Viewers looking for authenticity in television shows have created a skyrocketing demand for locations in regional Queensland.
The Queensland town of Jandowae, more than 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, didn't need many changes to transform into a 1980s film set this week.
Streaming service Netflix has been filming its adaptation of the novel Boy Swallows Universe, written by Australian author Trent Dalton.
The scenes will be of an eight-part limited series, filmed in locations scattered across metro and regional Queensland.
Bridgett Tredrea, manager of the Exchange Hotel on Jandowae's High Street, said there was an excited buzz.
"Jandowae is not on the main thoroughfare — I was fully amazed," she said.
"It was a complete transformation for us, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that big.
Slide the image above to see how the Exchange Hotel was transformed by production crews.
"In the pub, new alcoholic bottles were replaced with more period pieces."
Working in the main pub in town, Ms Tredrea said she had spoken to a lot of locals about the filming.
"There's quite a lot of people who have bought the book because of it," she said.
"The vibe is good."
Audiences can spot a fake
With a population of just over 1,000 people, Jandowae is one of many regional Queensland towns that have become a film set this year.
Screen Queensland chief executive Courtney Gibson said TV audiences were becoming savvy to "fake settings" and regional towns had the potential to provide a more authentic feel.
"You haven't had to have an art department come in and distress a building to make it look like the 1980s — it just is that," Ms Gibson said.
Using regional Queensland locations was a win-win for screen producers, according to Ms Gibson.
"On one hand, the fact that international audiences have never seen it before is exciting," she said.
"There's another appeal for us at home, where we can spot different locations and we recognise streets and buildings — they mean something to us."
More regional writers also in demand
Ms Gibson said along with locations, regional Queensland writers were also a major drawcard for producers.
But this wasn't always the case.
"You'd go into a writer's room and there'd be four or five writers and they would all be from the city, university educated, and that's how that [screen] world worked," she said.
"It's now very important if you're setting something in a community, that voices from that community [are in the writer's] room and leading or at least providing major contributions.
"It just doesn't cut the mustard anymore to approach these things in an unauthentic way."
Other series that have been made in regional Queensland this year include Black Snow in filmed Proserpine, Irreverent in Far North Queensland's Mission Beach, Upright in South East Queensland and Straight to the Plate in the Torres Strait Islands.
Film studios are also being built on the Sunshine Coast, predominantly for factual productions.
Streaming service competition adding to demand
Profits in the screen industry have dramatically moved away from box office tickets to long-term subscribers, according to Brisbane film critic Matt Toomey.
"It ultimately comes down to revenue," he said.
"They're looking for new subscribers, so they're trying to find a show that attracts people and hooks them into that first subscription. Then they're wanting to keep subscribers.
"We have movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce that streaming platforms are putting up the money for, and they're not even taking them to theatres."
It was a risky move, according to Mr Toomey, but one that streaming services were leaping at.
He said the competitive nature of the streaming platforms had also created opportunities for unique series that stood out from the crowd.
"You see it in foreign language markets like Squid Game, which was a success story from South Korea," Mr Toomey said.
"It was a product probably made specifically for their local market, which became a sensation around the world.
"You can create content unique to a region or country, but you hope it has international reach because it helps create those subscribers around the world."
Over $230 million spent in past 12 months
Screen Queensland could not give an estimate to how much funding would be spent on screen productions in the state for 2023.
But chief executive Courtney Gibson said more than $230 million had been spent in the past 12 months.
"A tenth of that money was invested by Screen Queensland, but the rest of that $230 million came from outside," she said.
"In the last 12 months, more than 5,400 jobs were created from productions in Queensland."
There are five crews currently working full-time in Queensland on screen productions.
Screen Queensland hopes that number will increase to seven in 2023.
