Ado setting the paw paw
and props at the Waddell Homestead
You
don’t want to get in ‘Ado’ Ogle’s way on set. As the
eyes and ears of the art department on set, she
moves around with a sense of urgency that never
slips into panic. Her job is to anticipate every
item that the director will want to see in shot and
to make sure it is ready- from a shovel to a gun to
the nightmarish challenge of making sure the
hundreds of specially made double-wick candles used
to light tunnel scenes are all matched up from shot
to shot. ‘I can’t tell you relieved I am when we
are using electricity!’ she says with feeling.
With ten years as a horticulturist and sales rep for
a nursery, Ado had a truck licence which came in
handy as a way into the film business: she started
out driving unit vehicles in 1997. ‘My first film
as stand by props was a low budget Australian film
called Angst. It was aptly named because I was a
nervous wreck on it!’
‘My job means I am the front runner for ten or
eleven departments, who can all be saying or
wanting different things at the one time. You have
to be able to cope with a lot of pressure and be
obsessively organised and one step ahead, in all
situations.’ Which is not so very different from
the world of the military. She regards the
atmosphere and team spirit of the Beneath Hill 60
shoot as unique. ‘People have offered to help each
other in ways you don’t often see on other shoots,
perhaps because we’ve all been stuck in the same
hell-hole conditions in the trenches and the
tunnels. There’s a very special bond with this
mob. I’ve never come across anything quite like it.
We’ve all endured the mud together, and the awful
claustrophobia of the tunnels, the rats, and we all
know it’s nothing compared to what the real
soldiers had to deal with.’
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Her
personal career highlight was another military
project, the mega US TV mini series Pacific, shot
around Port Douglas and to be screened next year.
‘There are not many women who do this job, maybe
four in the country. I had a team of five blokes
working under me, carpenters, painters... but also
scenes involving five hundred men running across an
airfield , lots of testosterone and aggression and
a US military advisor who treated me a bit like a
nobody until I acquired the confidence and authority
to step up to him and say ‘Look Captain, this is how
it is.’ That was a real turning point for me. This
is a job where you are continuously having to prove
yourself and earn respect every day.’
Not surprisingly, Ado admits to finding it hard to
relax at the end of a day of being keyed up on high
alert. ‘It’s hard to wind down. I have a beer and
shower, but on these night shoots, you never really
sleep properly when you get home at six a.m. I love
swimming and surfing, but there’s no surf up here
and no time anyway.’ says Ado, who was captain of
the crew team at a recent cast versus crew cricket
match but was forced to retire early with a
recurrent hamstring injury that occurred on set in
the second week of the shoot.
She’s loving the Townsville climate. ‘I prefer to
work in the warm, although I am a snow and ski
freak. My next job has me up here till Xmas,
working on the Sea Patrol TV series at Mission
Beach and that suits me just fine.’ Art least on
that job she can be pretty confident that she won’t
be wrangling candles.
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