'Starcatcher' - Short 2005

     In the summer of 2005 at Waipatiki Beach in Napier; Bay of Plenty I completed my first shortfilm; Starcatcher. It was an adaptation from a book of the same name by Glen Johnston of 'The Book Company' in Australia.

This was my first experience of acquiring rights to use someone else's written material. I had no funding for this project, but was supported by Edgewater Productions at Edgewater College and Alan Vester the Principal, and Markus Fritch who at that time worked in the music department composed the score,Markus is now HOD of music at Rangitoto college.The music, sound and voice overs were recorded at this College recording studio. The film is 7 minutes long, and was entered into Sydney's tropfest short film competition for Jan 2006; the motif was bubbles.

Jacob my oldest son was five years old when I filmed it, he is now ten, and remembers it well.

In the fantasy scene where the mermaid hands the shooting star to Jacob, there was actually two mermaids in the shot, but one Jenifer was on standby futher in the river as can be seen in this shot. It was filmed just after dusk with a back up crew standing on the shore with lights and towels ready.

I shot the film every night for about 6 nights in the hours of 8 to 9 o'clock so that the lighting was round about the same.  I got up early before sunrise to catch the sound of the birds, atmos and to film the sunrise which is seen in the time passing transition. I was enjoying my first taste of film making but driving my husband crazy as he thought I was suppose to be on holiday - but I was,  I was enjoying it thoroughly.