The project has actually been going for about 6 months so far -
although in a very low key way - mainly just an idea on my part and a
script I passed round - but anyway I'll try and recap it up to this
point
The treatment was finished early in the year and then the first
draft of the script was finished in April. I circulated it amongst some
people and got some good feedback - particulalry from Stuart Mannion.
This draft was mainly just about Cameron, the convict, on the run - and
focussed mainly on the psychological stresses of someone doing this -
hence the title - as he imagines his wife there with him to help ease
things. Stuart suggested it might be interesting to contrast his plight
a bit more with the aborigines and how well they handled things.
I finished the second and third drafts in July - I expanded the
aboriginal component a fair bit - but kept the rest of it essentially
the same - just filling in some detail. The third draft is the same as
the second except for a slight change to some scene numbers.
A few weeks ago I did a location scout at the Boondall Wetlands
with Patrick Hine, see pictures below, and found some great locations.
Although he moves through alot of sifferent vegetation types as he
continues and other locations will have to be found.
I set some dates 29th Nov - 4th Dec just recently and that's what we're working towards
Contacted Michael Aird, the former Curator of Aboriginal Studies at the Queensland Museum, and now head of Keeaira Press, for help with the aboriginal component - he's keen to help out
Been casting and crewing just through people I know and the odd person who has approached me and it's going pretty well so far.
One thing we're going to need is a bark slab hut along the lines
of the one shown here - we're planning on doing this as a model using
the foreground miniature technique which worked so well in In My Image and Roger Evans has been kind enough to give us alot of advice on how to do this
More meetings and locations scoutings coming up in the next few
days - I've also got to start going over all the camera eqpt etc that
we'll be using - but basically it's along these lines:
1 x Beaulieu R16 (we'll be shooting regular single perf 16mm but framing for 1.85:1)
2 x 200 ft magazines
10 x 200ft daylight spools and 35 x 100ft daylight spools (not that we'll need all of them)
Approx 1900 feet of short ends - all mainly 250D - will have to ratify all this soon
I've bought more lights since In My Image since we didn't
have enough then! but most of this is outdoors in day light so
reflectors will be more important - but the lights are:
1 x 2K, 2 x 1k, 3 x P23 650W profiles
Sound will most likely be through the Senheiser shotgun mic onto
a minidisc recorder via a break out box - but we will be going to great
lengths to get no camera sound !! - even though the R16 is quite noisy
-- but there's actually very little dialogue in the film and that will
be recorded after the vision is shot and the camera has stopped and
then synched up afterwards. I'm actually going to do a list of mistakes
we made in In My Image and Sleeping On Her Couch and
what we're going to do about not repeating them - this is mainly for
our own edification/clarification - but it might be of interest to
other film makers.
26/10/2004
We've rescheduled the shooting to late Feb next year
Liz Bella has been extensive historical and design research and
now is focusing on the costuming for the film - we're looking at having
a high degree of historical accuracy in this area
We've decided to base the hut on the following one because it looks so poor:
We've begun consultation with the Jagera people - the traditional
Aboriginal owners of the land where the film is set - and all is going
well that regard with Madonna William coming on board as a cultural
advisor - more on this soon
The locations scouting is continuing well with alot of good eucalypt forest sites found now - some more photos are below
Internationally renowned poet Lionel Fogarty will be playing one of the parts in the film
Rosemary Barret is making the model - she has made one rough mock
up to test different surface textures. Doing just a straight cut and
paste with a shot of the actual location it looks a bit like this below
- remembering though the actual process in the film will be different
where we shoot the model and the action at the same time
24/12/2004
Some more locations shots are below - these were taken about a month ago on a very wet day!
Heading up to the Christmas break now and a holiday - the film is
looking very good with a lot of major things already nailed down -
we're going to take a break now and continue work on it after the
festive season :-)
All progressing well - the dates are going back till late
March/early April to make space for some other film jobs I've got lined
up
The camera mount for the R16 is almost finished - we plan to
shoot most of the film from the shoulder - with a 16:9 anamorphic lense
on the front - these are some preliminary photos with DOP David Rusanow
- the mount is being designed and made by Alan Beale - Alan has alot of
experience shooting 16mm and Super 8 - and we're very lucky to have him
helping us. This set up is being discussed in this forum on the net
Below are some pictures from Don Ross's main property - Don is
providing some horses and a cart and some land as well - very generous
and a very knowledgeable man too on history and horse drawn vehicles -
really looking forward to working with him
Okay to cut a long story short we started filming last weekend -
a few of the pre-production things that we've done which I haven't
detailed here are:
The camera is now set up with a video split feeding out of the
view finder into a security camera which then runs into the camcorder -
the view through the camcorder screen is:
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