By Adam Coleman
After 14 weeks of pre-production and filming in Townsville, Beneath Hill 60 will wrap this weekend before heading to post-production company Cutting Edge for 12 weeks.
Transmission Films will distribute the picture and plan a wide national release strategy of 140 prints. Producer Bill Leimbach told INSIDEFILM that filming the World War I epic exceeded all expectations.
“I think it is going to be as big as Gallipoli was 25 years ago,” he said.
“We thought we would do a really great art house picture but director Jeremy [Sims] just got stuck into it and he is an actor’s director – he has built up his confidence over the course of the film."
With only one feature film under his belt – Last Train to Freo – Sims is a relatively inexperienced director, a fact Leimbach says will be far from apparent in the finished print.
“Jeremy is fantastic. He has just become a master director. Last Train to Freo was only a $2 million movie. Beneath Hill 60 is a $9 million movie in full period costume. But the actors love working with him.”
The set of Beneath Hill 60 replicated the Western Front, with cast and crew subjected to incredibly tough conditions.
“The guy’s are running through special effects, bombs going off, jumping into craters up to their neck in water and mud at 3am and everybody is smiling and having a grand time,” Leimbach said.
The story is centred on the 1st Australian Tunneling Division who were responsible for the mines set under ‘Hill 60’, a high point that dominated that part of the battleground in Belgium.
When filming in the tunnels, Sims decided he didn’t want break away walls in order to create a feeling of claustrophobia.
“So the camera is on with the guys either coming at you or going away," Leimbach says. They’re in that muddy little tunnel as we speak.
"To get the maximum value out of your money shots, the open WWI no-mans land you have to do it at night which means you are still out there at two in the morning, three in the morning with rain machines and everything you touch is mud," he said.
Beneath Hill 60 is scheduled for release on April 22 next year, three days before Anzac Day.