Three decades ago, Australian filmmaker George Miller made an unlikely career move when he set out to produce a film about a talking piglet trained by a border collie to become a sheep-herding star.<\/p>\n
With a growing filmography, including the original Mad Max movies, he set out to find the perfect location to create the now cherished children’s classic, Babe.<\/p>\n
“We were looking for a place that was close enough to infrastructure, like a town where we could stay, not too far from Sydney,” Miller said.<\/p>\n
He chose the tiny town of Robertson, known as the “green heart” of the NSW Southern Highlands, south-west of Wollongong.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to create a storybook world,” Miller said.<\/p>\n
Babe, filmed in the Southern Highlands, has a “storybook world” look and feel.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 (Supplied: Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n
“There were no gum trees, so it didn’t look specifically Australian \u2026 and the earth was quite sculptured.”<\/p>\n
But according to the town’s business chamber, an agreement with production company Universal Studios meant Robertson could not promote itself as the location where the film was shot.<\/p>\n
“The population was a lot smaller back then, and I think [the film crew] used every resource that they could,” Robertson Business Chamber president Jennifer Macquarie said.<\/p>\n
Miller’s production company lifted the restriction earlier this year, allowing the town to celebrate and claim its status as the home of Babe.<\/p>\n
Big potato turned pig<\/p>\n
Similar to the town featured in the film, Robertson has been transformed into a country fair this weekend, with a petting zoo and cake stall, to mark 30 years since Babe was released.<\/p>\n
The biggest attraction at Sunday’s event will be the town’s famous Big Potato, which was given a pig-pink makeover by Wollongong street artist Samuel Hall in March.<\/p>\n
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“It was a bit of a strange commission because we weren’t sure how the town would react,” Mr Hall said.<\/p>\n
“But it’s been overwhelmingly positive \u2026 with some suggesting the potato should stay a pig.”<\/p>\n
Mr Hall said he used the Big Potato’s odd shape to depict a pig lying in the grass alongside some of his favourite characters like Ferdinand the duck.<\/p>\n
“It was a challenge and more of a gift to the town,” he said.<\/p>\n
Samuel Hall is the artist behind the Big Potato’s transformation into Babe the pig. (ABC Illawarra: Mikayla McGuirk-Scolaro)<\/p>\n
Local farm recruited for film<\/p>\n
Robertson potato farmer Roden Mayor was a teenager when Miller wandered into the local real estate agency looking for the most suitable property to film Babe.<\/p>\n
“Dad came home and said the guy who made the ‘Crazy Max’ (aka Mad Max) films wants to use our property,” he said.<\/p>\n
The family home became Arthur Hoggett’s farm in the movie.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Mayor family’s farm was an idyllic location for the film’s producers. (Supplied: John Cox)<\/p>\n
“[The crew] were there for 18 months, so we got to know a lot of the people,” Mr Mayor said.<\/p>\n
“I fertilised some of the paddocks, we slashed and we even coloured some of the paddocks so they looked like Fallow Fields.<\/p>\n
“The film set didn’t affect us \u2026 it was actually a bonus.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Roden Mayor (left) at the official unveiling of the artistic dedication earlier this year. (ABC Illawarra: Mikayla McGuirk-Scolaro)<\/p>\n
New technology makes animals talk<\/p>\n
Babe stole the hearts and minds of its audience with not just its cute characters, but also its use of cutting-edge visual effects.<\/p>\n
John Cox, who won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Babe in 1996, was one of the masterminds behind the animation.<\/p>\n
Although SGI digital dispensation had only recently been developed, Mr Cox said it was critical in replacing the front of an animal’s face to make them talk.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Babe was made using a mix of props, real animals and digital animation. (Supplied: John Cox)<\/p>\n
“The attention to the detail was very important,” he said<\/p>\n
“There was a different department for each animal \u2026 and a breeding program so we can use pigs of a specific size.<\/p>\n
“Sheep were given a six-to-seven-month regrowth period so the fleece we had on the robot sheep was the same.”<\/p>\n
The film went on to rake in over $351 million at the box office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three decades ago, Australian filmmaker George Miller made an unlikely career move when he set out to produce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22955,64,63,34034,120734,120732,134,54684,120733,15460,99955,27481,9669,120735],"class_list":["post-190537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anniversary","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-babe","tag-babe-turns-30","tag-big-potato","tag-entertainment","tag-george-miller","tag-home-of-babe","tag-movie","tag-pig","tag-production","tag-robertson","tag-where-was-babe-filmed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}