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WEEK 6 / Sept 3rd 2008

Having been slowed by tiredness and the rlelentless 6 day weeks we bashed our way through the exhaustion and gave it one last blast along the home stretch. We spent most of the last week in the heavenly surrounds of the Wilpena Pound and the Flinders Ranges. After the treeless, dusty desert of Leigh Creek the sight of the giant river gums were humbling.  So much so that with some encouragement, I changed one of the main locations in the film overnight so we could make use of the size and scale of the massive forests. Hugo and Tom look like miniatures within a land of giants.

If you haven't been to Wilpena or the Flinders in general, I strongly recommend it at some point. It is such a beautiful place. A couple of times we had to hold off from shooting because we had kangaroos and on one occasion a family of Emus wandering through our set! Very cool.

Our very last sequence was shot just outside of Adelaide at this weird 'extreme activity' park where you can go and jump motorcycles and race go-carts and do other extreme things.  We finished shooting in Woomera in the am (where we spent 2 days in the flatlands) and then raced for 5 hours to catch the light at dusk at the half-pipe. However, about an hour out we headed into the darkest storm clouds and eventually pelting rain. It was looking like it wasn't going to happen, but I really believed it was going to, I couldn't accept that we had gone this far  and I was going to lose my last scene due to freaking rain. And sure enough as we turned off the highway we drove into breaking clouds and eventually a stunning sunset and dusk. All the rain from that day and previous days had gathered around the skate ramp giving us these amazing pools of water which surrounded the ramp, it looked better than I could have ever imagined!

It was very hard to call 'cut' for the last time. Infact I did one extra take just cos I wasn't quite ready to let go. And even on that 3rd take I was hoping that Greig or the sound guys would give me some technical NG so I could go again with reason. I had such a good time shooting this film, it really was a magic time, and I knew all to well that it will be a long time before I'm on set on my next film, I was very conscience of trying to be in the moment for that very last moment. It was a huge relief though to call wrap finally. More a relief in terms of Tom. The whole film rested on this 10 year old boy, and he came through above and beyond what we could have hoped for. He stepped up to every challenge with confidence. I think in many ways he was an inspiration to us all.

I'm totally in awe of the films cast and crew who helped me through one the most challenging of experiences. People worked so hard to make it happen as best it could. Special mention to Antonia Barnard (Producer) and Louisa Kors (Productiion Manager) for their expertise and support. And to Hugo who gave us a gift in his performance and was a dream to work with both on and off set. I'm thankful for every waking moment that everyone worked on this film with me.

I've learnt alot about what it means to be a director, about people, and what can and cant be in my control on and off set in a production like this. And even though I have months of post production ahead of me I feel as though i have completed something that I set out to do over 20 years ago. Whatever becomes of the film, I feel real good about the marathon that I and 30 odd others have just run.

The dust. The cold. The mud. The rain. The sun, The salt. The tears, the blood and the sweat. The early mornings and the late nights. The last 6 weeks seem to be a blur, but I can remember every detail. In some ways I'm glad it's over and in others I wish it would have never ended. 

When I close my eyes I see a never ending mosaic of shuffling images. Beautiful and brutal. Into the edit now with Jack to try and make sense of them all.

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WEEK 4 & 5 / August 27th 2008

What day is it? Where are we? What are we doing here?

Our shoot is an average length for a low budget Australian film at 6 weeks (32 shooting days). But with the amount of material plus the days of traveling that we have been doing between locations, the shooting schedule is so ruthless and demanding of the cast and crew, at this point i think we are all exhausted. I was kind of prepared for the emotional stress and anxiety that comes with shooting a feature film, but the physical tiredness is something that has just crept up on me and hit hard. We have just over a week to go and it feels all to easy to slip into auto pilot, and accept things that a few weeks ago you wouldn't have. I've been really conscience of this and tried to ride that line of not burning myself out, but also trying to keep things at the level I want them when we are in the edit.

We shot the ending of the film, which was not only a technically tricky sequence of scenes, but also a very emotionally and physically demanding time for Hugo and Tom. We had a extremely cold night shoot, and a final scene that takes place at dawn that we pretty much tried to shoot real time. And Tom had to spend time in freezing water, while performing a pretty tricky and very important scene (which he did brilliantly). All of these sequences pretty much came off without a hitch, and the performances blew me away! In the midst of all this though, I had more than a few moments of thinking "What the hell am I doing this for, and why am I putting all these other people through it as well..." I guess thats what is most inspiring about having a hard working and most importantly a collaborative cast and crew, because at these times of extreme pressure, I have felt totally supported in trying to achieve my vision.

After our luck with animals on the shoot I was very hesitant to be shooting another dawn sequence with 3 camels. I had very low expectations of anything with four feet after the trouble we had with our goat and rabbit friends. But the moment these giant beasts came on set I knew that it was going to be special. I have never been real close to a camel let alone three, and these guys were very calm and co-operative. The did everything on cue and even provided a few moments that I could never have dreamed of getting. And not that it will ever make the film, but we had another scene with a goat that went totally no-where the other day as well. Freaking goats, what were we thinking! If I have learnt anything from this shoot it;s that goats are probably the dumbest animal to write into a film script, let alone trying to get one to do anything on camera even remotely useful. Anyone thinking of writing animals into your scripts, stick to dogs and cats, perhaps a camel or two.

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WEEK 3 / August 20th 2008

3 Weeks down, 3 weeks to go!

(Actually we are well into week 4 as I send this, as we have been without phone and internet *GASP!* out here in the desert!)

This week we moved from Quorn to Mt Ive Station for the salt lake. I think the crew really enjoyed getting on the road proper and this country is some of the most spectacular I've seen. Lake Gardiner is a huge salt lake about 3 hours of dirt road north - west of Port Augusta. It's one of the few salt lakes in the world that you can drive on, and as the script has a sequence that takes place on a salt lake, we were always going to end up here at some point.

I first recce'd the lake in February and fell in love with not only the lake itself, but with the rolling treeless hills that surrounded it. On this first trip, the lake was what you would expect a salt lake to be, brilliant white salt and deep blue sky. Very cool. But when I returned for my 2nd recce a couple of months ago, there was an inch of water from recent rain on the surface which effectively turned the lake into a giant mirror! It made this great location into unbelievably awesome location. The only trick, was that the water layer could never be guaranteed, as it is totally reliant on nature.

When we arrive I went out to inspect the lake, and luckily enough it was perfect. Just the right amount of water to make the whole lake into one of the most surreal places you could ever see. Driving on it felt like a cross between sailing on a water and flying through clouds. When we first stopped at our first location on the lake, I turned around and saw every crew member with a camera taking happy snaps like a bunch of Japanese tourists!

I came away from the two days shooting on the lake, feeling like we had created a sequence thats not only visually stunning, but emotionally engaging, with intense performances from Hugo and Tom. Some pretty full on stuff happens in the scenes and quite a few of the crew told me later that they cried through the takes. I hope it's a good sign, if we can get people to feel moved while on set with all the distractions of people and equipment, I know that once on screen it will be even more powerful.

The Salt Lake was freezing cold and very windy, and we battled through quite a few rain storms that passed over, at one point I really thought it was going to go all La Mancha on our asses. Onscreen I think the salt lake will look more like an ice lake, and I was very proud of little Tom who had to spend alot of his time bracing against the cold in his thinly layered wardrobe, while us crew were rugged up with ever piece of warm clothing we could pile on! I'll say it again, Tom is a Star!

On the flip side continuing with our luck with animals (if you remember we lost 5 of our 6 rabbits on day one) we attempted to shoot a sequence with a family of goats yesterday, we had five to start with, one was big daddy goat who wouldn't stop rooting one of the other goats... then we stupidly lost three as they escaped into the hills before we could even roll camera... then the horny rooting goat must have pulled a muscle or something because he started limping. So we had one goat left, who after one very average first take also ran off into the hills, by this point we had lost most of the crew, who were off trying to catch them all! Needless to say we abandoned the scene, which would normally have been a nightmare, but I think everyone could see how funny it was from the beginning. In the end the ridiculousness of it all probably helped, as I was able to quickly combine what we wanted story wise from the goat scene into another scene and I feel that sequence worked better because of it. I hope the behind the scenes captured some of it, as we will never talk of 'the goat scene' again.

We all pack up and move to Leigh Creek today (8 hours north of Adelaide). There is a special feeling here at Mt Ive. We have been staying in shearing sheds and the frosty nights have been spent around the camp fire. It's basic on all levels but we have more than everything we need. Joy and Len who manage the station here are some of the most hospitable I've met. It will be sad to leave.

Onwards!

This weeks snaps by our very special guest photographer Rhys Graham who joined us for a 4 days, it was so good to see him and apart from a whole bunch of BTS photos, he also took the images which will probably make up our main poster image as well.