Summer Coda: Oh, those summer nights!
Richard Gray’s directorial debut Summer Coda became the first film at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival to sell out. It was a heartening affirmation for Gray, who poured his heart into making the film. He told Hansika Bhagani that it was all well worth it.
Summer Coda came second in Movie Network’s Project Greenlight competition in 2005, but that success was quickly followed by years of struggle and rejections at the hands of national and state film funding bodies.“We had a good opportunity after Project Greenlight to progress the project faster than you would normally. We got so close to getting it up so many times, so it’s felt like a longer journey, but it’s definitely been worth it,” said Gray.
Set in the orange groves of Mildura, along the Murray River, the story revolves around Heidi (Rachael Taylor) who returns to Australia to attend the funeral of her estranged father. On the way she meets Michael (Alex Dimitriades) – an orange farmer struggling with his own familial loss. As she joins Michael’s rag-tag bunch of orange pickers, Heidi discovers love, learns to cope with her father’s bereavement and discovers secrets along the way.
Crucial to the story is the town of Mildura, which features heavily as the location of the orange farm and backdrop to the burgeoning romance. For Gray, it was a treat to film in the country town where he’d previously shot the TV cooking series Stefano’s Cooking Paradise, and a place he looks forward to returning to. “I’d love to make another film in regional Australia, it was so much less stressful than shooting in the city, having people around you that aren’t just wanting to be paid, that just want to help and support, because they can see the benefit. It was a really positive experience,” he said.
One of the key benefits of filming in Mildura, Gray said, is getting more bang for your buck – which is particularly important when your film is privately funded (although Film Victoria did provide post-production support).
Despite the great “leg-up” he got for the screenplay at Project Greenlight and the high-profile connections he made through the competition, Gray conceedes it was difficult getting the project off the ground. “I thought filmmaking in this country wasn’t so hard in 2005 when it looked like we were going to make the film after only a couple of years out of film school. But it took five years got to make it, which is probably more true a reflection of how long it takes,” he said. The project’s intended timeline suffered through continual knockbacks by the former Film Finance Corporation, but Gray said he doesn’t hold any grudges. “I was very young, and there’s a lot of mouths to feed in Mordor and not everyone’s film can get made. We just couldn’t get it up, and it was probably due to my inexperience,” he recalled.
But his persistence and passion for the film won out. “We wanted to make the film so badly. We had distribution, sales and a cast but we just couldn’t seem to get the greenlight. So we went at it another way” he said.
Helping secure finance for the production were producers Marc Goldenfein and John Finemore, and executive producers James Hoppe and Bryce Menzies.
