An old man is visited by his estranged son which amounts to more than a hello.
This film was the product of last minutitus. A national film festival was looming and it was deemed that not enough time was left to complete a film by the deadline. Until I wrote an outline at 3am in the morning of a story that struck emotionally. It was all fiction but it struck me that I had to keep writing. I found my idea. So the next day the first draft was written and a great friend of mine, Nick McDougall, jumped on board as a co-writer for the second draft. I wrangled some crew together and my producing partner at the time, Nathan Dale, flew in from interstate back from work obligations. We were on a roll. And we were only 3 days in from idea conception. My cousin, as I've always said and so do the rest of the family, looks like a movie star. He looks like Bruce Willis from the Moonlighting days. His son, Harry, also looks like a movie star. So I thought, given that they're not trained, I could side coach them as the dialogue is quite minimal. They agreed and they drove to Sydney from the north coast for the shoot. This is 5 days in from conception. Crew arrive at the motel that we've decked out to shoot in. Ihan, the father, (who looks amazing, and whom I house sitted for a few years ago) arrived and we go over the script and shoot the first few scenes. Luke and Harry arrive. Now, the idea was to not have Harry and Ihan meet before shooting due to , as you would realise from the film, that character needed to be in Ihans presence for the first time...and I wanted to capture that. So I took Harry and some crew into the room where we were shooting and let him settle in whilst Luke warmed to Ihan. BAD IDEA! Note: Never take a child and place them in an alien environment with people they dont know. This traumatized Harry so much that he cried non stop for 3 hours. We were left sitting outside on the road trying to come up with a contingency plan: "Re-write the ending nath".."NO!"....Then Nath Dale (producer, actor) came up with an idea. HIs sister, Bec, was also from the north coast and her daughter was into theatre and acting. She was of similar age and likes to perform. Done. Locked in. I felt really bad for Luke and Harry...Luke was so excited to be in a film for the first time. There will be a next time. They left and went home. Bec arrives 1 hour later with Abigail and we race her into the set and start playing around with her, getting her excited and trying to figure out how to get her to react to Ihan. She was brilliant! But Ihan, who is getting on, had become sore and irritable due to the mess that was that afternoon. He went home to rest for the next day of shooting. Thing was, we needed him for pick ups and singles with Abi and we only had her for one day. Hmmmm. But we did a bit of movie magic and it all worked out. Long story short, we wrapped on the 6th day, washed rushes on the 6th night, cut on the 7th day, cut on the 8th day, scored on the 9th day, graded on the 10th day(which we abandoned) then compressed, burnt and physically handed in our entry into Sydney's Tropfest. Boom! 11 day turn around. It was fun. Please enjoy.
