Narrandera film director Tim Hills and his crew of 47 are working hard to bring together their second lot of filming for ‘When the house is empty’.
Their first lot of filming was held in Narrandera earlier this month with the whole team converging on the town for two weeks.
Mr Hills said they held a recent meeting in Brisbane to discuss the second winter shoot.
“We’ve got about eight to 12 weeks to really get the next winter shoot sorted out because its outside and you can’t fake it… it’s just better to still shoot in the real seasons,” he said.
“We’re hoping the miserable winter weather keeps up so we can finish off the second half of the winter shoot.
“We can’t come back in winter next year because we’re aiming for it to be ready by winter next year.”
Mr Hills has worked on one other film almost a decade ago and so a lot of the filming for ‘When the house is empty’ is a learning curve for himself and his team.
The first two weeks of shooting in Narrandera saw them on set for around 10 to 12 hours a day, starting from as early as 7.30am.
Mr Hills said that everything has turned out well so far despite the nerves around juggling different teams and locations.
“We only got half of the winter shoot done which is what we expected,” Mr Hills said.
“It was fairly successful in the sense that I didn’t know how I was going to pull the whole crew of 47 people together and manage all the shoots and locations and teams but it seemed to go fairly smoothly.
“Of the whole seven days, we’ve probably got about 15 minutes of footage and that’s what we have to remind ourselves of – when you’re doing a cinema film, it just takes us that long.”
At this point, the team are busy planning their next move as well as trying to keep the momentum going with the team which are scattered across Australia when shooting isn’t happening.
Mr Hills is also currently in the midst of relocating back home to Narrandera from Brisbane and hopes to be back in the coming weeks.
With the excitement of a film happening in town, there have also been talks of a possible theatre school coming soon with the help of Mr Hills and the Narrandera Rotary Club.
More information will be available in the coming weeks once the matter is further discussed.
This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 27 July 2023.
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