Happy ending for Hilditch
Perth writer-director Zak Hilditch has made four features but as the clock counts down to the unveiling of his latest film, the end-of-the-world fantasy These Final Hours, he's excited as a first-timer.
"It's been a long time coming so I'm really keen for it to happen," Hilditch tells me over coffee at Dome in Applecross ahead of the world premiere of These Final Hours at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).
The excitement level is through the roof because Hilditch regards These Final Hours as his proper first feature. He refers to his earlier efforts - The Actress, Plum Role and The Toll - as "backyard movies" because they were made for the smell of an oily rag.
"This is the first time I had a proper budget. It was wonderful to be able to pay people and buy things," says Hilditch, a film graduate from Curtin University, where he continues to tutor between movie projects.
That money, which came from ScreenWest, Screen Australia and MIFF, allowed Hilditch to spend five weeks shooting These Final Hours in October and November last year.
His film, an expansion of his multiple-award-winning short Transmission, is set on the eve of the apocalypse and centres on a 30-year-old named James (Nathan Phillips, of Wolf Creek fame) who is going to the party to end all parties to wipe himself out.
On the way James saves the life of a young girl (Angourie Rice) who is looking for her father. In seeking to reunite father and daughter James is after redemption for a lifetime of self-indulgence and failure.
"We had an awesome cast and crew so everything went smoothly. Everyone went above and beyond," Hilditch says. He adds that there was even great stuff left on the cutting-room such as a sequence shot in Lancelin.
"It was enormous job to get everyone up to Lancelin and, guess what, not a single shot made it into the final film. It was such a beautiful day and we got these great epic shots but we just didn't need it."
These Final Hours climaxes at the party which Hilditch and his team filmed in a Peppermint Grove mansion.
"It was amazing, exactly the place I imagined when I wrote the script," Hilditch says.
While the family were extremely generous in allowing them to use their home, which lasted five days and involved 200 extras, Hilditch feels they were relieved when it was all over because it was "pretty full on".
There was one special evening when the husband was determined to go ahead with his dinner party. "It was the day when we were filming the orgy scene so we had to shoot fast and then get out," he laughs.
One of Hilditch's coups was casting Perth fast-rising Perth actress Jess De Gouw who, in between signing and the actual shoot, had moved up the league table, landing major roles in the series Arrow and Dracula.
"The irony was that the local girl in the cast was the hardest one to get into the movie. We had to prise her away from Los Angeles for five days. But Jess was very committed and fought to get away from Arrow."
While Hilditch is likely to get offers outside of Perth as the film starts to be seen, he won't be quick to leave his home town.
"WA is the best place to be right now for a filmmaker. There's a lot of money going into the industry," Hilditch says.
These Final Hours has its world premiere at MIFF on Friday.
