Dunedin duo finish short film
Posted: Thursday Apr 11, 2019
Cast, crew and supporters of Port Chalmers film-makers Pennie Hunt and Stefan Roesch will tonight get to see the fruit of their labours.
They will be watching a private screening of the couple's new short film Milk, filmed over a four-day period in and around Dunedin.
The past year has been spent in post-production, transforming the raw footage into a finished product the film-makers hope will make it on to the film festival circuit.
Inspired by a true event - a visit to New Zealand waters by a German submarine in World War 2 - Milk depicts a fictional encounter between a local war widow and two officers when they come ashore to scavenge food.
''Getting the colour grading right was possibly the most difficult thing because the story takes place at night but for health and safety and budgetary reasons we had to film during the day,'' Ms Hunt, the writer and director of Milk, said.
''Getting a colour grade I was happy with was a challenging process, it was really important to me that we saw the faces of the characters because the actors expressed so much in their performances ... and we had to park a U-boat off the coast.''
The couple hope Milk will be a calling card for their careers, and producer Stefan Roesch said he was trying to attract interest from film festivals for the official first screening.
''I am absolutely confident in what we have achieved and now we are working on two feature films stories.
''We will stay working in Dunedin because it is a great place to make films and it has a really exciting emerging film hub.''