Purchase AJA Io XT for broadcast-quality capture, monitoring and output for Avid and receive free Eye Scream Factory presets to quickly add stunning effects to your productions. Pair Io XT with Avid, MacBook Pro and Thunderbolt storage for a no-compromise
more...
For a limited time, Digistor is including Digital Tutors online training with every commercial 3ds Max or Maya purchased* giving you and your team access to the world's largest online CG training library for free.
more...
Grass Valley and Corsair Solutions are proud to announce that, as part of a special competitive upgrade promotion, users of Apple's Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid's Media Composer can now upgrade to EDIUS 6 nonlinear editing software for just...
more...
IF and the Sydney Film Festival are giving away a Flexi10 worth $137
more...
Your Vote
Do you agree that the producer offset should be raised from 20 to 40 per cent for television?
Yes
No
|
Cover Story: Lucky Country
[Tue 05/05/2009 10:13:10]
After making his comeback with the acclaimed low budget Boxing Day, Kriv Stenders has delved deep into the Australian psyche with his period western Lucky Country. He tells Simon de Bruyn how he worked with writer Andy Cox to craft a taut claustrophobic thriller that uses the landscape as a key character.
Imagine a wild man crouched on a log, eyes glowering in the darkness, clutching a bottle of whiskey as he stares towards a nearby wood cabin surrounded by verdant bush, while inside a family huddles in trepidation at what he might do next. This is the scene which inspired screenwriter Andy Cox to pen his first draft of Lucky Country, and in an interesting twist on screenwriter timidity, he was the wild man in question.
“I had been reading a lot of discussion in the press about Australian identity and I had been trying to write a story set in the present but it just wouldn’t come together,” he says.
“I went on a camping trip and I stumbled across a little settler’s cabin in the woods, and I stayed up all night just staring at it with a bottle of whiskey which seriously disturbed the young family that was holidaying in it at the time. And the story came to me then, and the characters and the settings were quite intact. I realised I could tell this story I needed to tell about the now, but set it then, in 1902, because you can just strip everything away.”
Cox started immersing himself in the history of the times, reading news articles from 1901 and 1902, and the final film is brimming with fine historical detail.
“I found pamphlets they distributed on how to run a farm, it’s just terrible. They were little 50 page pocket pamphlets showing how you could leave the city and go out and farm God’s land, how to look after horses and grow food, it was insane, and people would. They would run off and buy this fallow land foisted on them by unscrupulous land owners and make an absolute hash of it. It’s quite disturbing really,” he says.
The story that had come to Cox at that cabin concerned a small landholder, an English schoolteacher and man of God, barely hanging onto his patch of land in the Australian wilderness. Recently widowed, this man gruffly cares for his daughter and son; resistant to the pressures of the land around him, until the arrival of three strangers – ex-soldiers lured by the rumour of gold – throws the family into disarray, and the son against the father. The homestead becomes the setting for a tense standoff, while the ever encroaching bush emphasizes the tenuous way that Australians are at home in this unforgiving landscape.
Want to read more? Grab a copy of the May #120 issue available at newsstands now.
INSIDEFILM delivers a 'who, what, where and how' guide to success in screen content creation. It's the bible for Australia's filmmakers - essential reading for anyone working in the film and TV industry. INSIDEFILM features exclusive interviews with the creative personalities behind today's most entertaining and stimulating screen content, as well as detailed info about new productions and technologies.
Subscribe to INSIDEFILM and receive up to 3 FREE DVD's from Madman's Directors Suite!
A subscription to INSIDEFILM is a must have whether you work in the industry or just love films!
To subscribe, all you have to do is...
* Phone 1800 651 422
* Email subscriptions@intermedia.com.au
* Go to https://secure.intermedia.com.au/index.cfm?page=mag.subscription&mid=29
