Armed with a script by Letisha Singh, a recent film school graduate, producer David Max Brown pulled together a team of mates and scrounged help from some corporate partners to produce a three-minute short which has become the marketing tool to raise funds for the full movie.
Singhs research found that the illegal mines were actually long-abandoned shafts which often collapsed and, because of the small spaces, young boys are favoured for their ability to crawl through to plant the dynamite and open up the area where the gold bearing rock can be extracted. These slave miners are held underground for months at a time, sometimes years, often dying there and sometimes obtaining their release through bribes or escape. The women are most usually forced into sexual labour.
Its a horrible real life situation which as filmmakers we couldn’t ignore. We hope our film will highlight the situation through an action-packed and highly emotional storyline, said Brown, who is now hunting for backers to invest in the movie.
The film starts off in Zimbabwe with the invasion of a white-owned farm, but in our story we also focus on the plight of the black farm workers who are seen by Mugabe’s war veterans as collaborators with the ‘colonisers’ and supporters of the opposition party, so they are forced off the farms and become refugees. They cross the border to South Africa looking for a better life, only to be forced into slavery. The two brothers in our story are separated and have to find a way to get back together and escape, he said.
Once they had decided to shoot on film the begging began. KODAK gave them some cans of 16mm film stock, a few feet of which had been exposed, but the rest was perfect. The Film Lab agreed to process and the Refinery agreed do the telecine and grade. One of South Africa’s top cinematographers, Nic Hofmeyer, came on board to shoot. Equipment came from Media and all the cast and crew came in for free – including the edit by Tongai Furusa from 14-Tenth Street and the sound post by Bibi Segola.
We also roped in Greneve, a wonderful special effects outfit here, who love blowing things up and so they helped to build the mine with art director Flo Ballack and then ‘blew’ it up, added Brown.
The three-minute promo was shot in one long day at a farm just outside Soweto.
We called it ‘Short Cut’ because the refugees are always looking for a short cut to cross the border and as we all know short cuts often turn out to be the longest way around! said Brown.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long to raise the money we need to make this movie! We have terrific tax and rebate incentives in South Africa and so over a half the budget is available from those facilities. What we need are private investors who recognise the commercial value of a film like this and in South Africa investors can take advantage of a 35% rebate and a 40% tax break so there is relatively no risk. We have learnt to make films on a shoe string, and can make this film for about $1.5m.
You can help!
You can help make this movie a reality by watching the promotional trailer on line at http://www.internationalmovietrailerfestival.com/imtf/index.php/trailer-2011/
At the IMTF page you then have to search for SHORT CUT to see the trailer.
When you have watched it and closed the viewer, a button will pop up to allow you to vote for the film. If enough people vote The Short Cut could win the people’s choice award for the International Movie Trailer Festival Competition!
Post published in: Theatre