The War At Home - Australian WW2 Feature

okay theres nothing more frustrating than fickle actors and disorganised shoots...one of our leads has pulled out of two of the main days of shooting (yesterday and today) meaning that alot of shots have been pushed back to next week.

as far as i know today was salvaged and alot of scenes not involving the actor were shot, and the actor made himself available last night for the shooting of the cockpit sequences.......

but we're a bit behind now on where I had hoped we'd be.....i just wish i had a bit more control over the shoot days....things get so random and jumbled its ridiculous
 
and its changed again.....*sigh*....filming will be sunday-monday-tuesday now provided no one changes on us again.....

i'll be getting about 45-60 mins worth of footage to rummage through tomorrow afternoon that was done on thursday night and during the day on friday.
 
got a few new screens to show, they're only small as they were sent through to me by the director...i haven't actually gotten the footage yet. These are from the filming done on Friday.

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These were all filmed at our new bunker which is a vast improvement over the old one.....as is clearly visible.......and to think it was dug by one man and a shovel....lol
 
PROPS UPDATE PART 1

Thompson SMG

Over the last few weeks I've been building our tommy gun for use in a few scenes, it was originally meant to come out a bit more detailed than it ended up being. This was mostly due to time, and me being lazy. I lost interest in it after I kept getting given changing deadlines and stuff and eventually just finished it up to this point. It still looks alright. I decided to take a few pictures as I was doing it too, just to show things progressing.


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Where all the magic happens.

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A few shots of the separate pieces in early stages of sticking together and shaping.

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Body of the gun test assembled with the barrel sitting above it.
 
PROPS UPDATE PART 2

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The barrel has now been attached.

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The body has been assembled.

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My coat-hanger rig for priming and painting the body of the gun.

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All parts that are 'wooden' received a coat of stain.

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And here it is all primed, painted and stuck together, I would have taken more pics but the director arrived early and in a rush to pick it up so no go...the next time you'll see it will be in screens and possibly the second trailer.
 
Filming Update

We've got some more filming coming up, I think the plan now is to film at least 4 times a week...lol...

Thursday, 30th Nov - About a 5 hour shoot is planned, including lunch, the idea today is to get the rest of the bunker scenes shot, with the exterior shots taking priority. If time runs out then the remaining shots on the inside of the bunker will be done on Sunday

Friday, 1st Dec - A road trip is planned today to some local rain forests with huge fig trees and steep paths and waterfalls etc which will hopefully provide some good scenery for our scenes on the Kokoda Track.

Saturday, 2nd Dec - Resting...

Sunday, 3rd Dec - Small scale shoot back at the bunker doing pickups for what was missed on Thursday. The second half of the day will be filming our tank scenes, in which we have a tracked excavator which we will be driving over scale trenches in closeups and such and in longer shots I will be adding a CG tank.

Monday, 4th Dec - Resting and organising...

Tuesday, 5th Dec - Small group of about 6 or 7 will rise before the sun in order to catch it rising over the beach (which will in fact become a sunset in the film), and film the scenes that take place as the sun is setting.

Then the opening shots of swimming and mucking around in the waters at the beach will be filmed, after which we will set up our beach barricades and film scenes from towards the end of the film.

Then we'll be moving over to some boatsheds and taking a boat out to film some scenes and a landing on the beach at 'Darwin' which will actually be an island in the middle of a local lake...lol

That's as far forward as has been planned but we still have these major section to film

- Extra training scene, (shooting, push-ups etc.)
- Darwin railway station at Timbertown (must get down before school holidays lol)
- Japs running shots, with Jonny running shots
- Papua landing zone confrontation (last Failford scene)
-Willy's jeep footage
- Americans at lighthouse
-Sniper Jungle and entrance
-Darwin Tent scenes before and after

- 'the making of crap' including a paintball expo

its all getting hectic now...lol
 
PROPS UPDATE AGAIN

COLT M1911A

This is actually quite old this prop but its the one I put the most effort into and I'm really happy with how it came out. It has a moving hammer and removable magazine.

These ones below were before I primed and painted the gun, it was also before i'd shaped the handgrips. You can see in one of the photos some of the templates made from the original blueprints which I used to cut out the pieces.

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These two were after the handgrips has been stained and the main body of the gun had been primed.

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And heres the gun completely painted and also being modeled by the local emperor penguin...lol...complete with M1 Helmet...

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This is looking very interesting. I like how you guys are being creative and making your prop guns. Good luck with the shoot, keep us posted.
 
This is really shaping up nicely. Great stills you have there, and kudos on making your own props! Good luck for the rest of the production
 
thanks for the comments guys.

heres a new batch of stills from our shoot yesterday. These take place in an abandoned Australian bunker at Efogi (it is actually just our old bunker that got neglected and flooded...lol), where they find a lone soldier hiding in a water pit after a Japanese raid.

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I especially love the last one, the look on the guys face is great.

I've been told that something went wacko with the mic on the day and that its picked up a lot of unnecessary noise...looks like there'll have to be a bit of post work on it.

EDIT: Just did up a compilation of the last 30 screens
Click here to view (approx. 350k)
 
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FILMING REPORT
from the mouth of Phil, our Director.

On our Efogi shoot:

"We filmed today, and I had my 5 actors I said bare minimum and Conor also was there, and it was also overcast and cloudy.

The only thing that was fundementally wrong with today was that work called me in the night before to work that day starting at 12.00. Therefore time was short, so I decideded to have people up and ready by 6.30 am. This was a long shot, and I knew I would be pushing it. I invited two of the cast members to my house the night before, so to make it easier to get up in the morning as a group rather than stand alone which does not work.

The filming started at our group heading into the ravaged bunker, and finished with my 'score to settle' speech. Unfortunately we did not get time to do the bunker sequence, but have left that for Sunday anyway, where we have the potential for a lot more extras for the battle scenes.

In amongst all the fun I got bitten by a spider and half my hand has had a reaction, killing all the skin? ? ? I saw a chemist who gave me something and said their was nothing I could do to stem it, ahem yes.

The Mud pit stuff worked out a real treat to, god it stunk in there, and funny enough we did not get a single leech. (by the way, I promised I would not do anything to an actor that I was not prepared to do myself, so I went into the mud pit with him for emotional support lol).

Seriously he (scott/trench-man) had mud totally all over him who played the part of Dave, he looked so Rambo.

Regrets, the sound quality is very crap. I haven't had the chance to check much of it out yet, and yeah, for some reason the microphone isn't doing what its meant to anymore, So the sound picked up every little bloody noise inlcuding highway traffic and camera shaking."
 
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****EDITED TO REMOVE UNNECESSARY GRUMBLING ABOUT THE EDITING PROCESS THAT I AM NOW EMBARRASSED ABOUT*****

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sheesh...in retrospect...never post when grumpy....lol.....i really blabbed on alot just then.......

anyway i started putting together the bunker sequence last night and its at about 7 minutes at the moment which is about 70% of the scene.....it all went together much easier and was a lot more organised than the efogi stuff....i was just in a bad mod when i was editing that i think...i watched it back and its not too bad....

i think that was all due to the bunker being something we'd planned from the start and the efogi stuff being created a few days prior to shooting.....

oh well...i'm in a better mood now
 
our director is quite the crazy one...lol....i'm sure he should have thought things through a bit more...lol...

today the scenes of blowing up our bunker took place...and well i'll let his words describe it

"Their was one that was spectacular, I wanted to show the explosions going off from Stevens perspective, as he was already in the trenches when they go off. so I jumped in the trench with a camera person and waited behind a corner while on the other side of the corner we tipped fuel everywhere. You can kinda guess what happened, the fuel was lit a fair bit away, and the flames roared through the trench like a tunnel, blowing me away on the other side of the corner, like I was on fire for about 3 seconds screaming some pretty foul words. haha. It was worth it, it came out well in the shot"

:violent5: (<---this is strangely so appropriate...lol)

and yesterday they traveled a few hours to a lighthouse on a cliff where this happened:

"we got an hour of filming done, but we weren't welcome from the start as this NSWPW ranger was upping us about how we didn't have permits. Anyway, we went and filmed anyway. However, last time I was at that lighthouse it was a beautiful day- perfect. However, today brought 85 Km/h Winds that swept half our props of the cliff, and almost some of the heavier ones, like our tables chair, fruit baskets, hats, tablecloths and paperwork were just gone, the U.S flag, almost gone, patience ------ SO GONE."

so its been an interesting couple of days....we still have willy's jeeps and a steam train to film this week
 
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