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On Monday, the 13th of March, the crew filming The Matrix 2 and 3 (Reloaded and Revolutions respectively) in Sydney, Australia informed residents and workers within the vicinity of Castlereagh Street that on the 16th (Wednesday) they would be blocking off traffic at 8:30 pm sharp in between the Bathurst and Liverpool Street intersections. For those of you that aren’t aware, Castlereagh Street is in the CBD and is quite busy most hours of the day. The crew advised that they would be employing all car parking spaces, and would only permit workers, or residents in the vicinity to remain within the area.

This article focuses on important, life-changing questions that you must surely be asking yourself, such as:

Was my old mate, Keanu, there?
Was there any fighting or action?
What IS the Matrix and what happens to it?

Those questions have answers of ‘no’, ‘not really’ and ‘I have no idea’. However, to find out “What DOES appear in this sequence?”, read on!

It so happens that I live one block and 22 stories in the air away from where all the filming would be taking place. News spread, and a quite a few people turned up, including a fair amount of bystanders that gathered around on the intersection between Bathurst and Castlereagh. At 8:30 pm, the crew and cameramen were setting up their equipment – this involved several setting up cameras from people cranes similar to those you see being used by the telephone companies. I’m sure you’re more interested in finding out exactly what was happening, however.

 

On set, as you can see from the pictures below, they removed street signs saying “Keep Clear” and “Fire Trucks Enter” (there’s a Fire Station directly opposite), and replaced them with signs that said “No Entry – Except For Trucks Loading And Unloading 7AM – 4PM Mon Thru Fri”.

 

Right in the middle of the street, they had earlier drilled and dug a rectangular hole. In the picture below, you can see the recess where the hole was dug, and one of the cameramen carrying some sort of device (I’ll leave you to figure out what it is – I have absolutely no idea).

In this picture, you can see another crewmember holding something on top of a manhole cover. He took quite awhile holding that device above it until he was satisfied with it. Yet again, I’m uncertain about its purpose.

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for! – What’s in this particular sequence/scene? Now, all of you die-hard Matrix fans out there (and there must be a lot of you, I’m one myself) will most definitely know the significance of phones in the Matrix! If you recall, there’s one scene in a subway station where there’s a phone booth. Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) picks up the ringing phone, and disappears. Now here’s the juicy bit – yes, I present to you, a *genuine* fake telephone booth that you WILL be seeing in the movie, complete with matching newspaper stand! A close-up shot of the phone booth is also available below. Notice the graffiti and how dirty the handset is (it IS dirty, and it was admittedly a bit interesting to actually get a chance to stand right inside!).

In front of the phone booth, you can see a Cadillac (it’s what I’m assuming anyway, since you don’t see many in Australia) parked right in front of it. From what I could tell, there is a person within the Cadillac (whose appearance may or may not be noticeable in the final film)? Not too tall either.

 

Now, for the part that actually has some sort of action inside it – they were filming this well until 3 am in the morning, over, and over, and OVER again. A truck’s tires screech as, out of nowhere, it accelerates along the street with lights fully turned on, zooming past the Cadillac, over the rectangular hole that was dug earlier. This was the main thing that they were filming! Okay, so it wasn’t really that exciting, as anyone who’s watched a movie being produced knows how many takes one scene requires.

 

 

To cut a long story short, it was about midnight when I decided to walk one block home because it was getting way too cold (it’s Winter down here), not much was happening – only the truck kept zooming down the street. Not too soon either, since I later found out they were having a “lunch” break at 1am in the morning (cheers Hyrax), for another hour. From what I could see from my balcony (it’s where my workstation is), things wrapped up shortly after 2 am, possibly towards 2:30 am. I can only speculate at this point that this was to replace the street signs, clear all the equipment away etc.

So, this is basically about all this *sneak* peek at one of the scenes in the Matrix 2 or 3 contains.

Questions I had earlier managed to ask one of the crew members (and their response) were as follows:

Me: Will any of the stars from the movie be here tonight?

Crewlady: (shakes head) Unfortunately not.

Me: Which movie, Matrix 2: Reloaded or Matrix 3: Revolutions, will this particular scene be in? Crewlady: I’m sorry, but I can’t say. However, we have been shooting bits and pieces of the film in between scenes at various locations already (This is of course, at Sydney’s Fox Studios).

Me: (cheesy grin) Can I take a picture of myself in the fake phone booth?

Crewlady: Sure, go ahead!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, Matrix fans WORLDWIDE, concludes this little preview. Interesting, to say the least, but ultimately, nothing more than a little *sneak* at one of the telephone booths that will be used. It is entirely my speculation at this point, but I have a strong feeling that there will be a scene in which Neo (Keanu Reeves) either attempts to reach this phone booth (with it ringing?) or does reach it to be transported from the Matrix back to “reality”? We’ll only find out about this time, next year, unfortunately… in the meantime, the latest teaser trailer can be downloaded from whatisthematrix.warnerbrothers.com . It looks set to be another cult classic in my books.