Monthly Archives: May 2015

May 29 2015
0
Strangerland_Poster

Nicole’s back!

By | Just for fun | No Comments

To celebrate Nicole Kidman’s return to Australian independent cinema in Strangerland, we’re looking back at some of Nicole’s performances both here and abroad, from the start of her long and lucrative career to now.

1

BMX Bandits (1983)

2

Dead Calm (1989)

3

The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

4

Practical Magic (1998)

5

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

6

Moulin Rouge (2001)

7

The Hours (2002)

8

Dogville (2003)

9

Cold Mountain (2003)

10

The Stepford Wives (2004)

11

Bewitched (2005)

12

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

13

Australia (2008)

14

The Railway Man (2013)

15

Strangerland (2015)

Strangerland is screening at the Sydney Film Festival on 5 and 6 June, and will be shown in Palace Cinemas across Australia from 11 June. The feature debut from director Kim Farrant, Strangerland also stars Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving and Maddison Brown.

May 21 2015
0
Hiding-560

Hiding creator Matt Ford on coming up with a fraught family dramedy

By | Interview | No Comments

One of the new and original TV series we’ve seen so far this year is Hiding, part crime show, part family dramedy.

Hiding is a thrilling eight part series about a family in strife. Dad, Troy, is caught up in a drug bust gone bad, forcing him and wife, Bec, and teenage kids, Mitchell and Shaneen, into the witness protection program. The family packs up their lives and head interstate. Sydney’s inner west proves very different to the Gold Coast, as the family adjusts not only to a new place, but also new names, new jobs, new schools and new histories. It’s a high-stress home situation that’s often made more so by the slapdash detective, John Pinder, tasked with the family’s welfare. Not to mention the ever-present threat of being found by Troy’s previous employer, Nils.

We talk to the series creator, writer and producer, Matt Ford, about coming up with this riveting television.

Screen Australia: Which TV series that you’ve seen inspired you to create something like Hiding?

Matt Ford: I’m a huge fan of The Sopranos, so I think it was a pretty big inspiration to create something based around a family, with a crime element. I also loved Friday Night Lights, and the relationship between the coach and his wife was one I’ve thought about a lot. That was one of the first shows I ever saw that treated teenagers like they were adults, and in some cases, cast adults to play them. I loved that.

SA: How did you come up with the concept for the show – a family new to the witness protection program?

MF: I’d had the idea for a long time, just kicking around in the back of my mind. I’d never seen witness protection done very well, and I was puzzled by this. It seemed like potentially rich territory. And I wanted to write something about a husband and wife, so… I started making notes about my two lead characters, and everything else came fairly quickly.

SA: What kind of research was involved in writing the parts of the show like the drug bust, the characters John Pinder, Kosta and Nils and the stuff about the witness protection program?

MF: I have a weird relationship with research. I get fascinated by stuff and I research it. But I try not to become a slave to the research. I’m not making a documentary, I’m telling a fictional story. Also, I’ve learned the hard way that people have their own preconceived ideas about what’s ‘true’ or not.

SA: Which family member do you feel for the most during the whole ordeal – moving to Sydney, new identity, and no more contact with friends and other family?

MF: It’s been fun to get feedback from the audience about it – so many people have said to me, ‘hey, the kids. Please be kind to the kids, they didn’t deserve this, this is freaking us out’. I think maybe Maree/Bec is the one who affected me the most – she really cops it. But it changes, depending on the episode.

SA: Which episode is your favourite?

MF: Episode 5 is my favourite – Lincoln and the stalker, and the judge’s car, etc. I was happy with the story and the script, but then the direction by Grant Brown just lifted the whole thing up to another level. The performances from James and Kate are stunning. The music, by Dave McCormack, and Rodrigo Balart’s editing. It’s one of those times where you watch the first screening and think wow – I want to shake the hand of every single person in the crew – they did their jobs perfectly.

If you missed Hiding when it aired on the ABC a few months ago, you’re in luck – the DVD is out now.

May 13 2015
0
Babe

20 years ago George Miller was revelling in the success of sweet family film, Babe

By | Just for fun | No Comments

While we’re all having a George Miller moment with the release of Fury Road, let’s take a look back at one of his earlier films. A far cry from the toxic storm… it’s Babe from 1995.

Who could forget the adorable talking pig?

Earnest and curious piglet Babe is adopted by Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) who takes him to the farm where he meets a host of other furry friends including Rex the border collie (voiced by Hugo Weaving) and his mate Fly (voiced by Miriam Margolyes), who takes Babe under her motherly wing. Babe quickly endears himself to the whole farm when he develops a novel sheepherding tactic. Comedienne Magda Szubanski also stars as Mrs Hoggett in this utterly irresistible family film with enough whip smart humour and subtle dark undertones to appeal to the adults too.

Produced by Mad Max legend George Miller, Babe was a huge box office and critical success – it took $36.8m at the Australian box office and $254m worldwide. It was also nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay and won for Best Visual Effects, as well as Best Motion Picture Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes.

Filmed in Robertson in the Southern Highlands, the lush rolling hills served as a gorgeous backdrop for the whole farmyard cast brought to life by iconic character voice actors, animatronics from the Jim Henson Creature’s Shop, and special effects that were, at the time anyway, ground-breaking.

You can rent or buy Babe on iTunes, Google Play or at JB Hi-Fi

May 13 2015
0
Wilfred

10 unlikely heroes of the past three decades

By | Just for fun | No Comments

To celebrate the much anticipated return of Australia’s ultimate anti-hero, Max Rockatansky a.k.a Mad Max, we’re looking back chronologically at some of the most memorable characters who have shocked, stumbled and surprised their way to some semblance of heroism over the past 30 years.

1

Max Rockatansky in Mad Max (2015 – 1985)

2

Simon Chan in Maximum Choppage (2015)

3

Jonah in Not Suitable for Children (2012)

4

Wilfred in Wilfred (2010 – 2007)

5

Ned Kelly in Ned Kelly (2003)

6

Placid Lake in The Rage in Placid Lake (2003)

7

Chopper Read in Chopper (2000)

8

Babe in Babe (1995)

9

Rhonda Epinstalk & Muriel Heslop in Muriel’s Wedding (1994)

10

Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee (1986)

May 12 2015
0
Sam Worthington stars in Deadline Gallipoli. Supplied by Matt Nettheim.

Tackling the Anzac legend

By | Interview | No Comments

Jacquelin Perske on the challenges of Deadline Gallipoli. By Caroline Baum.

Now that the TV schedule is no longer wall-to-wall Anzac commemoration, there’s time to go back and sift through the sentiment for overlooked gems.

Screened on Foxtel’s premium Showcase channel, Matchbox Pictures’ Deadline Gallipoli told the story from a fresh angle that gave the mini series a life that is bound to extend beyond this centenary year.

Jacquelin Perske, one of the quartet of screenwriters on the mini series, together with Stuart Beattie, Shaun Grant and Cate Shortland, came to the project knowing little about the subject that she had not learned at school or from watching Peter Weir’s film in her youth. But as a writer whose credits include Love My Way and The Secret Life Of Us, her chops when it comes to writing about relationships are beyond dispute.

Perske brings a contemporary edge to historical figures, shaking the dust off their uniforms.

“Part of the development process was to find the real people in the history. 1915 was before film or radio so we only had the written word to try and understand who our characters really we. Even their diaries were written in a very formal way – this is pre Freud! Feelings and emotions were not discussed, even privately.”

Perske admits that at first she was wary of Matchbox’s approach: “My eyes glazed over a bit at first – until I heard the angle, which had been developed with Sam Worthington (who plays real life press photographer Philip Shuler and was also one of the series’ executive producers).

“The challenge in making war correspondent Charles Bean (played with convincing intensity by newcomer Joel Jackson) the central character was that he wasn’t immediately sympathetic. I’d always thought he was a right wing reactionary. He was tricky to find a story for as he lives by the book – he’s a factoid, very dry in his comments, almost anti – heroic.

“What made me fall in love with him was that he knew his limitations – for example, that he lacked a sense of humour. Today I think we’d say he might have been ‘somewhere on the spectrum’ given his obsession with statistics. But he was also heartbroken and disillusioned by what he saw. At the start he was so very ‘King and Country’ in his loyalty and then became completely anti- British and refused a knighthood not once, but twice, quietly.”

Further research found elements of drama in the small details of logistical oversight that contributed so tragically to defeat- a lack of water to hydrate the troops, the absence of greatcoats when winter came.

“We tried to avoid the cliché tropes of the story and we were fortunate in that because journalists were our central characters we didn’t have to go into too much detail about the fighting in the trenches. My favourite scene is a small one at an English garden party where British journalist Ellis Ashmead Bartlett (played with panache by Hugh Dancy) accidentally-on-purpose bumps into a Turkish prince so that he can pump him for information, while revealing that they have previously fought together on the same side. I liked the bizarre slightly surreal nature of this and that they were now supposed to be enemies.”

As a writer who is known for memorable female characters, Perske found it challenging to have few women on screen: “It was hard to create a story that was not about the romance factor. So instead I concentrated on finding ways for the men to bond.”

Deadline Gallipoli is available to view on Foxtel Go.

Next on Jacquelin Perske’s slate is an ambitious adaptation of Seven Types of Ambiguity, Eliot Perlman’s sprawling novel of moral twists and turns, for Matchbox Pictures.

May 08 2015
0
Judy Davis, Sarah Snook and Kate Winslet star in The Dressmaker. Supplied by Universal.

Couture in a Country Town: Kate Winslet and The Dressmaker

By | Feature, The latest | No Comments

The art of the seamstress requires perfectionism and patience. Qualities also required in a film producer. Sue Maslin never dropped a stitch while waiting years for the rights to Rosalie Ham’s novel The Dressmaker to become available. By Caroline Baum.

Initially published to modest fanfare in 2000, The Dressmaker gradually drew a devoted following among readers who fell for its gothic mix of love, hate and fab frocks, set in a mythical country town in the 1950’s. Peopled with a rich cast of eccentric characters and a plot full of unexpected twists, it had obvious potential to reach a far wider audience in another medium.

“It works on so many levels” says producer Sue Maslin, who, as a country girl herself, related to the story immediately. “The small town concept travels universally. And Tilly, the central character, who comes back to Dungatar seeking revenge after years working in the world of Parisian haute couture, is such a complex and an intriguing character: watching her is like dropping a stone in a pond and watching the ripples spread as her presence begins to take effect on the town.”

“The big advantage of the book is that it is so visual. The costumes and the irony of the middle-of-nowhere setting enhance the element of transformation that is so essential in a great film.”

Maslin doesn’t feel that being faithful serves a novel’s best interests when it comes to screen adaptation.

“The problem with most great literature is that so much of it is interior. So the challenge in adaptation is how much of the story can be externalised. You look for material that you can show and hear. In The Dressmaker, the entire story is told through the actions of the townsfolk and what happens when Tilly arrives. We see her power to transform the dowdy frumps through couture (thanks to stunning designs by Marion Boyce, best known for her beaded flapper dresses for Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on the ABC) . We see everyone’s flaws, and how Tilly knows exactly how to expose and cover those up. And we see the development of her relationship with her mother which moves towards reconciliation.”

Just as a great couture dress is constructed from a flawless pattern, Maslin set about finding a writer who could cut and shape an elegant, well-fitted script.

“I thought of Jocelyn Moorhouse immediately because of Proof, which demonstrated her ability to see the comic and tragic dimensions in any given scene. Balancing on that knife edge is very tricky. But the timing was not good for her, so I had to wait a year, and went back to her at which point she said ‘Thank God, I’m ready now!’”

Scripting took two years. Moorhouse, then based in LA with her four children, worked closely with husband PJ Hogan (Muriel’s Wedding).

“There were in excess of a dozen drafts” remembers Maslin. “One of the challenges was trimming from the original cast, which has so many characters and story lines – it was too crowded for a film.”

A crucial advantage in casting was that Moorhouse was represented in LA by CAA, the same agency as Kate Winslet, making it easier to get the script to her.

“We waited eight months, because she’s so busy and gets so many offers’ says Maslin, ‘and during that time we got a lot of pressure to consider re-casting. Then one day, out of the blue, she sent Joss an email saying ‘I’m in’! We could not believe it, so I put Joss on a plane to London immediately to meet with Kate and make sure.”

Then came another setback: Winslet fell pregnant and the shoot date had to be postponed for a year. In the meantime another piece of crucial casting was underway: the search for an authentic location that could become the remote town of Dungatar.

“Rosalie is definite about it being in a wheatbelt but on a hill. We drove around Victoria, NSW and into South Australia for three years looking but never found all the elements. Then one day the location department at Film Victoria rang up and suggested the back of the You Yangs near Geelong , where Heath Ledger had filmed Ned Kelly. It had a granite outcrop and a landscape of dead trees. Our DOP Don McAlpine took one look and said ‘We have to shoot here’.”

So Dungatar was built at Mount Rothwell, its verandahs and streets inspired by the lines and tones of Russell Drysdale’s paintings of Hill End. Two hundred and twenty locals were cast as extras for scenes shot at Mt Rothwell and in Horsham, with extras casting director Charlotte Seymour appealing for authentic country types to match the period. Locals also supplied  vintage vehicles and a local bakery provided period cakes.

At Mt Rothwell, the location fee meant that the biodiversity centre, which has breeding programs for rare and endangered wildlife, was able to employ another manager and significantly expand their conservation program.  Further boosting the local economy, a third of the crew stayed nearby at Little River. When production moved to Horsham, there were up to two hundred and fifty people on set, which meant that the production booked out every available motel room in the town and the crew were also regulars at the pub.  ‘This community engagement had an ongoing effect; we’ve noticed that 800 of our nearly 4000 Facebook followers come from the Horsham region,’ says Maslin. Rosalie Ham has contributed a jaunty blog to the film’s website, as both author and extra.

The Dressmaker had niche appeal as a novel but as a film, Universal are aiming for a commercial hit on a broader scale, helped by a stellar cast (including Judy Davis, Liam Helmsworth, Hugo Weaving, together with rising Australian star Sarah Snook).

“It’s got that ability to cross over to a broader market looking for that blend of  sophisticated quality storytelling and pure entertainment that they are calling ‘smarthouse’,” says Maslin. Sounds like she has it all sewn up.

The Dressmaker opens in Australia on 29 October 2015.

May 04 2015
0
Mad Max: Fury Road

Fury Road: Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy and a new desert storm

By | Interview, The latest | No Comments

Caroline Baum talks to Mad Max: Fury Road film editor Margaret Sixel about the practicalities of recreating George Miller’s famous dystopian world.

Caroline Baum: Can you talk about the special effects and how they amplify the look and tradition of Mad Max but using new technology?

Margaret Sixel: In Fury Road nothing defies the laws of gravity. This is not a superhero movie, so there was no flying through the air or magic wands…

By and large the visual special effects are invisible in this film, apart from the obvious toxic storm sequence (even here the many elements are real i.e. the War Rig, Nux’s car and the Flame Car) and the Citadel which is a mix of effects and set design.

There are no computer-generated vehicles, car crashes or even explosions. Ok… maybe one computer-generated crash!

For safety reasons, actors and stunt crew wore harnesses that were erased later. But all stunts are real. Visual special effects are used to enhance the shots. We ‘comp’ shots, using elements from different sources but combined into one image. Our visual special effects supervisor Andrew Jackson loved using the real thing rather than creating a fully computer-generated element. On set he would shoot real flames, water, dust, rock, vehicle elements, or skies all to be used later in post.

Even the interior cabin scenes were shot in a moving vehicle. This is naturally more challenging but ultimately far more effective. For various reasons some scenes were shot with green screen, using a ‘sim trav’ hydraulic rig. So these shots had to have background replacement and often have had additional camera shake added.

There is a canyon sequence in the film and George was adamant that the location scouts find the right location. This was a big challenge. Visual special effects could have created it in computer-generated imagery but the sequence would have felt quite different.

So we have ‘messed’ with every shot – reracks, resizes, speed changes, sky and background replacement, rig removals, ground removals, digital intermediate colour manipulation using a baselight, but we still feel it is not a computer-generated movie. It is old school meets new school!

CB: Audiences are more visually literate than ever and used to the rapid fire rhythms of fast-cutting and video games so how does that influence the rhythm of the action sequences in the way they are shot and edited?

MS: I agree that audiences can process visual information faster now than ever before. Our brains are changing. Digital editing has also changed editing styles. It is easier now to experiment, manipulate the images and create multiple versions.

Fury Road is cut faster than the original Mad Max films but I have been told that it is very easy to follow the action. I was thrilled to hear this.

George is well known for his classic montage rather than mise-en-scene approach. This is not a film shot by the Dardenne Brothers! To tell a story that is constantly on the move is very difficult so you have to break down scenes into achievable shots.

The multiple cameras also influenced cutting rhythms. I love multi-cam coverage. It can save the day.

We also sped up many shots in the film. Almost nothing remains at 24 frames a second. The fastest vehicle could only travel 40 kilometres on the desert floor in Namibia so everything in the dailies looked very slow. Speeding up shots is something George did in the earlier Mad Max films but the technique now is much more refined. In the old days it was either 24 or 12 frames. Now, within the same shot, you can go from 24 to 12 back to 18 frames a second.

The cutting style largely is dictated by coverage. There are no master shots so you have to create moments out of many ‘bits and pieces’. And once you have set up a certain rhythm you have to keep going. You can’t fall off the wave.

CB: What are the design details of the dystopian ‘steampunk’ world that most appeal to you in this film?

MS: It’s not quite steampunk. The older more robust technologies have survived. The computer chip didn’t. Everything in the Fury Road world is made from found objects and has been repurposed. George and production designer Colin Gibson put massive thought and energy into the look of the film. They applied the design philosophy rigorously. In spite of it being ‘after the Apocalypse’ they wanted vehicles, clothing, bikes, et al, to be beautiful and made with love. George often talked about cave paintings and how humans are hardwired to make art.

I love the human-powered treadmills in the Citadel, the Gigahorse with the dashboard made of the insignia of old cars, the wire skull steering wheel in the War Rig, the Immortan’s mask, the scarification on the War Boys’ bodies… and let’s not forget Furiosa’s mechanical arm designed by principal vehicle designer and storyboard artist Peter Pound.

CB: What does sound add to effects and the texture of high impact scenes?

MS: George often says ‘See with your ears, hear with your eyes.’

Initially George was adamant that we edit the action sequences silently – no sound effects, no music. The rhythm of the visuals has to work as best it can before being enhanced by sound and music. No hiding allowed. This also allows you to focus very intensely purely on the visuals and not be distracted by temp sound.

Once we have milked the picture edit, then great attention is paid to sound and how it can enhance the storytelling. It​’s not only in the high impact scenes but in the more subtle scenes for which sound adds another vital dimension. In the scene where Max meets the girls and the subsequent fight sequence, sound designer David White put a huge amount of work into the chain effects, the water effects and other Max ‘headspace’ sounds. The soundtrack knits the shots together and amplifies the whole immersive experience.

Mad Max: Fury Road is now playing!