by Nigel Hicks
Plan Bea is a rousing high school musical comedy filmed at St Ives High, a public school on Sydney’s upper north shore, starring the school’s students! Nominated for Best Score at the 2024 APRA Screen Music Awards – the first musical ever nominated in that category – Plan Bea is an all-Australian, all-independent miracle of a film.
Shot during and after COVID, Plan Bea revolves around Bea (Mary Peter) who, outraged that singing has been banned, forms an underground show choir.
Written and Directed by Sean Peter, who also composed the music, the film is a testament to what can be done by creatives willing to roll up the sleeves and make it happen.
Take it away Sean!
“I started writing Plan Bea at the end of 2020 when we were in that lockdown. I’d been directing the musicals at my kids’ high school in 2017 and 2019. So, we’d done Bring It On, The Musical, and then Matilda, The Musical. We were due to do one in 2021, and looking at the state of play at the end of 2020, it was obvious that we weren’t going to be able to do a musical in any conventional way. Even people that were allowed to do anything performing-wise, it was in front of one camera at the back of the hall as a live stream for their parents – it was just awful. The other thing happening though, at the same time, was that they were opening up the laws to allow the film industry to work, and allowing people to film things. We just sort of thought, ‘Well, if we can do that, why don’t we do just that?’
“Another of the fathers at the school used to work at Videocraft in Sydney and knew lots of people in the industry. A third one was an editor who I’d already worked with at the ABC in children’s content. So, between the three of us, we thought, ‘Let’s get some iPhones out and make a movie’. And then Andy [Liell, Location Sound and Second Unit Cinematographer] found a DOP for us [Borce Damcevski], who said, ‘Yeah look I’m happy to shoot it for you, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather use my REs (Resolution Engineering workflow) and Primes (fixed focal length lenses) if that’s ok with you’. We said, ‘why not?’
“So, we really started making something very polished from day one. We were really aspiring to make movie, not a school movie, but the best feature we could.”
Have you worked much with teenagers before?
“Having directed the musical for the school in 2017 and 2019, most of the cast in Plan Bea had been in Matilda and knew me already. There was a lot of trust with them and a lot of trust with the school as well that we could get it done.
“Outside of that, I’ve been writing children’s music professionally since about 2000. It’s been most of my career actually, Through that, I’ve been a producer for Nickelodeon and the same with the ABC.
“I’ve done a lot of work with kids and I love it.”
Any film inspirations which particularly drove you to make Plan Bea?
“The film is obviously of the high school musical genre. Kenny Ortega, Julie and the Phantoms, that was really what I was going for. I think there’s something to be said that if you’re starting out in film, know your genre and stick to that genre first – you can break the rules and reinvent your new thing later on. But start where you can really bring something that you love. And I do love those kinds of movies, I genuinely do. I love that type of music, I love those types of songs and really enjoyed writing them in this.
“The main thing for me with why I wanted to do it is at the base of its premise is this idea that performing arts is something that is really, really important to do. To make an opportunity for it when it was banned, seemed meaningful. Then the film itself kind of proved the premise by the end of it. When that kind of meta idea of everything fell in on itself, it just felt really, really satisfying, and I knew I had to finish it.
“I’ve written a lot of music theatre and musicals over the years, and then kind of moved to film screenwriting. I did a degree at AFTRS and really enjoyed it. Then I spent five or six years trying to come up with a really good idea for a film. You’d outline them, overthink it, watch it fall apart, and then drop it. Plan Bea was something that held up robustly. And then because it also had an avenue to completion, I just did it. It just kind of happened.”
Some of the songs are very polished, especially ‘All The Things We Lost’.
“That song, I’m very, very proud of. That was absolutely me talking about the specifics of what the kids lost as well, but it was for all of us. There’s actually a scene just before that where they’re standing in the gymnasium and one of the girls doesn’t want to wear a mask. She’s kind of the anti-vaxxer in the room, and the whole group kind of turn on her and give her all of the lines that we all had. And you watch it now and it seems like this incredible group bullying and how different the response to that scene is now compared to what it was when we wrote it in the middle of COVID.
“There is a soundtrack already out on Spotify. We actually finished the movie in 2023 and had a short cinema season. We put it on Spotify at the same time as that release. We also got a distribution deal from a company in the UK, who unfortunately went bankrupt. But the soundtrack was actually nominated for Album of the Year with the MMMA Awards as well, which is the big children’s awards in Australia.”
What was your budget for the film?
“Micro, micro, micro. The budget was made up of a grant from the P&C (Parents & Citizens Association) and some support from the school. A lot of the budget was eaten up in catering – we made sure everyone was fed every day. I think we had an honorarium for DOP Borce. We also did a crowdfunding campaign, and in total it all covered costumes, props, and catering. We did hire a set of Matilda costumes half a dozen times. The only other paid role in all of it – and I would recommend this to anyone working with teenagers – was hair and makeup. Whenever our kids rocked up, they knew they had someone there to look after them and make them look great. Our hair and makeup team were fabulous. They absolutely kept the ball rolling, they were wonderful.”
The St Ives High School seem a very talented bunch. Would you say that cohort of students is particularly talented or is it just given the conditions?
“My genuine feeling is that there is that level of talent in any high school. If you are there and you can create an environment where kids feel trusted to invest and want to perform – and aspire to it – they will come out of the woodwork. That is challenging, and it takes a long time. You can’t just walk in.
“When we did our first musical, one of the girls playing Ms Honey was a phenomenal singer, absolutely incredible, but just decided that she didn’t want to do the musical. After having done the musical, she admitted that she did actually want to do it after all. The first one is the hard one. You’ve got to have trust, create trust with everybody and have a great result. And if you do that, people will go on with you.
“St Ives is a large school, 1200 kids. Don’t get me wrong, there were 1100 kids who really didn’t want anything to do with the musical. That’s the nature of it. But we found the hundred kids that wanted to be there. All of the voices that you hear in the soundtrack are them singing. I loved producing that – I love working with them, I know how to get them to sound good.”
Rob Carlton is quite a recognisable Australian actor who has been on a lot of TV shows. How did he come to be part of the project?
“Rob’s been a friend over the years. We originally worked together on Chandon Pictures [a funny show from 2007-2009, created by and starring Carlton, which is very hard to see these days due to it screening on and produced by the now defunct The Movie Network] with a really good friend of mine, Stafford Wales, who I went to high school with. He was the editor, and through that, I got to know Rob.
“Rob is a very generous contributor, particularly in the directing and writing space, but also as a performer as well. When I started writing it, I had Rob in mind for the role, knowing I could probably tap his shoulder. And he said, ‘Oh a musical? I’m not doing that, I’m not going to sing’. But I said to him, ‘Mate, you’re not even going to have any lines’. I think he really relished the opportunity to do a completely silent character. The sandwich sequence with him was just ridiculous. We handed him a sandwich, and it got funnier and funnier every time. He’s a genius, it was so great.”
Plan Bea is available to stream on Prime Video, and the soundtrack available on Spotify. More on the film at the official website.
Photos by Douglas Frost
