By Adam Coleman
With post-production on privately funded Australian feature Surviving Georgia nearing completion, the film’s producers are busy shopping for a distribution deal in the hope of bringing the low-budget drama to cinemas by October this year.
Starring Pia Miranda (Looking for Alibrandi), Holly Valance (Taken) and Shane Jacobson (Kenny), Surviving Georgia depicts the lives of two sisters, that come to realise their vivacious, gambling mother has left them to fend for themselves in their small country town.
Surviving Georgia producer Spencer McLaren told INSIDEFILM, the film will be screened for distributors on February 26.
“We haven’t done a sale yet. We chose not to sell off the script, we wanted to wait until we had done the edit and done a pretty good fine cut and hopefully we can get a better deal from distributors that way,” he said.
The film will be delivered and finished by mid-May, according to McLaren.
“Ideally, I would like to get it into cinemas in October, but I am not sure. It will depend on distributor’s slates really. I suspect they would release it early 2011 to avoid the Christmas clash,” he said.
The Surviving Georgia shoot was “tough” due to the limited budget and time restrictions, according to McLaren.
“We did it in only four weeks, so that is 20 days at a five day week, three of which were away in Warburton in regional Victoria. So it was a bit like being on school camp,” he said.
Iconic Warburton landmarks such as the Main Street, Yarra River and Warburton Primary School have all been chosen as locations for the film.
“We had a great cast, no divas, Holly Vallance came back from LA to do it. Pia Miranda, Shane Jacobson, everyone was just kind of down to earth and happy to go with the flow and do what we needed to get the film in the can.”
If Surviving Georgia fails to secure a suitable distribution deal, the film’s producers haven’t ruled out handling some sales themselves.
“At the moment we are just shopping for local and international, we may look at doing some direct sales ourselves in terms of perhaps cable and in-flight, but we will just wait and see what happens when we talk to distributors on the 28th,” he said.
McLaren is producing the film alongside the film’s director-producer, Kate Whitbread. Sandra Sciberras (Caterpillar Wish) will co-direct the film and also wrote the screenplay.
While Surviving Georgia was made solely with private investment, the producers will be seeking government money to assist in post-production.
“The last 12 months has been a tricky time period to get private investment as you can imagine, so we have been quite pleased by that,” he said.