One night the MoonOne night, in the Australian outback in the early 1930s, 6-year-old Emily (Memphis Kelly) steps out of her bedroom window - entranced by the beautiful, beaming moon. When her parents go to check on their sleeping child, she is nowhere to be found.
Came a' rolling by
Drove a big cart
Across the night sky
One night the Moon
Came rolling by
Called all the dreamers
To come for a ride...
The mother (Kaarin Fairfax) and father (Paul Kelly), recent settlers in the rugged landscape, spend the night looking for her, to no avail. By early morning, the father turns to the local police for help. The Sergeant (Chris Haywood) suggests that Allman (David Field) and their very best man, aboriginal tracker Albert (Kelton Pell) set out to find her. But the father revolts - insisting "No blackfella is to set foot on my land."
Instead, he gathers together as many white men as he can find, and conducts a line search across the desolate plains in search of the child. Albert watches helplessly as her every trace is stamped to dust.
One night the Moon is based on the true story of aboriginal tracker Riley in Dubbo in the 1930s, who was awarded the King's Medal for his services to the police force. His grandson, Michael Riley, directed the documentary Black tracker in 1997, which became the inspiration for One night the Moon.
Special Agent Matti
If you've already seen The tracker then One night the Moon seems a little bit naff, simply because it's a smaller film tackling a similar subject. If you can manage to see One night the Moon first then you will get maximum enjoyment. It's very straightforward, pulls no punches, makes no excuses and is filled with some great bush-style music. It's good.
M (Adult themes)
55 minutes (0:55 hours)
Film: 8 November 2001
A commissioning team was headed up by a representative from each of the funding companies: Kevin Lucas from MusicArtsDance films, Paul Grabowsky from the ABC and Lindy Hume from Ozopera. The initial thought was to approach a number of artists directly, to create a series of new, innovative music dramas, but in the end, they thought of doing it in a completely different way.
Says producer Aanya Whitehead of MAD films, "We decided to advertise and say you form your own creative team, and develop an idea, and then we will help fund that development and act as mentors. The artists didn't have to be connected to film, but had to create a film project that had music especially commissioned for it. The music had to be developed exactly along the lines of a script in order to drive the story. We wanted the music to completely influence the story and vice versa."
The ad was a great success, with 270 submissions from artists all over Australia. The commissioning team chose 10 ideas, which were developed to a treatment stage, before 4 were finally selected and gradually developed to final compositions and scripts. One night the Moon is the first to be produced.
Says Aanya Whitehead, "The project's strength is that the creative teams got together themselves, and that they have the creative control of the project. Although editorially we have a say and response, we don't try to infringe on the creative elements at all." Adds producer Kevin Lucas, "It was exciting to engage composers in the writing process - and directors in the music process. so you end up with a film that explores boundaries that might not have been explored before."
Inspired by the ad - and by a documentary about tracker Riley in Dubbo in the 1930s (executive produced by Rachel Perkins) - composer Mairead Hannan put together a creative team consisting of songwriters/musicians Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody and screenwriter John Romeril. The creative team took a workshop approach to the script. Hannan, Kelly and Carmody started making the music, which then got refined through Romeril's script. At the start, Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody were each given a character to develop - without thinking Paul would necessarily play "the father" - with Paul and Mairead writing the part of "the mother" together. The rest of the characters and compositions were mostly written by Hannan.
When Rachel Perkins became involved as director in early 1999, she started focusing on a different aspect of the story: the emotional journey of the parents. Says Mairead Hannan, "Initially the film was about tracker Riley. His story is really intriguing, but when you get deep into what is this story about - the loss of a child - it becomes clear that it is more the mother's story. The father is the ignorant, and she is the one who finally saves the day." Aanya Whitehead agreed with this approach, "Rachel really worked through the last draft, and gave the film a stronger point-of-view."
"It is a story of knowledge offered and knowledge rejected, and the consequences that come from that," adds Paul Kelly, "and that has great resonance for the history of both blacks and whites in this country."
Although a new experience for all involved, it proved one that worked well. "You have to be very open-minded because you have to be open to what other people can put in. And I think that everybody involved in this project has had that approach," says Hannan. "Although we've had discussions, and agreements and disagreements, people have been able to see things through, and also had the energy to argue things out."
The emotional drama proved something everybody can relate to: a child, your child gets lost in the bush. It hit home for the crew when they first arrived on location in Hawker, South Australia - in the beautiful but intimidating bush just outside the Flinders Ranges. Says Kevin Lucas, "When I first got there, I had sleepless nights thinking about my children, that they might disappear. I knew exactly what the characters are feeling - a sense of absolute, total frustration, helplessness, angst, and all these confusing emotions that go on. The story has become a complex emotional one, because we see that the father is a racist who doesn't allow the black tracker onto his land, but you are still full of sympathy for him because he has lost his child, and he is making stupid and irrational decisions."
Another addition by Perkins was the decision to cast Paul Kelly in the role of "the father", proving a perfect choice given the possibility of using real-life wife, actress Kaarin Fairfax as "the mother" and their daughter Memphis Kelly as "the child". "Putting Paul into this role was interesting, because we knew we had someone who wasn't an actor but who had a strong presence," says Lucas, "and to bring the chemistry of a family together was fantastic - it both gave Paul confidence and created an environment where he felt safe." Kelly agrees, "The acting is hard, but good when you get it right, and I had such good actors around me. A friend of mine told me before we started shooting, to just look and listen. I find that's the best advice anyone's given me: say your lines and try not to bump into the furniture!"
Finding the right location had long proved a problem, but taking time out of MAD's production of Paul Cox' dramatised documentary The diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky in Adelaide in early 2000, Lucas and Whitehead came upon Hawker. "We had to stretch the tightest budget to get out there, but the location was perfect. And both the crew and the locals were fantastic - it is good to work with people like Chris Haywood, who was more crew than actor on this production, because these people know about the lifestyle of films - not being pretentious and just getting on with it and doing it. In the end all the complications of such a desolate location were worth it."
A normal one hour television production is usually shot in one or two weeks, but in order to achieve optimum quality - and for it not to be a horrendous experience for everybody, the schedule got stretched to 4 weeks. Says director of photography Kim Batterham, "The shooting schedule was very generous. It made it faster than a feature but slower than TV - which gave us the chance to achieve feature film quality."
With 70% of the shooting of One night the Moon being outdoors, the crew were always at the mercy of the light and the weather. Says Kim Batterham, "The landscape in the flinders ranges is fantastic - but the weather can be hard. You don't get two days the same, so you've got to be flexible in following the light. The contrasts in the landscape are amazing - one day it can seem almost boring, but the next day it is the most magical place you have ever been to!" Adds Perkins, "We also used lots of day-for-night to achieve a surreal effect - and to allow you to actually see the landscape in the darkness."
The on-set experience was exciting for the creative team not usually involved in filmmaking. Visiting the location, Mairead Hannan knew that so much of her work was still to come - rewriting the music along with the editing process, "When the music was written there was no location for it, so I got a different feeling for it in Hawker. It is really silent there! I don't think there is anywhere in Victoria that is that silent!"
Says Paul Kelly, "Being on set, making the film after all this time, felt a little unreal. In many ways it is like when you're doing a music clip - you remember back when you were sitting around with a guitar, trying to write this song... a year or two later there are all these people standing around shouting action and set and slate, turnover and speed - and off we go."
Integrating the musical and the visual aspects became an exciting new process for everybody involved. "It is an interesting project because the musical has been dead for such a long time," says Rachel Perkins, "but considering a contemporary comparison to the musical is the music clip, we approached it by pushing the boundaries of what you would normally do in a drama, with the style, the design and also the camera."
Says Lucas, "It is important to take these risks and create new forms of productions and not be afraid. You look at what Dennis Potter was able to create at the BBC and the style of television he started making... not many countries in the world would have given him that opportunity. I think more filmmakers should be able to explore the boundaries of the medium, in particular the relationship of music to drama."