Pacific sci-fi movie is no “ordinary” Kiwi film

Waikato film maker Julia Reynolds has embarked on her hardest cinematic venture – a Pacific sci-fi feature set 70 years in the future.

A master’s student in film at Wintec, Julia wrote and is now directing her first feature film, Shepherd.

No new hand to film making, Julia has three short films behind her, and says her latest project is no ordinary Kiwi film.

Though telling a story unique to the pacific, she sets her story 70 years in the future where religion and cultural diversity have been banned after devastating religious wars.

Shepherd is a story about hope when things seem bleak.

“I had this idea about five years ago,” Julia says. “I really wanted to make something, not quite commercial, but that everyone could watch. It wasn’t just some art house project.

“I wanted the themes to be around faith. Not as much as in god. It’s not a religious film, but it talks about faith in yourself or faith in something you believe in that you can’t prove. That’s really the premise of the whole film.”

And now here we are, five years later and 20 per cent of Shepherd has been completed and the rest of the film is in the pre-production stage ready to shoot early next year.

Over the summer holidays, Julia shot the first scenes of Shepherd.

One scene was filmed in the Raukuri caves, Waitomo, and required around 100 extras dressed in sci-fi garb.

One of the main actors in the preliminary shoots is New Zealand actor Peter Elliot who was an early cast member of Shortland Street – he now graces the nation’s TV screens as the face of the Civil Defences Get Ready Get Thru campaign.

The Shepherd creative team also set up in the unused Matangi dairy factory building where they fashioned a “fully functioning” spaceship from things such as old computer parts, bread bins, and fly netting.

Reynolds seems to have a knack of turning otherwise unremarkable items into integral pieces of the reality she is trying to create. The spaceship cockpit uses Volvo red seats and an X-box controller as the gearstick but it all looks surprisingly realistic.

It is this skill that has allowed Julia to create on a very frugal budget.

That’s all down to the volunteers though, she says.

Volunteers that devoted time, labour and even a little of their acting ability as extras.

Many of the volunteers for the shoots were other Wintec film students and film makers; evidence of the strong support network that Julia says exists here in the Waikato.

“The film making community that is here all know each other quite well and support each other, we are small here so we have to do that.

“It’s about supporting each other in projects, it’s important if we want to get them made.”

What could help film makers along locally though, according to Reynolds, is the creation of a forum that allows film makers to view and critique other film makers’ work, to get up and speak about films, the processes, and learn from others’ experience.

She also would like to see a Hamilton-specific International festival come where short films could be shown and forums such as the one she proposes could be held.

“I think it’s possible. There are definitely enough film students and film schools and people interested here to go to a festival like that if it was organised well.”

She will spend the rest of the year sourcing funding to film the rest of Shepherd in April of next year and finding people to volunteer in whatever capacity they can.

She has no lofty aspirations of where she wants to see Shepherd go once it is completed, but does have one mark of success she has set for herself.

“If it could end up in the DVD sale bin at The Warehouse, I would think I’d have made it! That would be fantastic; my dreams would have come true.”