THE SOUND OF A CITY- DOCUMENTARY

“Both individually and collectively, you exceeded our highest hopes, combining professionalism, artistic imagination, practical speed, clarity of communication, and as much kindness and generosity of spirit as any producer could hope to find. ”
Steven Smith - Senior Producer, Trailer Park (Unites States)

After the TV commercial for APT Tours, The Sound of a City documentary for the 50th anniversary of the cult classic The Sound of Music, was the second project that Progressive Productions shot in Austria, this time in Salzburg.

Progressive worked on The Sound of a City documentary, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music, and was shot on location in Salzburg, Austria

The documentary features Julie Andrews, the absolutely amazing, Oscar-winning living legend, returning to Salzburg and revisiting all the shooting locations filled with heart-warming memories. We visited the terrace of Leopoldskron Palace, where Julie fell into the water in the film, Mirabelle Garden, and the Do Re Mi steps at Winkler terrace which were all closed down for this shoot.

Iconic locations from the original film, like the “Do-Re-Mi Steps” in Mirabell Garden pictured above, were closed down for the shoot (Photo: Dániel Szőke)

Progressive also provided production support for the shoot of junket interviews that were made for popular shows like Good Morning Britain with Kate Garraway. These shoots were organized as distant shoots, which meant that most of the crew and the facilities came from Budapest. Since Progressive also has an office in Austria, we could easily find the best solution for organizing the equipment and the crew, and we used both countries’ resources, which came together to create a very effective whole. The DP of the shoot Márton Vízkelety is also Hungarian, and is very experienced in the documentary genre.

Progressive hired Hungarian cinematographer Márton Vízkelety, who was the DP for the project. As we have an office in Vienna as well, we can smoothly combine the best possible crew for a particular production (Photo: Steven Smith)

Our equipment really lived up to the Hollywood standard, meaning that three 4K cameras were used and even a DIT station was set up due to the fact that we shot in 4K RAW and had to handle an huge amount of data. We consider it a once in a lifetime opportunity to shoot at these emblematic spots and somehow connect to the 50-year-old story of one of the most popular films in the world.

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit these iconic locations and make a connection to one of the most popular films of all time

It was a huge honour to work with such a great studio and agency like 20th Century Fox and Trailer Park, who coordinated the project. Working with superstars like Julie Andrews always requires great flexibility, for instance, we had to completely rewrite the schedule several times just before the shooting, but our team responded to these challenges smoothly and the production was a huge success. Julie Andrews is an amazingly kind person, and it is quite representative of her professionalism that at the wrap of the shoot she brought the whole crew champagne and thanked everyone for their work.

It was an honor and a delight to work with Julie Andrews, 20th Century Fox, Trailer Park and the American crew

We really enjoyed working with the American crew and this feeling is mutual. We received very positive feedback from them, especially because we made their job a whole lot easier by speaking their language fluently and knowing their working process inside and out.