The airport was closed for most of the day, near New Zealand and since a huge delay followed
the disruption to their services.
I'm going to tell you what it's all about.
It's all about a girl, May and she's come in with holding some pictures and she stops.
She sees all the water coming out, she looks to the pipe and that's where it's coming.
She opens it up and she gets all splashed in the face.
So she holds the bar and she closes it and she says,
Mum, Mum, the pipe's broken mum. Mum's come in, she opens the door, she takes her moth,
takes the paper off it, picks up the bucket, put it down, start cleaning and I say,
but the pipes, look at my hands though.
But in this movie they don't want to listen.
So Dad comes in and says, what happened?
Dad comes in and says, Dad, Dad you're home, welcome back to the house.
I'm trying to show him where the pipe is because he can fix it and he's not listening.
That's all I'm going to tell because I don't want to tell everyone.
I'm about to do the scene, I'd say the most demanding scene on the cast.
We've got the mother, father, mother, brother and sister falling into the pool
and I've just been talking to the kids about them believing that they're going to die
and that's what it's all about and it's a tough thing to imagine and perform.
I wouldn't personally want to jump off a couch and think I'm going to die.
Once you go pop in, you both had your backs to camera like you were looking that way
and instead, although it's unnatural, you need to be facing this way.
I feel relieved because of the stress and the drama of the last shots with the family drowning.
I was really worried about both because of what they had to do
and also because of what I had to do because if they couldn't look scared
and if they couldn't look like they were drowning, which fortunately they did themselves really well,
then it's my job and my responsibility to get them there and to force them there
and I didn't want to have to yell on any of the kids' faces and I thought I might have to do that
and I didn't, so that's the good news.
They all did really well and I feel like the whole weight's just come off my shoulders
from doing it and having achieved it.
Now we're shooting flowers, I can yell at flowers, fine with that.
Yes, you must move open.
I suppose it was about two years ago now and we were just cruising along in our van
listening to cold play and just had this idea and these images of people just floating in water
and then it just sort of went from there and just thinking about, like the whole, I don't know,
rising water and people just ignoring your reality and just bolted into a script
and then it was really long so I sort of tripped it back and sent it out and just got the break.
I got a phone call from Auckland which was from, they had Saunders,
he's part of the Swords Saunders consortium, which part of the film was it, short films
and she was asking a person I was interested in looking at the script
and we, the script arrived and I was just blown away, totally blown away
and we sat down, had a bit of a chat and decided we wanted to go for it.
When I did first read it I just thought how incredibly strange and surreal and absurdist, really.
And I had to digest it, it took me a day to actually wrap my head around it
and be like, well, what the hell is this film about and what's it saying?
And I actually went back and called up Tony and started talking through it with him
and found out what a lot of the themes were that he was intending
and it just suddenly, the whole script just opened up, almost like a flower,
I mean it just had all these layers and I suddenly understood everything that was in your mind
and that was really what attracted me to the whole idea.
You know, I think that the challenges are very attractive
and just speaking for Carl, I think he was attracted to the challenge
of pulling off such a mammoth and epic production with these elements
and for me it was like, you know, am I able to really get the right performance
out of three children within the family, the youngest being seven years old
with the scene that we have yet to shoot, which is like the ceiling up against their heads
and, you know, the water up to their lips and that much breathing space
and then realising that they're going to drown because they didn't do anything about the problem
and then just coming to this incredible realisation of what their situation has become
due to denial and procrastination and, you know, not talking about the issue.
We were very limited in what kind of role we had to play with
so we were limited in our choices and what we found was this place, this is a pool
which is a school pool, it's unused, it's been drained for quite a while now
and we came to see the guy and the principal of the school and he thought we were mad
and we almost didn't come here because we rang him up and said, can we look at your pool
and he's like, oh no, it's a piece of shit, you won't want to see it, you know, no, it uses it
and we almost didn't come up, we were just around the corner looking at another pool
and we thought, shall we go and look at this?
Is it worth it?
We'll kick ourselves if we don't, we better go and here we are
and it's been huge working out, you know, what's how to do it, the lights, the crew
the water, the safety, the actors, getting everything prepared because water slows you down
and it's just such an extra element added to a production which is just so huge
that it changes everything, so yeah, it has definitely been the most challenging production that I've ever held
I just think we'd have a whole lot of hiccups and take a whole lot longer
if we didn't have the professional expertise that we do
and the truth is that Carl and I and Tony are all young filmmakers
and we've got very seasoned experienced crew that have just bought their knowledge and experience
they've dealt with water before, we haven't
and they are sort of, you know, leading us with their expertise
and their knowledge and mileage through something that we could drown in
You know, most of the dramaturges are gone but it's still dealing with elements that I haven't dealt with before
pool's a little bit deeper than Whitby, you know, not a lot, but just a little
it's a slightly bigger pool, slightly more intimidating
but now it's good, it'll be good, get our big macho shots, get our big deep underwater shots
One of the most ambitious short films ever made in New Zealand has just started production
Water is a 12 minute story that follows the experience of a child who discovers a burst pipe under the sink
We won't give the story away, but needless to say it's not a story about domestic bliss
Directed by Wellington filmmaker Chris Graham
Water is due to finish filming in New Zealand
We'll be launched into the International Film Festival circuit next year
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