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Making Love The Movie (2009)
Mat Blonde is an aspiring Bollywood film producer. But when he takes money from the Bombay mafia and they're not happy with the return on investment. He ends up living in a cheap Australian apartment with Frank, a disheartened Accountant who's infatuated with a girl he's met, but cant get. Then Mat gets an idea. An idea to put him on the road to Local Community Television stardom and fix Frank's love life in the process. But Mat soon discovers that making a show in Community Television is no easier than making a show in Bollywood. But Mat never gives up. Together with Frank, Mat takes on an assortment of amateur hopefuls, including a manic vice squad detective who thinks Mat and Frank are making porn. A mobster who thinks they're cutting in on his turf. A judge who thinks they're trying to impeach her. And a motley crew who have trouble keeping their minds making TV. Can Mat and Frank make it to stardom without getting killed. See if he can when Bollywood meets Community Television and Serge Sharrinovsky Motion Pictures present 'MAKING LOVE'.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Writer and Director Serge Sharrinovsky;
Making love was initially born out of the first television series I made for community television stations in Perth and Melbourne called the “Love Show”. The TV series was a lifestyle show similar to other popular lifestyle shows like the popular “Burke's Backyard” except it was designed to explore love and relationships instead of looking at houses and gardens. At the time I felt there was a need to develop an understanding of the topic of love, as from my experience is seemed to be one of the biggest motivational influences for human behavior, yet at the same time it seems to be the one that was least understood.
Although the television series never had enough resources to explore all the areas of interest the way I wanted it, once it was finished, I looked back with a sense of nostalgia. I began to remember the relationships that were formed during the making of the show amongst all the cast and the crew and found a microcosm of interesting ideas going on around and the behind the scenes of the show and in the wider spectrum of local community television production. It took a while for the significance of this to set in, but 12 months later I decided to take the TV series concept and turn it into a feature film. I often used my own experiences along with some imagination to fill in the storyline and turned it into a romantic comedy.
Reflecting between several different ideas for this project, I thought up what I imagined would be an extraordinary movie that people would warm to. I came up with a story which followed the fictional tale of Frank Donaghue, a disheartened professional at the crossroads of his career who never found his “perfect” girl. Then he meets Linda his once high school fantasy sweetheart. Frank is convinced by his friend Matt Blonde that the only way a guy like Frank can get a girl like Linda is if he’s a high profile TV star, So Frank puts his dignity and his self-respect on the line and decides to follow his friends advice and make a TV show.
I initially started to write the original script towards the end of 2003. I only managed to get to about 75% of the story when I got involved in another feature film in Thailand which gave me the ideas for the remaining 25% to finish off the script. Once I completed the first draft of the script, I decided to seek out funding and start building a team of key creative people who could help me make the movie. However, at the time it seemed people and organizations were mostly interested in talking but few would come to the party in terms pledging any help or resources needed to transform the script into a final film. I was also surprised to find just how much ridicule and discouragement I received from some other experienced filmmakers and funding body bureaucrats. I even had the unfortunately experience of being lead down the garden path by a very experienced Australian producer/director who was more interested in collecting a fee then really helping out on the movie. Somewhat disillusioned about my progress, I frequently turned to watching the Behind-The-Scenes DVD's of George Lucas experience when he first began to make Star Wars and found that he had even more complex challenges getting his film off the ground.
With a bit more inspiration behind me and some time on my hands I developed a few more re-drafts of the script and recruited a co-writer and a script-editor who helped further develop some of the additional sub-plots. With a more developed script in hand I tried again to get funding and a creative team together. However what I found was still the old same situation of lots of talking and funding proposal applications but no real assistance to help make the movie. Eventually after trying for about two years I came to the conclusion the only way I was going to turn my film into a reality was to make it myself, with whatever I had at my disposal.
I had to work out how I could make the movie on a very small, virtually no-existent budget. Luckily, by this time I had a few keen actors who where still happy to commit to the project on a deferred payment agreement. However I still didn't have a crew and had to take on the role of production manager, as well as work out how it could be done. I ended up taking a gamble and bought all my own equipment in order to start testing the new high-definition technology that had just been released. My confidence to undertake the project grew after shooting a few weddings on the side as a day-job. I realized that since I could make a 6 hour wedding DVD, it would not be impossible to do a 2 hour film either. In addition, whilst the camera I had was made more for domestic home videos, I found that the quality of the picture of the modern day high-definition camera rivaled many of the more professional cameras in existence. So I ended up using one of the world’s smallest camcorders to shoot the movie.
The next major hurdle was to find sets and locations for the filming. After scouting around for locations, I realized that I needed somewhere I could have enough control and flexibility to work with my team of actors in small periodic bursts, so I decided to convert my house into a small sound stage. By decorating and painting each room of the house I was able to use every room to resemble a different location including my laundry and WC. This gave me the freedom to work when I wanted or in most cases when the actors where available to shoot.
I also had to strip down the original script into something I knew I could afford to make. Initially I had a cast of 36 which had to be written down to just 12 characters. So many of the supporting characters and the lead female role had to go, otherwise we would never finish the movie. It was the same with the locations and sets needed for the story. Initially I planned a much grander production. However, not having the budget to match my imagination, I was forced to consolidate them into whatever way possible to keep things in line with available resources.
Whilst the final film was shot over the course of an 8 month period, made up of small half day shoots, recorded once a week, I also spent a previous year shooting various other versions of the film which I realized could not be completed. One lot of actors helped out with the first version but then decided to leave for bigger and better things elsewhere. Another set of actors stayed with me a bit longer for the second version but because the film was not being made fast enough, they also decided to pursue other interests. So I had to start again for the third time. This time I decided to take on the lead acting role myself, as there was little chance I would walk out on my own movie and one less person I would have to sit down with and explain what I trying to do. I also rewrote the script again a few more times to change the characters from the original vision of the story and aligned them with the individual characteristics of the actors and friends that stayed loyal to the project and were prepared to stay with me until the completion. Which I must add I am so eternally grateful to for all their work, help and perseverance to stand by me and the movie. As a result the initial premise of the movie was changed and was given a Bollywood flavour as a good portion of the cast were newly settled immigrants from various parts of India and Africa.
Eventually I recruited two additional people to help out as Directors of Photography, but since they were only available on a limited time basis, I was forced to shoot the remainder of the film with a remote control and used a microphone stand to hold up the sound recording equipment and interchanging the actors into crew and visa versa when I simply didn’t have enough people on set. Once the bulk of the movie was shot I began the grueling task of editing the movie. By this time, I had accumulated some fifty hours of raw footage sitting on five separate external hard drives to cut into movie. Luckily, I found a wizard editor with a unique talent for narrative story telling who helped me share the workload of putting many of the scenes together. He also helped me do some of the special effects I needed for some of the more complex shots. It took almost approximately 8 months in 2009 of editing, mixing and tweaking the film before I was happy enough with something that resembled a finished version of a locally made prototype of a Perth independent movie. Despite all the set backs and the challenges that had to be overcome, I was actually still very happy with the way the movie ended and still quite surprised with the end result considering it was everyone’s first feature film and made on nothing more than a shoe string. In the future, I would also like to consider the possibility of putting together enough resources, to make a version of the movie the way it was originally intended.
| Cast |
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Harpreet Dhanjal |
...Mat Blonde |
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Ed Love |
...Kurt |
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Kristen Mckinnes |
...Judge Justine |
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David Valentin |
...Vanderburg |
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Kate Hales |
...Mrs Sloan |
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Harry Frochter |
...Mr Sloan |
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Michael Armstrong |
...Monaro |
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Colin Hughes |
...Dax |
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Liton Kaz |
...Jambo |
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Verity Hobbs |
...Veronica |
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Serge Sharrinovsky |
...Frank |
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Chalimanga Muwowo |
...Brigandi |
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Simbarashe Mutatpasi |
...Lawman |
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Kanokgan Chokhaiaphjwat |
...Linda |
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Klaus Westerhausen |
...Court Observer & Wedding Guest |
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| Camera |
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Dylan Tilbury |
Director of Photography |
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Harry Frochter |
Director of Photography |
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| Production Sound |
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Serge Sharrinovsky |
Production Sound Mixer |
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Mike Stand |
Boom Operator |
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Klaus Westerhausen |
Boom Operator |
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| Editorial |
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Hayley Salt |
Film Editor |
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Serge Sharrinovsky |
Film Editor |
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David Valentin |
Film Editor |
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| Visual Effects |
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Kristy William |
Computer Graphics Animator |
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David Valentin |
Visual Effects Supervisor |
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