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 the
start I
the casting
I
the boys I
the shoot
Having just completed a stint on Mission Impossible II, YOLNGU BOY provided director of photography Brad Shield with a 360 degree turnaround. "I've worked on a lot of big budget American movies," he mused, "but this has been an entirely different experience. People have been totally committed to this feature for six years and have taken enormous personal risks to see it made. That alone makes you appreciate that every day of the shoot is unique as we're not going to live that day again. We don't have the luxury of being able to film endlessly which is actually very exciting. Plus we have three fantastic boys who have taken to acting unbelievably quickly. From a professional viewpoint it's also great to work with such magnificent terrain. The look of the film has been on Stephen's mind from day one. His chief directive was to 'treat the country as a character' as he wanted a Yolngu perspective on everything to instill the sense that the country is watching the boys." Johnson's desire to represent the land as a vibrant entity extended to the film's soundtrack. "It too serves to heighten one's sense of the land," he enthused. "I want the audience to feel that the land lives and breathes like we do. We come from the land and eventually return, which is the Yolngu way of thinking and a philosophy that I share. Musically, we've tried to create a situation that suggests a struggle between the old and the new in much the same way that most Aboriginal kids are being pulled in two different directions." |
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