The Legend of the Stationery Officer

R

Ryan McCarvill

Well-known member
Ok, so its been a bitter bitter winter so far, in fact the coldest start that I've ever felt - of course I say that every year. And unfortunately I've been stuck making a film rather than up on the slopes, but I digress.

It is no longer a horror western - bugger shooting outside - and is now a Office Western - yes you heard right - so Ladies and Gentlemen, and without further ado, I present to you ba da da da da dum.


-=-=-=The Legend of the Stationery Officer=-=-=-

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Hey Guys,

This is our first attempt at a DVXFest film after focusing on local film competitions. Being based in New Zealand Westerns arent our strongest suit but we will give it a crack.

A couple of factors are shaping what we shoot and how we shoot it:
  1. There is a desert in the middle of the island that I live on, however its at altitude and by the time we start shooting it will probably be covered in snow. Its also a military training ground with public access being forbidden. There are however a unique breed of wild horses loose on the range.
  2. Pistols are pretty hard to come by - any firearms that aren't designed for hunting being banned. Even the police aren't armed.
  3. While we have our own frontier/gold rush history most of the sort of frontier villages that people here seem to be getting hold of are tourist traps and would cost a fortune to hire.
  4. Our team is also based in Wellington which is a city that was completely destroyed by an earthquake a hundred odd years ago therefore there isn't much from the settler period in the region.
  5. As I said winters just starting so its most likely raining, hopefully its too early to be snowing in our primary location.
What we do have is pretty rugged and spectacular terain, our goal is to go and shoot on a farm in Taranaki (which is ironically on the west coast) and have kind of a modern horror western thing going on. Pretty low key in comparison - a simple film told well.

Hopefully we can honor all of the criterea of the competition while telling a story not really set in the west of the US.
 
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Good luck with the shoot !

If any help needed for sound clean up, sound editing... I'm always interested
 
Cheers guys,

Script is all but abandoned in its current form, back to the drawing board slightly. Hopefully have a rough draft locked down by the end of the week.
 
Thanks Michael,

We aren't short of ideas just short on agreements, its kind of hard with the above restrictions, we are tossing up whether or not to try for genre accuracy or to try and subvert things somewhat.

The good thing about the length of the shorts is that its easy to come up with a rough draft as a concept, so far we're at 7 different scripts before we come across a concept that everyone can agree on.
 
Ok first shoot day today, I'm away for a couple of weeks for work from sunday weekend. So we plan to shoot today after work, tomorrow after work, then shoot all day saturday. I will then cut the film together while on the break and we will return for the rest of the shoot and pickups when I get back. Lucky everything is in one location, deadlines tight but then that makes it exciting.

Won't reveal too much about the film until closer to submission but its a play on the western genre but not really in the west. Ironically we do have access to a historic village on the west coast of the south island - it's really rugged land, sparesely populated, with rolling plains and a backdrop of snow capped mountains, in short perfect - It's the kind of land that the farmers have to farm with helicopters and on horse back. Unfortunately that is only available from August so we might end up shooting a western for whatever the next competition is!
 
Well one day of shooting left. Had a bit of a problem with the main location, one of the crew sat on something he shouldn't have and broke it. Rather than risk not being able to return we crammed three days shooting into one, instead of wrapping at 9pm like schedualed we shot through to 5am, we don't usually work so long on 48hour film competitions let alone a more leisurely paced one. Obviously I was honest about the damage and we will chip together to fix it. Also had five actors drop out on us so had to put in crew plus actors which were cast for rolls in the last part of shooting so need to recast.

Quality has definitely been affected, doing a rough cut now and it's a shame - still pretty reasonable I hope. But golly time is now tight.
 
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