Casino Beach was a pitch pilot episode filmed on North Stradbroke Island. Looking to have the best summer of their lives, EJ and Gwen travel to Casino Beach, where they plan to spend the summer with friends surfing, drinking and escaping the realities of life. The sense of euphoria is quickly replaced when a mysterious letter is found leading the group of friends on a dangerous treasure hunt that only leads to more questions.

Casino Beach was my first Indie Film Project since working in the art department on larger productions. The education and experience on these larger projects is evident in Casino Beach with the level of design and attention to detail in every shot much more developed than past projects. This project would be my first completed project where I felt I did everything I could and overwhelmingly happy with the finished result. The step up in skill level has also brought a much needed boost in confidence with my work that can be seen moving forward in the following projects.

Welcome To Casino Beach

With new confidence with my construction abilities, I took the opportunity to build a custom show stopping ‘welcome to town’ sign completely out of recycled materials that would set to tone for styling and theming for the rest of the shoot. Naturally there were complications along the way, filming in the middle of a La Nina storm front, the hurricane winds caused the sign to completely fall apart the day before shooting. Last minute repairs and constant weather surveillance in the lead up to the shoot put everyone on edge.

The day of shooting, the weather cleared up and we were able to install the sign on the selected site without any complications at all. Finishing touches were added and the sign was camera ready.

The decision to put the extra effort into working on this sign proved to be a big game-changer for my own level of work on all future projects. Knowing that I can deliver on complicated and ambitious ideas has allowed me to procure high standards of work from this project onwards.