The War At Home - Australian WW2 Feature

R

robo3687

Well-known member
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

THE WAR AT HOME

OFFICIAL SITE - CLICK HERE

DIRECTORS: Phillip Kingsland, Paul Robinson
PRODUCERS: Phillip Kingsland, Paul Robinson, Connor Byrne
GENRE: War Drama
RUNNING TIME: 45-60 minutes
CAMERA: 2 Canon mv600i's (I know, i know...lol)
LOCATION: Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea (being filmed in varying locations in rural NSW, Australia)
LEADS: Phillip Kingsland and Connor Byrne
SCRIPT: approx 95%
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BEGINS: 15th of November 2006
PRINICPAL PHOTOGRAPHY WRAPS: 5th of February 2007
PROJECTED RELEASE DATE: 2007

Production status report coming in a short while.

TEASER POSTER 1


TEASER POSTER 2


TEASER TRAILERS
Teaser Trailers are available at the Official site which is linked above.
 
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PRODUCTION STATUS PART ONE
LOCATIONS, PROPS AND VEHICLES

Locations
Living on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales we have a lot of varying types of scenery which have allowed us to conveniently portray both the dry northern areas of Australia as well as the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One of our key battles takes place at a Japanese bunker and trench system in the middle of the jungle. To facilitate this we originally dug a trench system that was approx. 25m squared, this then doubled in size over the space of a few weeks.

This bunker was fraught with problems as we had many a heavy shower and it constantly became flooded and kept needing maintenance. So while we couldn't really use the trenches, much of the 'above ground' stuff (huts, camoflauge and other bits of fortification) was still usable but we have since dug out a new trench system bigger than the original in which we will film all the 'below ground' scenes (the new trenches are about 4 foot wide and over 6 feet deep).

Props
Since laws are fairly tight on gun ownership over here we've been forced to make our own replicas of WW2 weaponry. Most have come out looking fairly good, whereas some are being reworked and redesigned to be more accurate. We have an overall arsenal of about 14-15 weapons from Australian, British and American origin.

Vehicles
We wanted to have some authentic pieces of machinery in this to help sell it a bit and we've so far been able to secure an old 40's Ford truck and 2 Willy's jeeps. Also our first bout of filming is a road trip to various areas around NSW where we have located intact WW2 fighters, artillery emplacements (still able to be turned and aimed), tanks and other things (like munitions facotries and such). We've also looked into securing a plane to go up in to get aerial shots over forests and beaches as well as the ocean, and 2 boats have been secured (one for acting in and the other to act as a camera boat).

more to come...
 
PRODUCTION STATUS PART TWO
CAST, CREW AND STORY

Cast & Crew
Some of our cast doubles up with our crew on this which we knew was going to be the case from the outset. We currently have a crew of about 10-15 people in total and a main cast of around 5-6 people with over 30 part time extras available to us at any given time.

Up until about two months ago we didn't have a dedicated camera operator and the task was shared between the director and actors that weren't in the current scene. But we have since secured someone who is willing to be the sole camera operator for us.

As far as post production on this movie goes it's all being done by me. CG, editing, colour grading, music, sound effects....the whole post production workflow is resting on me to do it in the 2 and a bit months after filming wraps....my poor little laptop will be so tired...not to mention me...lol.

Story
While the specifics of our story have seemed to swap around alot over the past year the central idea has always been the same, I'll try and give a brief idea of what it's all about.

"Two friends join the militia to defend Australia's shores from invasion during WW2, one is selected to join the air force and they are separated. Through fate they are reunited in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and are forced to fight for their lives in order to make it back to Australia to warn against the impending Japanese invasion"

The climax of the movie will center around the bombings of Darwin that actually took place in 1942, but it is looking as though we will be including a bit of a 'what if' scenario of the Japanese actually making landings on the Australian mainland. I've still got to re-write that bit.
 
thanks cannon and Evan_S.

If I had somewhere to host the teaser in quicktime I'd gladly put it up...but I don't have any webspace....

i'm also considering putting together a second teaser to release sometime shortly before principal photography begins
 
PRODUCTION STATUS PART THREE
Filming and Costumes

Filming
As stated previously principal photography starts on the 15th of November and run till early December. From the 15th to the 18th our director and a number of cast and crew will be traveling around the state to various locations to essentially film what could be called pickups but they'll mostly just be short battle sequences in and around existing WW2 era machinery and structures.

Prior to this main round of filming we have completed several days of filming. Several of these days have just involved guys running around experimenting in the bunker which provided some promising results. We also filmed a few scenes which we have since done away with. From all our previous shooting we have about 3 or 4 scenes which can be considered completed, with a few that are only partially complete and will require completion in the coming weeks.

At this stage our main round of filming is planned to be spread over 24 separate days, but the director is working hard to schedule thing so that it can be condensed into 10 full shoot days. This has become more possible since we have condensed most of our cast and crew to people coming from the one area so as to reduce travel times to and from locations.

We have a large scope of things to cover, land, sea and air shooting taking place on beaches, lakes, on the ocean, in tropical forests, bushland and farming areas. We also have an old WW2 airstrip nearby which we are making use of as well as our two extremely large bunker systems which were dug by hand (our machinery died on us...lol).

Costumes
We have been lucky enough to secure a lot of authentic gear for the film. We have a number of Australian uniforms and helmets and webbing gear and such. We have Japanese helmets and mock up uniforms, and we also have a costume designer now who is in the process of creating several US uniforms for a few key sequences of the film, although I'm yet to see how they are coming out. We do have scenes involving civillians at an old train station but I'm not sure about what has been decided for their costumes....maybe we'll try and avoid seeing them as much as possible...lol....
 
45min doesn't make a movie a feature film.
Some of the SFX looked kind of bad, sorry, but the tension in the movie was good.

cheers
g.
 
well we'll call it a short feature....lol....

and i know what you mean about the special effects but truth be told the stuff in the trailer was really rushed (did the whole trailer in about 2 hours) and isn't going to be reflecting the final quality of what comes out....

i mean it won't be ILM...but it'll be better than whats on that...

i'm aiming to have a few short sequences to show sometime soon
 
Looks good Robo, just wondering with the amount of work and effort your putting in that your camera will not become a liabilty.
 
well we had hoped to get a new camera a few months ago through a deal with a local school where the directors dad is a teacher....but i haven't heard anything about that in quite a while so I think it's fallen through....

i know what we're working with isn't the greatest but I'm hoping to get something decent looking out of it all....
 
okay a small update

I just put the finishing touches on what I think is the 3rd draft of the script. It finished up at 59 pages. Which in total is about 13 or so more pages than the initial draft. There are a few action pieces where everything is summarised a bit and one middle section has been altered, but I don't have a copy of those changes yet.

The ending we have now, while longer, will be far easier to execute and doesn't rely as much on CG to carry it through.

We start filming on Wednesday the 15th and I'm anxious to get the footage in my laptop and start editing it...
 
robo3687 said:
thanks cannon and Evan_S.

If I had somewhere to host the teaser in quicktime I'd gladly put it up...but I don't have any webspace....

i'm also considering putting together a second teaser to release sometime shortly before principal photography begins
Click to expand...

PM me about this. I can donate webspace and bandwidth to you for trailers and the final film, if needs be. I think you should have a shot at a higher quality presentation than this. Best of luck with the project. I have dreams of making a WWII film someday as well, so I'm happy to help along someone who is making their dream real today.
 
thanks ovjmaica, I have PM'ed you.

Today also marks the start of principal photography....eep....it's all downhill from here...lol

also that second trailer is going to come a bit later than i thought....as the cut i have at the moment is a little too similar to the first (due to lack of footage) so once some more stuff comes in i'll put another one out.
 
Okay well I just got word that our small group got back from their trip alright. So it's time for a

FILMING UPDATE

After a 1600km round trip (eek...glad I didn't go...lol) our first small bout of filming is complete, and we have a complete scene with good dialogue and lots of varied shots for editing choices.

Our initial plans to shoot some scenes with old WWII fighters went sour when one of the actors required was unavailable...as were the planes...they were gone...lol...

But the filming at the guns went quite well, I'll post an image of what I've been told these guns look like...quite awesome. Filming took place from around 9:30 till 2:15 and I've been told that a lot of the stuff is rough but there is also a lot of usable stuff in there as well...

Alot had to be filmed from a stationary tripod which in some cases will be a blessing (due to CG) but it could ruin the look of things as well...depending..

I haven't actually seen the footage yet but should be receiving the tapes tomorrow afternoon. I'll try and get some early caps just to give an idea of what the guns were really like.

Anyway heres a shot from WW2 of what these guns apparently look like.
antiairaft8kv.jpg
 
Well I just got my hands on the footage and i must say i'm fairly pleased with a lot of it...there is some rubbish but that can always be expected.

the guns look awesome and the whole complex they are in (they're not just in a field as per the above picture) looks impressive.....

as for compiling a whole scene out of this footage I don't think I'll be able to do it just yet...theres still too much missing....lol....

I'm off to capture it all now and will be back later or tomorrow with some screen caps....
 
Heres two for now....the rest will follow later
001io7.jpg

002sm8.jpg

The above one is a shot where we plan to do a bit of cloning....so I did a bit of a test on the still (went a bit overboard though).

and also I discovered that there was some interview/bts stuff shot in Lithgow which I didn't know about...soooo....

COMING SOON
Our first Behind the Scenes Featurette
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ok we've got some more filming coming up over the next couple of days

Schedule

Thurs, 23rd Nov - begin filming the scenes at our bunker location, expected attendance for this day is 9 people so we aim to do all the bigger shots on this day
Fri, 24th Nov - Only 4 people are coming today so the rest of the smaller shots for the bunker will be shot today. Also in the evening things will move indoors as the cockpit shots are filmed.
Mon, 27th Nov - 1/2 of the beach sequences will be filmed today.

after that things still need a bit of organising but the general idea is to film every monday and friday from now till christmas....
 
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