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Clip description
Cleo (Phoebe Tonkin) and Lewis (Angus McLaren) attempt to wish the fungus problem away.
Curator’s notes
In this sequence the full extent of the fungus chaos is revealed as Lewis and Cleo attempt to use the last of the wishing potion to solve the problem in the café before the owner arrives to film an advertisement. This ongoing tension around the protagonists’ fear of discovery, which galvanises the friends into collaborative problem solving, is a regular feature of the series.
The clip also features Cleo with one of her mermaid tails. Each actor employed three: a tail to swim in, a floppy tail for bath shots, and a hard tail used for stunts. The mermaid costumes took six months to build, while the tails were cast from the actors’ bodies and scaled by hand. The tails weighed between 12 and 15 kilograms and, once in costume, the actors had to be lifted into the water. The tail fin was designed with a foot pedal to help the actresses swim.
