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| Pete, Mel and Alexis filming Tony and Liz on Muri beach |
A week-long pearl festival is being planned for April next year and Alexis Wolfgram, one of the Film Raro directors, has been busy putting together a promotional three or four minute film with a website and some 30 second adverts to follow.
Some of our course members, including Maureen and Caroline, are particularly interested in the scripting side of a film and they took the original outline – a series of scenes highlighting pearl festival attractions – and added a neat story line about a curious, young mermaid’s journey around the island during the pearl festival.
Highlights include events at the Punanga Nui market, a mardi gras evening with a Pearl Princess competition and facepaining for the kids; a treasure hunt; fun team sports at Muri beach; a gourmet long-table dinner at the marina; fashion and wearable arts shows and a Pearl Ball.
We had a lovely mermaid, Teja who’s just returned to Raro from New Zealand and put in a great performance over the course of a long Sunday’s shooting. This included wearing a mermaid’s fishy tail in some scenes and having blue and silver make-up expertly designed and applied by Ani.
Mel and Pete manned the cameras; most of the props came from Alexis’s Warehouse (a couple of container-sized treasure stores); I helped out with props and locations – making sure we had everything we needed on site and took it all away with us when finished. Most of us also filled in as extra bodies on the set on occasions!
We’d hoped to get it all filmed in a week but the weather didn’t cooperate and making movies always takes longer than you think it will. (That’s something else we all learned from Film Raro!)
I had to go to NZ before it was finished – just got back and I’m looking forward to finding out how it’s coming along.
I’ll be putting links to the finished products but in the meantime here are some photos from the first week’s filming.
Watch this space.
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| Teja the mermaid at Black Rock |
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| Dernice face-painting at Punanga Nui market |
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| Filming the Pearl Princess at Punanga Nui market |
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| Liz and Tony find the treasure |
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| Ani fixing the mermaid make-up |
