ABSTRACT
Film production in the Australian state of Queensland has grown substantially since the 1990s and in a way that is built around iconic images of regional landscapes. The paper discusses productions of the Village Roadshow studio hub in the Gold Coast, which predominantly, although not exclusively, has made transnational films on marine themes utilising the studio facilities and location production on the beaches and hinterland of the coast and a range of other locations around Queensland and interstate. This media is discussed as the ‘terraform tropics’ to describe the imaginary geographies that emerge through the complex transnational provenance of the films and the technically convergent means of production whereby the tropical imagery is an engineered blend of location and studio footage and digital effects. A contrasting case study is the tiny town of Winton in Western Queensland where, since 2004, a number of filmmakers have been drawn to the spectacular arid landscapes that surround Winton to make films that contest the Australian history of terra nullius and/or for the resemblance of the landforms to the settings of American genre Westerns. More significantly for the discussion of regionality, the productions have been stimulated and encouraged by the residents and regional council in cultivating the film-friendliness of the town in their efforts to sustain the survival of Winton into the future. Both case studies suggest how region is a construct forged in a relationship between nature and culture.
