SENSE SIMPLICITY
&
SENSE SIMPLICITY 22
Bright Star, like one of John Keats’ poems, needs understanding through the senses, as Adam Coleman discovers.
SCENES FROM BRIGHT STAR
I
n Jane Campion’s ballad to the romantic poet John Keats, he explains poetry thus: “The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.” It is with a similar sensibility that Campion (The Piano) has approached
Bright Star, a sensual film starring Australia’s Abbie Cornish (Somersault) as Fanny and Ben Wishaw (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) as Keats. Like poetry, you do not work Bright Star out – it is experiential rather than thought provoking.
“It is not so much a linear story or reliant on character development,” explains producer Jan Chapman, a long-time collaborator of Campion’s. “It is almost like experience in one of the poems. If you let yourself go into the film and open your heart, then you can really get the full feeling.”
Bright Star is set on London’s Hampstead Heath in 1818 and tells the story of Keats’ love affair with the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, through her eyes. The affair drove Keats to write beautiful love letters that, along with Andrew Morton's biography of John Keats, inspired the film. Both Chapman and Campion were aware from the outset that making a film about a romantic poet would be difficult. “In this day and age that is a difficult thing to do, it is not a particularly popular subject,” Chapman says. “Basically, it is a film about love, but what is daring about it is that it uses poetry to convey that. Poetry is read, recited, spoken, it is used as part of the dialogue in the film in a way,” she says. When cinematographer, Greig Fraser (The Boys are Back) became involved in Bright Star he didn’t discuss the look of the film with Campion. “Jane is really a feel-based director and expressed that she wanted something simple,” he says. “She was concerned that with poetry being foreign to a lot of people, she just wanted the story to play out in a very simple, not a common sort of way, but not too complicated,” he says. When preparing to shoot Bright Star, Fraser took his visual cues from a series of paintings called Haystacks by impressionist, Claude Monet. “He painted Haystacks in very different light over a long period of time, so the paintings all have a very different feel even though they are the same subject material,” he says. Like Haystacks, the tone of Bright Star changes throughout the seasons. “It is about blossoming flowers, it is about budding romances, it is about the chill of winter – that was more the tonal shift,” he says. Casting Bright Star was crucial and difficult, says Chapman. Continued on p48
INSIDEFILM #127, DEC 2009 – JAN 2010
IF_127_DEC09.indd 22
1/12/09 3:28 PM
BIRTHDAY WILL BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE PACK
SPECIAL EXHIBITION &
FEATURE DISTRIBUTION
RUNNING WITH THE PACK
While FInding an audience for a small independent FIlm in Australia can be difFIcult, FInding a reasonable return for the FIlm’s investors can be near impossible. Adam Coleman speaks with one distributor who is taking a different approach.
A FEATURE
48
decline in single screen independent cin-
emas combined with stiff competition from larger, more heavily-marketed international films can see many small Australian films struggle to find an audience, let alone a return for investors. But founder of The Pack, Peter Castaldi, will take an alternative approach on May 1 when he releases eight digital features with a combined budget of $3.5 million, theatrically, on DVD, in-flight and online, all within the same month. Of the eight digital features, only one of them has around $5000 in script development investment from Film Victoria. “This is all mums and dads, next door neighbours, families who have put up the money to make these films, but they are excluded from traditional distribution because the market is so cluttered.
“If you can [combine] all of your marketing across several windows of release at the same time, you are basically going to increase the return to investors and that is one of the prime functions of what I am doing,” he says. The Pack is a collective of all the infrastructure services Castaldi needs to release a film, including marketing company Dlshs, public relations companies and media buyers. “So we all have other jobs to go to and that keeps the wolf from the door for all of us but we come together to handle these kinds of projects.” Castaldi is searching for producers who have made digital features they can’t get to market. “I am also looking at scripts, essentially the idea is to keep a content stream going,” he says. The Pack’s blanket distribution approach is
currently being used with independent content in North America, according to Castaldi. “What they are doing is using the theatrical for what it has been used for a long time – the marketing tool for the following window,” he says. Castaldi will launch the first eight films at the inaugural Australian Film Festival, (formerly Coogee Arts festival), which will take place from February 25 to March 7 at the Ritz Cinema in Sydney. The program of films will also be digitally packaged to tour regional centers. “All I am trying to do is take a lot of what I think to be very good quality independent Australian digital features and push them into the market in the most economical way, which is to have them in-flight, in cinemas, streaming and on DVD, all within the same month.”
BRIGHT STAR
Continued on p22 “Abbie was not so obvious. I guess we thought we would find an English actor but in a way, Abbie’s character assisted in the creation of Fanny’s feistiness, independence and high spirits.” Chapman was in awe of Wishaw’s performance as Keats. “Ben just feels like he is Keats. Sometime I felt on the set that I was
reticent to approach him because he is in another aura,” she says. Campion’s editor on In The Cut, Alexandre de Franceschi, became involved in the film after being impressed with the first draft of the script. “It read like a poem, there was so much love and truth in it. I’ll never forget that first impression,” he says.
de Franceschi says sometimes when making a film, it is really like making three: the one you write, the one you edit and the one you shoot. “Whatever Jane or myself had in mind when we started, changed and evolved with every cut.” Films have needs that go beyond the hopes and expectations of the filmmakers, he says and “when filmmakers
are clever they listen to those needs”. “Some people call it the ‘magic’ of filmmaking although the word is a bit out of fashion. Jane is very good at that, the magic. She has the gift to get it out of the actors.” Conscious that a film about a poet’s love affair mightn’t see audiences storming the multiplexes, Chapman and Campion set out to make “a small film”. “We didn’t want the budget to be any higher than it needed to be … but we wanted enough to make it in the way it had to be made.” A 70 per cent UK and 30 per cent Australian co-production, Bright Star had a production budget of £6.7 million (at the time, around $16.7 million). “In Australia, I don’t think the film would have cost nearly as much with the travel component and cost in pounds of shooting over there,” she says.
Tech Specs CAMERA: Arricam ST FILM: Kodak - Vision 3, 500t Vision 2, 250d and 50d VISUAL EFFECTS: FSM SOUND: Audioloc
INSIDEFILM #127, DEC 2009 – JAN 2010
IF_127_DEC09.indd 48
1/12/09 3:29 PM
SENSE SIMPLICITY 22
Bright Star, like one of John Keats’ poems, needs understanding through the senses, as Adam Coleman discovers.
SCENES FROM BRIGHT STAR
I
n Jane Campion’s ballad to the romantic poet John Keats, he explains poetry thus: “The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.” It is with a similar sensibility that Campion (The Piano) has approached
Bright Star, a sensual film starring Australia’s Abbie Cornish (Somersault) as Fanny and Ben Wishaw (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) as Keats. Like poetry, you do not work Bright Star out – it is experiential rather than thought provoking.
“It is not so much a linear story or reliant on character development,” explains producer Jan Chapman, a long-time collaborator of Campion’s. “It is almost like experience in one of the poems. If you let yourself go into the film and open your heart, then you can really get the full feeling.”
Bright Star is set on London’s Hampstead Heath in 1818 and tells the story of Keats’ love affair with the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, through her eyes. The affair drove Keats to write beautiful love letters that, along with Andrew Morton's biography of John Keats, inspired the film. Both Chapman and Campion were aware from the outset that making a film about a romantic poet would be difficult. “In this day and age that is a difficult thing to do, it is not a particularly popular subject,” Chapman says. “Basically, it is a film about love, but what is daring about it is that it uses poetry to convey that. Poetry is read, recited, spoken, it is used as part of the dialogue in the film in a way,” she says. When cinematographer, Greig Fraser (The Boys are Back) became involved in Bright Star he didn’t discuss the look of the film with Campion. “Jane is really a feel-based director and expressed that she wanted something simple,” he says. “She was concerned that with poetry being foreign to a lot of people, she just wanted the story to play out in a very simple, not a common sort of way, but not too complicated,” he says. When preparing to shoot Bright Star, Fraser took his visual cues from a series of paintings called Haystacks by impressionist, Claude Monet. “He painted Haystacks in very different light over a long period of time, so the paintings all have a very different feel even though they are the same subject material,” he says. Like Haystacks, the tone of Bright Star changes throughout the seasons. “It is about blossoming flowers, it is about budding romances, it is about the chill of winter – that was more the tonal shift,” he says. Casting Bright Star was crucial and difficult, says Chapman. Continued on p48
INSIDEFILM #127, DEC 2009 – JAN 2010
IF_127_DEC09.indd 22
1/12/09 3:28 PM
BIRTHDAY WILL BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE PACK
SPECIAL EXHIBITION &
FEATURE DISTRIBUTION
RUNNING WITH THE PACK
While FInding an audience for a small independent FIlm in Australia can be difFIcult, FInding a reasonable return for the FIlm’s investors can be near impossible. Adam Coleman speaks with one distributor who is taking a different approach.
A FEATURE
48
decline in single screen independent cin-
emas combined with stiff competition from larger, more heavily-marketed international films can see many small Australian films struggle to find an audience, let alone a return for investors. But founder of The Pack, Peter Castaldi, will take an alternative approach on May 1 when he releases eight digital features with a combined budget of $3.5 million, theatrically, on DVD, in-flight and online, all within the same month. Of the eight digital features, only one of them has around $5000 in script development investment from Film Victoria. “This is all mums and dads, next door neighbours, families who have put up the money to make these films, but they are excluded from traditional distribution because the market is so cluttered.
“If you can [combine] all of your marketing across several windows of release at the same time, you are basically going to increase the return to investors and that is one of the prime functions of what I am doing,” he says. The Pack is a collective of all the infrastructure services Castaldi needs to release a film, including marketing company Dlshs, public relations companies and media buyers. “So we all have other jobs to go to and that keeps the wolf from the door for all of us but we come together to handle these kinds of projects.” Castaldi is searching for producers who have made digital features they can’t get to market. “I am also looking at scripts, essentially the idea is to keep a content stream going,” he says. The Pack’s blanket distribution approach is
currently being used with independent content in North America, according to Castaldi. “What they are doing is using the theatrical for what it has been used for a long time – the marketing tool for the following window,” he says. Castaldi will launch the first eight films at the inaugural Australian Film Festival, (formerly Coogee Arts festival), which will take place from February 25 to March 7 at the Ritz Cinema in Sydney. The program of films will also be digitally packaged to tour regional centers. “All I am trying to do is take a lot of what I think to be very good quality independent Australian digital features and push them into the market in the most economical way, which is to have them in-flight, in cinemas, streaming and on DVD, all within the same month.”
BRIGHT STAR
Continued on p22 “Abbie was not so obvious. I guess we thought we would find an English actor but in a way, Abbie’s character assisted in the creation of Fanny’s feistiness, independence and high spirits.” Chapman was in awe of Wishaw’s performance as Keats. “Ben just feels like he is Keats. Sometime I felt on the set that I was
reticent to approach him because he is in another aura,” she says. Campion’s editor on In The Cut, Alexandre de Franceschi, became involved in the film after being impressed with the first draft of the script. “It read like a poem, there was so much love and truth in it. I’ll never forget that first impression,” he says.
de Franceschi says sometimes when making a film, it is really like making three: the one you write, the one you edit and the one you shoot. “Whatever Jane or myself had in mind when we started, changed and evolved with every cut.” Films have needs that go beyond the hopes and expectations of the filmmakers, he says and “when filmmakers
are clever they listen to those needs”. “Some people call it the ‘magic’ of filmmaking although the word is a bit out of fashion. Jane is very good at that, the magic. She has the gift to get it out of the actors.” Conscious that a film about a poet’s love affair mightn’t see audiences storming the multiplexes, Chapman and Campion set out to make “a small film”. “We didn’t want the budget to be any higher than it needed to be … but we wanted enough to make it in the way it had to be made.” A 70 per cent UK and 30 per cent Australian co-production, Bright Star had a production budget of £6.7 million (at the time, around $16.7 million). “In Australia, I don’t think the film would have cost nearly as much with the travel component and cost in pounds of shooting over there,” she says.
Tech Specs CAMERA: Arricam ST FILM: Kodak - Vision 3, 500t Vision 2, 250d and 50d VISUAL EFFECTS: FSM SOUND: Audioloc
INSIDEFILM #127, DEC 2009 – JAN 2010
IF_127_DEC09.indd 48
1/12/09 3:29 PM
