THE odds are improving that friends Angus Thompson and Nina Oyama will be able to make a full series of their comedy about university life in Bathurst.
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Their creation The Angus Project has been negotiating the various levels of ABC and Screen Australia’s Fresh Blood program, which aims to kick-start comedy careers, and now they have been selected to make a pilot in 2018.
That means they will be filming again on local streets.
From hundreds of applicants, Mr Thompson and Ms Oyama were selected early this year to film three web series episodes that were unveiled on ABC’s video-on-demand service iview this month.
Of the 20 projects that reached this stage, only four have now been chosen to progress to a 30-minute pilot next year.
The pilots have to be delivered by June 2018 and will premiere on ABC Comedy in the second half of the year. ABC and Screen Australia then hope to take one of the four pilots to a full series in 2019.
Ms Oyama, who met Mr Thompson while the two of them were at CSU Bathurst, said they created the show to present a more realistic portrayal of life for someone with a disability.
Mr Thompson, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, plays a young uni student who fires his boring, conservative older care worker and convinces his best friend (Ms Oyama) to work with him so they can party.
“We wanted to show someone with a disability not in this sterile bubble,” Ms Oyama said.
The first time she met Mr Thompson, she said, they were both at a uni party and he was drinking and smoking.
“I was like 'that's so bad',” she said.
But Mr Thompson was simply doing what many uni students do, she said.
“It’s his right to choose,” she said.
There is a perception that people with a disability should be treated with the utmost care, she said, but The Angus Project seeks to show a young man with cerebral palsy taking the same risks as others of their age.
Filming is planned for Bathurst in early 2018 and Ms Oyama will be mentored in her writing and directing of the pilot by comedy veteran Craig Anderson.
Ms Oyama – who was in Bathurst for three years while she was at uni before moving back to Sydney for work – says the city features prominently in The Angus Project.
She is interested in the juxtaposition between the conservative side of Bathurst and the uni students who arrive each year to make the city their home.
“I loved it there,” she said of Bathurst. “It’s definitely a really interesting place to grow as a person. You can kind of do anything.”
Anyone who is willing to offer a hand when the pilot episode is filmed next year is asked to make themselves known on The Angus Project Facebook page.
