start to argue and debate and dispute, which they do quite a lot. That’s the character dynamic of the show.”

So far the Rush is quietly forging its own way forward. But while Prowse is pleased with the visual aspect of the show, he indicates there is still more to achieve with the show’s overall storytelling.

“I think we’ve still got a bit of work to do on scripts and how we’re presenting our stories. But it’s an organic process when you try and do something in a slightly different way. So I think visually we’re successful, even though I know some people complain about too much wobble cam and too many shots, all that stuff…”

In summarising the tone of Rush, Prowse is reminded of a comment from actress Catherine McClements.

“She said it’s a bit like Picasso, a bit like Cubism. You look at a picture which is painted from every angle at the same time. That’s kind of what we do.”

Rush airs 9:30pm Tuesday on TEN.