21 days till shoot

Hello friends,

That's the Murray river about 5 minutes after sunset. There's a burst of red that's tricky to capture, but it ripples through the sky. Just beautiful. The water's warm too, and it really does feel like a beach with all that white sand. Perfect place to hang in the Summer.

Launched our Summer Coda FB site yesterday, earlier days, but there'll be some v cool stuff up there in the not too distant future. Become a friend and follow us, the team will be offering a really unique experience by tracking alongside the production with plenty of videos from set when we get started. I've learnt so much from DVD extras and commentaries over the years. You just can't beat hearing and watching the making of your fav films. Boogie Nights commentary is an absolute cracker, as is American Beauty and Brokeback Mountain. You can go to film school on the extras of a good Godfather box-set alone.

Tomorrow we block a fight sequence which I gotta say I'm pretty excited about. It's not a biggie, but it's crucial to the story and so critical we get it right. Will be working with our Stunt Co-ordinator to nail the realism in the hope of recreating something quite harrowing, without being overly graphic. It's a top little scene where in the shadows of a dusty pub car park, lined with trucks and semi-trailers, Heidi and Michael (lead characters) find themselves in trouble. The sequence and preceding scenes are being designed to carry a real Film Noir quality -- stripped of colour, with some nasty characters appearing. They're highly charged scenes and I can't wait to shoot them.

Don't get me wrong, at its heart Summer Coda is an emotive Romantic Drama, however there are powerful genre elements that make the film unique (we hope!). In the end it's the chemistry between our characters that will make or break this particular story. ...I'd best read some books on directing... Thank God we've cast such great actors!

Ricky