Wine Country is the location for a new found-footage horror comedy from directors Tristram Baumber and Allan Brady that will begin production next month.
Written by Baumber, Site Unseen stars Nick Cain and Nadia Talotta as country recluses who are hassled to sell their property in the hot country market.
They end up kidnapping two agents, played by Olivia Suleimon and Zac Garred, and put them through a torturous round of events to see who survives as a warning to all trying to jag a cute, country fixer-upper. Emily Caelli and Brady are also part of the cast.
Shooting will take place across 10 around the Newcastle and Hunter Valley region from September 26 on a budget of less than $250k, incorporating locations such as Lovedale and iconic music venue The Cambridge Hotel in Newcastle’s west.
The film is the first to come under Baumber and Brady’s new production company Bad Rev Films, with the pair producing alongside fellow novocastrian creatives Garred and Caelli.
Baumber, who has written on the likes of The PM’s Daughter, Mother and Son, and Born To Spy, said he and Baumber had been looking for the opportunity to collaborate on a bigger project together, having first met more than a decade ago and bonded over a shared love of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
“The film started with a conversation a bit over a year ago where we said, we could easily shoot a horror film, so we just decided we were going to,” he said.
“I wrote the script and conferred with Allan about it, had a couple of sessions and it got to the point where there was a script
“Then we started a company and said, ‘Right, we’re gonna just do it’.”
For Brady, co-owner of the Newcastle Comedy Club and Newcastle Film School, the film and the subsequent creation of the company came from pooling their resources and filling in the gaps where they needed to.
“We did a very preliminary budget and realised if we shot found footage, we could it so insanely cheaply because we have great locations in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, all the production gear, and a great writer on board,” he said.
“We’d be idiots not to do this, so why don’t we?”
They decided their ingredients were best suited to the hicksploitation genre, pioneered by films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, whereby remote bush dwellers serve as captors.
After road-testing a series of early versions, including one where hicks were competing with killer clowns in their murderous pursuits and another that was a mix of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Office, they settled on the real estate premise, even managing to make room for some Curb Your Enthusiasm-style humour.
“It is a horror comedy but one of the things we wanted to be careful about was making sure it was actually scary,” Baumber said
“I think that’s probably why we moved away from some of those earlier ideas because if you’re doing hillbillies vs clowns, or The Office meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s going to have to be too funny and it’s not actually going to be scary.”
According to the writer, once the “train got moving”, it gathered people as it went.
Among them was the LA-based Garred, known for his roles in Australian Gangster, Occupation: Rainfall and Bring Him To Me.
It was on a recent trip back to his hometown to participate in Screen NSW’s Emerging Producer Program that he was approached about becoming involved.
“It started as a conversation about how I could help them put this together and then they asked me to read for the role of Parker,” he said.
“There’s such an all hands on deck approach to this with everyone involved crossing over [roles]. That means everyone knows what’s going on all the time and can answer each other’s questions if need be. I’m glad they asked me to jump on because it’s really enjoyable.”
The producers aim for a theatrical release and are in discussion with a potential distributor.