© Erwin Films 2005
Little River When you're travelling from Melbourne to Geelong, you pass a little turnoff to Little River. A small country community just a stone's throw from the freeway. This little town is the gateway to the Golden Plains Shire - beautiful open spaces, great scenic iconic trees and rolling hills nestled among scattered farms. Most of the travelling montage where the Neal character starts to adopt his drifter existence was shot in and around this area. Farmers helped us out by allowing us full access to their farms enabling us to use existing ruins and windmills for sequences to illustrate Neal's solitude. Shooting a road movie in winter is a bit of a gamble but we were blessed with beautiful weather most of the days and the country presented us with amazing light and cloud formations, usual for winter. Had we waited for summer, the light would have been too harsh and empty bright skies.
We needed permission from a few farmers to be able to have access to their farm to shoot windmills, old ruins and even some dead trees. They were always courteous and willing to help out and in some cases even provided an entire history of the farm, giving us free range to move anywhere. Country Victoria holds the friendliest people. At times the Beast would determine where we shot. For example, we would be driving it to the meeting point and once the entire crew were present and ready to trek to the location, we would hear those famous clunks and wheezing sounds coming from the bonnet. With a big sigh and dim outlook, one reaches the conclusion - so I suppose that is where we will shoot. With the tow truck driver patiently waiting for us to cover a few set-ups before the Beast was hoisted up again and like an ailing friend left the set before we did.
Lucky for us Jamie was a bundle of good health and we still managed to shoot sequences with him. One truly magical moment was on the farm that belonged to Sean Carroll from Shelford. It’s a huge empty field filled with sheep and these amazing dead trees (and yes the dead trees are metaphoric in the film, not just my morbid fascination with dead things) and this was the place I decided to show that Neal expresses himself through his guitar. Jamie found himself a spot and started playing and as the sun was setting he continued playing even while we were setting up. This was by far the most therapeutic experience I have ever had. There was this sense of calmness and serenity in the air and it reflects in the visuals, as we were able to capture some stunning images.
We grew fond of Little River and its surroundings and with Film Geelong always helping us out at the last minute, this made the entire production run smoother than it might have. Now at times when I drive past that Little River turn off it stills bring up memories of great empty unspoiled images and locations ready to be discovered by some big budget production.
Night Shooting When Luke wrote "Scene 30 Ext Road Night" what he did was drop a can and there was worms everywhere. To shoot night time footage at the side of the road for a small budget crew is crazy at the best of times. With big budget productions its easy - get some 6K’s onto a crane and Bob’s your Uncle. Only we did not have that luxury. The night shoots were the hardest to do just because we did not have the proper manpower and a location that is familiar in daylight seems like a completely new place at night. We tried some night shots up at Toolleen and managed to get a few done there and the rest of the night was spent shooting in Little River.
There was a night shoot that needed to happen and we scheduled it for a couple of evenings and then always cancelled at the last minute due to weather forecast. Time was running out as Lana was required for this particular shoot and she was about to hop on a plane and jetset to a life in New York. We scheduled one evening and disregarded the weather reports because they have been so accurate the last few time (sarcasm included) and as we started shooting we were hit by a rainstorm. Wishful thinking was that it will blow over and we’ll continue. However witnessing Mel dishing up salad and seeing the wind blowing the salad off the plate even before the lasagne could anchor it we realised it was time to face the truth and to call it quits for the night. Later that evening after dropping of the Beast, I drove past Little River again and it looked like the set of The Day after Tomorrow! Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
The shoot was postponed for two days which took us to the longest production day from 12pm on the Thursday until 4am the next morning. This was do or die mentality that kept us going. It was the last night we had the company of Lana and we just had to finish the scenes scheduled, otherwise we would have had an unfinished film. The weather played along and we had a perfect evening, with the only hiccup involving Daisy Green and the theft of her left side rear mirror by an encounter with King Roo (kangaroo). A special mention to Helena who had started work at 5am that morning on another shoot and at 8pm came to our set with Lana and carried on through the night until 5am the next morning. A true professional. We concluded that evening and besides another Super 8mm day, that was it. We were done. We had a movie. |
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