After contributing to features such as Emilie Lowe’s The Canary and Jordon Prince-Wright’s Before Dawn in the past couple of years, WA filmmaker Peter Renzullo is back in the driver’s seat for micro-budget feature The Jewel Wasp.
Pre-production is underway for the psychological thriller, set to shoot predominantly at Perth City Farm, which follows an underground agency dedicated to capturing perpetrators of horrific crimes before they are caught by law enforcement, bringing them face-to-face with the families of their victims.
The cast comprises Jay Jay Jegathessan, Kate Lloyd, Paul Cozens, Nate Garnett, Steve Kio, Laura Mac, Grace Garnett, James Broadhurst, Vipin Murikulathil, and Ricky Pulko.
Production is scheduled to take place over two weeks in July, with a crowdfunding campaign underway to raise $11,000 of the film’s budget. Backlot Perth managing director and Halo Films founder Ian Hale is executive producing, with Halo Films to handle distribution.
It marks the seventh script and third feature as writer/director for Renzullo, who has also served as a DOP, editor, and composer on multiple projects via company Scudley Films, through which he will do the editing and score of The Jewel Wasp.
His prolific output is made more impressive by the fact he is legally blind, with only 3 per cent vision remaining due to a rare condition called Cone Dystrophy. It’s a journey that began in 2017 with the making of his debut feature Anticipation, which he used as an opportunity to learn the complexities of production and post-production, teaching himself the intricacies of each department.
Renzullo told IF he wrote the script for The Jewel Wasp during the COVID lockdowns, describing it as a “dialogue-driven story”.
“The concept came to me in 2021/22 and then I fully fleshed out the script and got some scenes shot in early 2023 just to get some ideas out for a couple of scenes I had written,” he said.
“Everything went on hold while I had other client work to catch up on because of the lockdown and now it’s getting to the stage where I’m getting back to the full script, which is currently sitting at 120 pages. I want to shoot it all and then condense it in the edit.”