In the Australian filmmaker’s blockbusters Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge (2001), the soundtrack was central to their success.

Music will again play a vital role in Luhrmann’s latest production, The Get Down, an upcoming Netflix series that traces the birth of hip-hop in New York in the 1970s.

The man developing the musical score for the series is 27-year-old Newcastle-bred producer Jamieson Shaw. After making his name in the industry working on Luhrmann’s film The Great Gatsby and with fellow Australian director George Miller on the acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, Shaw was appointed last year to be music editor of The Get Down.

Last May the Cooks Hill boy moved to Brooklyn and he is expected to remain in New York until production on the 13-part series is completed at the end of the year. The first six episodes will premiere in August.

“It’s a very tight and collaborative team,” Shaw told Weekender from New York. “There isn’t really a difference between story, the music and editing. It’s all the elements of film.

“Baz characterises and creates them all really simultaneously and we in the music department are around in a lot of the different phases of the creativity as well.” 

Shaw’s big break emerged in 2012 when he was hired by music composer and producer Elliott Wheeler to work at his Surry Hills-based Turning Studios, after he impressed during a writing session with Silverchair’s Daniel Johns and Kimbra.

“Not often do more contemporary guests use the studio, usually it’s film music,” Shaw said. “They needed someone last minute to handle that one. I got a call about that and spent a week in there and it was a very fruitful session and I think they mentioned they liked working with me to Elliott. 

“It was at the point when Gatsby was coming to a close, it had like four months of production left and was getting hairy, but he invited me along on a casual basis to help out on Gatsby.”

Shaw was then hired by Miller to develop “temp music” with Elliott for the Mad Max reboot. Temp music is used during the production stages before the original score is written. None of Shaw’s work made the final cut.

Nevertheless the experience helped secure Turning Studios and Shaw the opportunity to work on The Get Down. During music production for the series, which features a mix of ‘70s classics and originals, Shaw has worked closely under the advisement of Nelson George - the acclaimed journalist who is considered the definitive voice on the birth of hip-hop - and rap pioneer Grandmaster Flash.

Rubbing shoulders with hip-hop luminaries and Luhrmann in a SoHo recording studio is a far cry from where Shaw began. The former Hunter School of Performing Arts student dropped out in year 11 to pursue his “rock’n’roll dreams” as a bass player with Newcastle metal band .jinn.

The rock dreams failed to materialise, but with the support of his parents Gillean and Kent, Shaw kept chipping away at the music production industry. Shaw had an internship with Sydney’s BJB studios, freelanced and worked on the first season of The Voice before finally earning his start with Wheeler.

“In an industry like this one, there’s no piece of paper that’s going to get you a job,” he said. “It’s based purely on merit, skill and really a personality game. I was really so obsessed with it, that if anything, a formal education was too slow for me at the time. I wanted to learn what I wanted to learn as quickly as possible. I just devoured it.”

On a personal front, Shaw is also striking the right chords. Next year he plans to return to the Hunter to marry his fiance Ashley Fay Burgess, known professionally as Ash Bee. Burgess played Vanessa Cronin in Strictly Ballroom the Musical and last year she sang on Haut En Bas, a track written by Shaw.