if.com.au

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One production that Australia can count on is Unbroken, the Angelina Jolie-directed drama about US Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, who was captured by the Japanese in WW2.

Funded by Universal, that’s due to roll on October 21, featuring Jack O’Connell as Zamperini, a member of the US track team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics who survived a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean and after 47 days on a life raft was interned in a Japanese prison camp.

Last Friday crew employed on the production voted to accept an industrial agreement which the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance had negotiated with Fox Production Services, which represents Universal.
The first for an international film shot in Australia, the agreement will now be registered with Fair Work Australia, which means it will be legally enforceable.

Malcolm Tulloch, director of the entertainment crew and sport section of the Alliance, told IF, “We’re very excited about what’s been achieved with this agreement. We hope future productions (from offshore) will follow a similar path.”

Laura Hillenbrand

At peak of production, the Ford Motor Company's Willow Run plant was putting out one B-24 every 55 minutes. Here's a great video done by Ford showing the building and testing of the plane. Among other things, it shows a close-up of the feathering of an engine, something that was critical in the crash of Louie Zamperini's "Green Hornet." Thanks to historian Richard F. Snow, author of the Ford biography "I Invented the Modern Age," for sending this film to me.