02/07/10

I am writing this on Aya Tanimura’s laptop as she has very kindly donated its use to the ‘penniless filmmaker’ cause while she’s out filming today.  The weather here has finally cooled down and a low overcast sky has moved into the Queenstown valley.  I am hoping that Aya’s film doesn’t count on brilliant sunny skies (in which case I will hope for these clouds to evaporate) or if she can make do with overcast, then I hope it sticks around for both days so that she can have great light and sky continuity for her film!  In any case, a big thank you to Aya for providing me with a computer and a net connection for the next two days!

If my first day of preproduction in Queenstown was about stunning views and wrangling problems in the production office, then the theme for Preproduction Day 2 is one of high and wild adventure!  The day started out with meeting two very important members of my crew – my 1st Assistant Director: Dave Norris (’Dorris’ to his friends) and my Locations Manager and Safety Officer, Stefan Crawford.  Dave is a wonderfully calm and collected individual (always important in a 1st AD) with a filmography list as long as my arm including The Lord Of The Rings, King Kong, 10,000 B.C., An American Haunting and the new Spartacus television show.  Dave looks like he’s going to be exactly what I want in a 1st AD including having a good sense of humor which is important in any managing job, especially when managing a film crew where you’re racing to get as many shots as the director wants done before you run out of billable hours or sunlight.  Stefan, on the other hand, is the most utmost badass, dedicated and hardcore Locations Manager I’ve ever met in my life – a guy who’s intensity and energy is infectious and as in your face as the scenery of Queenstown and he helped make yesterday one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

High up in the Remarkables ranges

Dave, Stefan and myself piled into Dave’s rented 4WD and headed out to our first location on the list – a high alpine lake in the Remarkable Ranges called Lake Alta.  Stefan was certain that this lake could double for the shoreline of Lake Unknown and I felt confident that his opinion would be correct.  Lake Alta is located directly behind the highest peak in the Remarkables – a spectacular and craggy mountain range than looms over Queenstown like a megatsunami of rock frozen before it breaches – and to reach it we had to drive up into the ranges and then up past the ski-fields and lodges perched in the craggy valleys inside the ranges and finally up past the top of the ski-lift areas.  Then we had to hike for 20 minutes in the brilliant blue sunshine, over crystal clear gurgling streams and fields of glistening green moss and stones that looked like movie props (they were so cinematic looking they didn’t look real), from the 4WD until we finally arrived at Lake Alta which was in the shadow of the twin horned peaks of the Remarkables.

The shore of Lake Alta

Lake Alta was perfect.

It was hard to believe that we were standing right there on the edge of it, especially since we were technically several thousand feet above Queenstown itself.  The actual horns were only a hundred metres or so above us (often shrouded in clouds when I saw it from my hotel room) and it felt utterly unreal to be standing there.  Of course camera trickery and discreet choices of composition and lensing would be required to complete the illusion, but overall Lake Alta was cast, there and then, as being our location double for Lake Unknown.  It had a spectacular shoreline and amazing, turquoise colored, crystal-clear water that was like colored glass in motion (not that you’d want to swim in it!  It’s freezing cold!).  But of course casting Lake Alta wasn’t good enough for our hardcore Locations Manager who was insistent that we go check out a few other spots on the same ranges just to be sure and, keen for any excuse to have my mind blown by the incredible surroundings, I said “sweet as!” and off we went – hiking up several other mountainsides (and negotiating our 4WD through some terrifying slopes), though we still didn’t see anything that fit our needs better than Lake Alta that day.  Tired, dusty and hungry as anything, we packed up our gear and headed back into Queenstown to do some more work!

Rajneel at Lake Alta

Of course every location isn’t without its problems and Lake Alta comes with a very big one – transportation.  A 15-20 minute uphill hike is not really ideal considering the vast amount of gear and people to move into such a location … and so that left us with only one option: helicoptering the larger gear onto the lake shore.  This of course is going to take huge, wet, glistening, bites out of our budget and limit the amount of time we can spend up in Lake Alta because we have to heli the gear BACK OUT as well … so this meant that ideally we can only shoot for a single day in Lake Alta and then try to cheat THAT location elsewhere, perhaps on the shores of Lake Wakatipu or Moke Lake.  So Stefan, Dave and I hopped into our 4WD after lunch and carried on searching the entire Queenstown valley – locating an ideal spot where we could cheat some high-angle and insert shots of the water and our character in his tiny dinghy on the lake, but we had a much harder time trying to find a spot where we could film our opening sequence: our hero climbing UP to the lake itself.

Stefan took me everywhere from Arrowtown to Coronet Peak Ski Fields to the most insane cliff-edge road I’ve ever driven on, in a place called Shotover Saddle, which had the right mountain vista we were after, but the foliage didn’t match Lake Alta (or Lake Unknown) at all.  Frustrated (and dizzy from vertigo from the drive back up the road), we headed back to the office a bit glum and scratching our heads.  Finally, after some food and water, the 1st AD, producer, locations manager, production manager and myself put our heads together and came up with the only solution possible that could give us not one, but a full day and a half on the lakeshore … an overnight camp.  Stefan’s idea is to tent up the gear, leave it overnight with several crew (who will camp out on the lake shore, under the summer stars – lucky buggers) and then crew will return on Day 2 to shoot half a day before everything gets helicoptered back off the mountain.

A potential location for the cartography office

Sadly I will not be able to join the camp out as I have to return to civilization with the DOP and 1st AD to view Day 1 rushes and a quick color-grade (as the DOP will not be present for the full grade at Park Road Post and so he has to give the guys up in Wellington a ‘rough guide’ for the look) as well as plan for our shoot for the second day.  As for the Cartography Office, if we are capable of shooting a full 1.5 days at Lake Alta then we will jump down to the Remarkables Ski Lodge and set up a dark and dingy office on the first floor of that building for Day 2.

Right that’s about all I can say for sure about now – I need to head off as I’ve got to see some actors for the roles of the Cartographer and the Supervisor, so wish me luck!  I’ll be in touch again, probably in another day or so.

Ciao!

- Rajneel