Some of the difficulties Rebecca Tansley encountered in making her short film the discovery were beyond her control.
Others, were more self-inflicted.
For example, make the decision to use 16mm film. Not only is it less than readily available in these days of the digital device, but you can’t get it developed in New Zealand. And that’s just the beginning.
However, Tansley was determined to caption the action in a way that would contribute to the themes her film explored.
the discovery tells the story of a teenager’s attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, on his isolated ranch in Ida Valley. He’s caught up in his past by a secret she needs to know so she can help.
Tansley says she wanted to create the feeling that she was stuck in time because the farmer, Sanders, was stuck in time, unable to continue with what he had been doing.
“I saw a movie and I thought, ‘That’s the kind of look I need, that kind of being stuck in time,” she explains.
The film, Happy as Lazarus (or Happy Lazarusin the original Italian), was shot on 16mm.
So, Tansley spoke to her director of photography Simon Raby and the film stock was duly ordered from Kodak, in the US.
They also needed to find a camera that could shoot at 16mm, and managed to track down one that was collecting dust on a shelf.
That was just the beginning.
“And when we were filming, we had to physically carry the stock of film with us and try to talk our way through security so they wouldn’t put it through the X-ray machines,” the former Dunedin-based but now says the Auckland-based filmmaker.
Old-school footage and X-ray machines don’t mix, but try explaining that to people under 40 who’ve never bought a roll of film in their lives.
While the film stock creates atmosphere, you have to work on it, she says, because more light is needed.
Midwinter in Central Otago isn’t exactly a time known for lots of light. So that was literally chasing the light of day.”
Other than that, they only had so many roles.
“We figured out how many rolls of film we could get away with and then you literally had to count the feet as it went through the camera. “How many feet do we have left?”
The film itself has been in the pregnancy for a long time. Tansley has been making documentaries more recently, Crossing Rachmaninoff and The heart dancesas well as filming a live production of Handels Semele by the New Zealand Opera.
“I started writing it right after I left Dunedin, oddly enough, so that was in 2010.”
It is indeed a bit of a tribute to Otago, she says.
“I lived there for 15 years and also spent quite a bit of time in Central.”
Over the years, she would go back to the script, adapting it.
Then it just seemed time to make it, except Covid had arrived on time, but eventually production ducked and ducked and managed to get on location for the main shoot in July 2020, at level two.
There were other smaller hurdles to overcome, including the movie challenges at Dunedin Airport, the setting for the film’s opening scene.
“It was really funny, because we cast a lot of extras, there were 30 extras or something, because I needed a planeload full of people. And to shoot them when they came out of the arrivals hall, every time we did, they had to go back through security to get into that area,” Tansley recalled with a laugh.
On that day, low clouds and drizzle had settled over Momona, so flights were delayed and circled the airport, complicating matters.
The core of the film’s story began with the question of what would happen if a parent left their children alone, Tansley says.
“When a parent does that, usually nothing happens, right, thankfully. But what if it doesn’t, what if the kids wake up and wonder where the parent has gone. And that’s where it really came from.”
It’s the kind of scenario that could play out anywhere, but for some reason it had to be a rural setting for her, Tansley says.
“I think the theme of rural isolation is strong and that landscape, it’s beautiful, I love it, but it has something that feels kind of isolated. I think my brain just subconsciously put it there and that’s what I went for.”
After drafting the screenplay, Tansley says she was interested in exploring the idea of forgiveness.
“I was interested in the idea that the daughter, Lucy, is actually the bigger person and can forgive her father for what he did, while her father is the one who didn’t get on.”
But in retrospect, she admits, it wasn’t necessarily what she wanted to write in 2010.
“I think that became clearer to me when I wrote the film and then made it.
“Things happen in families all the time, right. And how do you continue with that, I was interested in that.”
The isolation of the setting is underlined by the apparent distance between the film’s two main characters, Sanders, played by Matthew Sunderland (David Gray in Out of nowhere), and Lucy, played by newcomer, young Dunedin actor Ruby Walton.
Their conversation struggles to rise above the superficial, yet becomes fraught with barely hidden emotion.
It means that every line in the script should count.
“It’s a process of distillation, so these things can take some time,” Tansley says of the process to get to the final script.
Even some of the lines they filmed didn’t make it to the final cut.
It’s remarkable how little dialogue you actually need.
“Of course it depends on the story, I mean there are plenty of examples of great movies with a lot of great dialogue.”
But what matters is what the story asks. In a movie like the discovery where extemporization would be out of place, the words given to the characters have to do their job.
“They have to do a lot of heavy lifting in a short film,” says Tansley.
“I suppose this is mainly a big story that fits in a short time.
”I would really like to make those short films that are actually about very small moments. I think this is a bit of an epic story wrapped in 20 minutes.”
If the setting of Central Otago doesn’t place the film in the South enough, the music does. The soundtrack features songs from Dunedin Sound bands Sneaky Feelings, The Straitjacket Fits and The Verlaines. It also contains part of the poem Song by James K. Baxter set to music by Dunedin composer Anthony Ritchie and sung by Walton.
The music of those classic Dunedin bands was always in her head, says Tansley.
“I remember driving here along the highway and… [Sneaky Feelings song] Husband house came on the radio.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s the song, I must have that song, that’s the opening song.’ It’s just the mood. There’s something about the vibe of those songs that you can’t quite put your finger on. Well, I think so anyway.”
The film
– the discovery will be screened as part of the Show Me Shorts Film Festival.
– Show Me Shorts Film Festival selection The Sampler will be screened on Sunday 30 October at Rialto Cinema, Dunedin.