User:Aliveness Cascade/Sky Trackers

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Sky Trackers TV Movie dates:

• Pre-production: 5 February 1990 - 22 April 1990
• Production: 23 April 1990 - 27 May 1990
• Post-production: 28 May - 30 September 1990^[1]

• Sky Trackers appeared at the 1991 Melbourne International Children's Film Festival^[2]

TV movie cost AUS $1.8 million^[3][4]

ACTF summary:
"Twelve-year old Ali is a computer buff and, while hacking into the mainframe computer at the satellite tracking station where her mother works, she becomes aware of a falling satellite. Unaware of the danger involved, she decides to be the first person to locate the satellite when it lands."^[1]

Melbourne International Film Festival
:"Mike's Dad, an astronomer, is transferred from England to Tidbinbilla satellite tracking station, Canberra, and Mike comes too. He meets Ali and her sister Fiona, whose mother is a scientist at the station. Ali is a computer hacker who is breaking into the station's main computer, using an old satellite as a diary. She learns by accident that her Mum's boss, the horrible Dr Giles, is expecting a satellite to crash somewhere close by. The children want to be the ones to find it, but they don't know that on board the satellite is a deadly small pox virus, a secret experiment, and their adventure could mean risking death."^[2]

Screen Australia - National Film and Sound Archive
:"At a satellite tracking station where their mother, Spencer, works, Ali and Fiona meet Mike whose father has come to work on a special project with Spencer. Ali is a computer buff and, whilst hacking into the station's mainframe computer, becomes aware of a falling satellite and decides to be the first person to locate it when it lands. Ali is in danger, however, as another unknown hacker is also aiming to be first on the scene."^[5]

Australian on the small screen 1970-1955
"Ali sits at the front of her computer at Tidbinbilla, the NASA satellite tracking station in the bush. A very bright 12-year old, she is hacking into the station's mainframe computer. A decommissioned satellite is coming down out of control somewhere near Canberra and it contains a deadly cargo: the smallpox virus used in a weightless breeding experiment. Mom is Spencer, a scientist at Tidbinbilla. Fiona is her eight-year old sister. The guy who doesn't answer her letters is her divorced father. He is somewhere in South America.There are two new men in Ali's life: Tony, another scientist, and his 12 year old son, Mike."
16mm. 92 minutes. Feature-length pilot for series.^[6]

Sky Trackers: the series dates:

• Funding decision: 29 July 1992
• Pre-production: 15 February 1993 -
• Production: 26 April 1993 -
• Completion: 1994

A decision to fund Sky Trackers: the series was made by the Film Finance Corporation on 29 July 1992.^[7]
Sky Trackers started pre-production on 15 February 1993.^[8]
Sky Trackers started production on 26 April 1993.^[8]

Production was completed in 1994.^[9]

The series was produced by Margot McDonald and Edgar, and directed by Mareo Andreocchi, Julian McSwiney, and Steve Jodrell, with Andreocchi directing the first episode.

"Mike and Nikki are both scientists’ children, living beneath the massive dishes of a space tracking station in the heart of the Australian outback.

Nikki is 13 and into science - her dream is to be the first person on Mars. Mike is 14 and into rock music - he thinks science sucks. Mike’s horse and guitar are the only things that make his life at the station bearable - until he falls for Nikki, that is…

Lively action, strong emotions, lots of fun and the cutting-edge of science are all combined in an exciting series about children, their parents and the universe around them.^[10]

"Interest in space travel and exploration continues to expand and underscores the relevance of this award-winning series for children and teens, which has been digitally re-mastered on the 25th Anniversary of its first release. We meet Mike Masters (Zbych Trofimiuk) and Nikki Colbert (Petra Jared), whose parents, Tony (Steve Jacobs) and Marie (Anna-Maria Monticelli), respectively, are scientists. Both families live beneath a massive, gleaming, white dish of a space-tracking station, located in the heart of the Australian Outback, which is the perfect setting for the adventure-seeking sky trackers to observe stars, planets, meteorites, comets, and the Southern Lights or to look for UFOs and Extra Terrestrials."^[11]

"Mike, Veronica and Maggie are scientists' children who live in Tidbinbilla, a space tracking station at the heart of an Australian wilderness park. The stories in this children's series revolve around two families, the life of this tight-knit community, the station's links to the international science community, and the discovery of the universe and self.^[7]

"A 26 x 30 min space adventure series revolving around two families, a tight-knit community and a wide range of youthful visitors. Sky Trackers deals not just with the discovery of the universe, but with the discovery of the self, the world, and others.^[8]

"Sky Trackers may be the first television series that recognises that today's children are, at best, only very distant relatives of the Brady Bunch, instead they are much more closely related to the crew of the Starship Enterprise.^[12]

"Teens at a satellite tracking station in the Australian outback use high-tech computer technology to solve problems and save lives.^[13]

"Three kids live with their families at Kaputar Space Station, a massive space tracking station in outback Australia. Nikki Colbert (Petra Jared) is 13 and passionately loves science. Her ambition is to become an astronaut and to be the first person on Mars. Her little sister Maggie (Emily-Jane Romig) is nine and is an all-out performer. She wants to be the centre of attention and often gets in her big sister’s way. Their mother Marie Colbert (Anna-Maria Monticelli) is a senior scientist at Kaputar.

Mike Masters (Zbych Trofimiuk) is 14 and he hates science. Jimi Hendrix is his hero. Mike has a very strained relationship with his widowed, workaholic father, Tony Masters (Steve Jacobs), a famous astro-physicist.

The children’s daily lives are intertwined with science and technology as they live their lives within the space station. They attend a small local school, but scholarships also bring other young students to Kaputar from all around the world to conduct space-related experiments. Their adventures follow deep space probes, the search for aliens, and solving environmental mysteries. Along the way they learn a lot about themselves and each other."^[14]

Curator's notes:

Sky Trackers is an enjoyable series with an interesting blend of stories about family and relationships, science, technology, deep space and the environment. The lead girl character, Nikki Colbert, is a science buff but is also very attractive and likeable, deliberately designed to encourage girls’ interest in science. Superbly played by Petra Jared, Nikki’s character is unfortunately not always presented in a consistent way. While she is seen almost invariably as a girl genius in her science work, there are a few script and direction lapses where she is suddenly depicted as a helpless girl which do not ring true to the character.

Great care was taken with the scripts to have the science as accurate as possible. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki was a science advisor for the series and the was also given expert advice and assistance from NASA in the USA and the US project SETI.

Sky Trackers also appealed to boys, with lots of action including rollerblading (on a satellite dish) and music, in particular Mike’s passion for Jimi Hendrix.^[14]

The series was shot at The Australia Telescope Compact Array.^[15]

Petra Yared recalls:

"We filmed all of the exterior scenes in Narrabri in New South Wales in the first couple of months of the shoot. The whole cast and crew were moved there from Melbourne and Sydney and filled all the motels and hotels in the town. It was my first time working away from home and it was really good fun. Then we filmed the studio scenes in Melbourne (home for me) and further exteriors all around the state of Victoria. The whole shoot was 9 months."

"I remember thinking Nikki was a bit of a grump sometimes! She was cranky with her little sister and Mike quite a lot but I liked her sass and intelligence."

Do you remember the very beginning of the shooting? Which scene was that? How did the first day of filming look like?
"I do remember it! We had had a couple of weeks of rehearsals with one of the directors and the “family” cast so we were familiar with each other but it was still different to be on set for the first time. I wish I could remember what the scene was about! I don’t but it was definitely on the balcony of the Colbert house."^[16]

CSIRO reported:

Filming began in June on Sky Trackers – a new children's television series and a new television concept, aimed at making science more appealing to childlren. Starring in the series will be the enormous radio telescope antenna at CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility at Narrabri in NSW. In one early episode young viewers will get to see what it's like to roller-blade in the giant receiving dish of the telescope itself. In reality the telescope is dedicated to radio astronomy, but in Sky Trackers it will also do duty as a station for tracking satellites and space probes. The 26-part adventure series revolves around two families living and working at the Kaputar Tracking Station. The kids are scientists' children going to school in a country town nearby.They face the ordinary problems of growing up, but lead extra-ordinary lives at the telescope, which offers them a window to the universe. The series takes the exciting qualities of science and creates storylines that are fantastic, mysterious and thrilling, said Ms Patricia Edgar, Executive Producer of Sky Trackers. The characters follow deep space probes, search for aliens, solve mysteries through computer technology, fly into space, live, love, fight and laugh together. The series also offers international interest. Many overseas high-school students come to the tracking station and board in a nearby homestead while conducting space-related experiments. CSIRO staff have had a constant and vital role in the creation of Sky Trackers. Apart from lending the world-class facility to the production team, they made themselves available as consultants throughout the development of the scripts, as did NASA, America's spaceorganisation. Ms Edgar said that recent government reports had shown that students believed science to be boring and "for nerds". "There is also the perception," she said, "that the science world is a male world". "The series seeks to break down these negative views and to encourage children to think about jobs in science areas as a positive option for the future." The series which will go to air in 1994, is being produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation. It has been sold to the Australian Seven Network and to Spain and Portugal.^[17]

NSFA reports:

Sky Trackers shot the rollerblading on the satellite dish scene well before The Dish (2000) did their cricket scene, but it wasn’t without difficulties at the time. Filming was originally set to take place at Tidbinbilla, outside Canberra, operated by the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex – who baulked at the rollerblading scene (Episode 1) in the script. Although in most part this was not to be shot on the actual dish, they didn’t want it to be included at all, and so the entire shoot was moved to the Australia Telescope National Facility in Narrabri in northern New South Wales, where the rollerblading scene was felt to be OK.^[14]

"A massive satellite dish on which to go in-line skating, right there in the backyard? What more could a teenager want? A space tracking station where teens and even pre-teens have free rein to log in to the computer systems and such? Even better… just about approaching perfection, in fact. Welcome to the world of Sky Trackers, the latest effort from the trail-blazing Australian Children’s Television Foundation. The series has its premiere here two days after the completion of the World Summit on Television and Children in Melbourne. Sky Trackers has already been sold everywhere from Iceland to Indonesia, and it will do nothing to harm the glowing reputation forged by the foundation through series such as Round The Twist (pictured) and Lift Off. The cast is excellent, particularly the teenagers Petra Jared as science-crazy Nikki Colbert and Zbych Trofimiuk as Mike Masters, whose scientific interests range about as far as a Jimi Hendrix lick."^[18]

Young love to lure girls into science!

Is science sexy? The CSIRO certainly hopes so, because it was its idea to approach the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) to make a series that would inspire girls to seek a career in science. The result is Sky Trackers, which the ACTF is hoping will do for astrophysics what Models Inc has done for the superbimbo business. In one sense, Sky Trackers is already a winner. The series has been sold to 23 countries, and, in another example of local jet lag, it appears that kids in Brunei and Cyprus will see it before we will. As with another highly successful ACTF export, Lift Off, the hard educational core of Sky Trackers is wrapped in a layer that makes it easier for the target audience to swallow. In this case there is a soapie content acted out by two attractive teenagers, Mike (Zbych Trofimiuk) and Nikki (Petra Jared). According to the brief, it is Nikki, 13, who is the science freak, with ambitions to be the first woman on Mars, while Mike, 14, is going through the "wanna be a guitar legend" phase. They are going through the traumas of young love while living with their families on an isolated Outback space tracking station. This mix of science and sassiness is a tricky one to balance. While researching the program, ACTF director, Dr Patricia Edgar, hired Karl Kruszelnicki, the pop guru of the science industry, to cast a professional yet fanciful eye over the CSIRO-inspired TV series [which] aims to make science attractive to girls. It serves up straight science but with a soapy coating.

Ted Ankrum; the man in charge of NASA's operations in Australia, also acted as a consultant Kruszelnicki, who prefers not to use his "doctor" prefix, is perhaps best known to Sydney people for his perceptive replies to impossible questions on radio station Triple J rtWift-ttinittirriftfuj I -5jE 1 f U S; children's tv talkback, although his latest gig involves stepping into the late great Professor Julius Sumner Miller's shoes at Sydney University. He is also noted for his excellent selection of socks: for the launch of the series he chose a white pair featuring Pepe Le Pew. He says his job as Sky Tracker's science facts man does not conflict with his lifelong love of science fiction, the style of science that television traditionally serves up. "In this show we tried to be factual, although there is one episode that deals with some sort of UFO experience. All that that signifies is that science doesn't have all the answers yet." It was Kruszelnicki who, in one episode where Mike decided to transmit a guitar solo to deep space via the satellite dish, told the producers how, in theory, this could be achieved. In another episode where the kids decided to set off their own experimental rocket, he suggested that the children be filmed standing a lot further back than originally planned. "They had the kids standing right next to the rocket," he laughs. "I said, 'What if it explodes? They'd all be wiped out by shrapnel'." One of the challenges of the series was to keep it contemporary when science itself changes on a daily basis. Although it is about two years since the series went into production, Karl Kruszelnicki says the only thing that has changed is that as of last month female astronauts are now a reality. Not that this surprises Generation X. "When I told my kids," he recalls, "they said, 'Yeah, so what, tell me the amazing bit'." Sky Trackers premieres on Seven on Sunday at 8.30 am.^[19]

ACTF's contemporary Sky Trackers page, with links to teacher's and student's resources, and production details. Production year given as 1994.^[20]