Movie Drama

In 2007, I involved some of the youths of Bukawa, Morobe Province in a movie drama titled "The Dire Trade" which was based on a true ancestral story.  The youths I worked with in that project belonged to a theater group called the BuAwa Theater Group which comprised of mostly school leavers and drop-outs who do not have better knowledge on acting or drama.  

Members of BuAwa Theatre Group before the shooting of scene 1 of the movie drama.

The idea of digitizing cultural performances began during my 3rd year at the University doing Arts and Design, minoring music and IT in 2002.  

Every break when I returned home, I usually saw the youths performing dance and dramas to family members who went there to spend the Christmas.  The group charged around 20-50 bucks for every performance just to entertain visiting families and most of the time, whatever they took is used to buy basic food like tea and rice for their get-together.  

One evening, I sat down with their group leaders and advised them to start thinking of making use of technology to generate some income, little higher than the one they're charging.  I asked if we could try capturing some of their performances and create DVDs then they can sell to friends and relatives.  I assured them that if things go well, we could organize to shoot a home-produced movie in locations within our jungles.  They've agreed so I tasked them to plan for the coming Christmas.  Everything went well and the coming break (2003), we shot the first stage performance using a camcorder.

I brought the footage back to the city, edited it and sent it home.  I told them to watch it over and over to identify their weaknesses and practice for another shot to be captured the coming break.  

The following Christmas (2004), we did a proper stage set-up and they performed using two camcorders.  I edited the clips and gave them the DVDs.  Everyone was so happy, including the village elders but I told them that there's a lot more to be done and if they agree, we shall discuss the next phase.

Everyone agreed, even the spectators (those who claimed to be the stage crews).  I gave them the task to come up with proper script and also to identify various locations that suit the story so the coming break we would investigate and do further preparations.  

In 2005 Christmas, we looked at the script which was written by one of the group leaders Mr. Jonah Bai and derived from storyteller Mr. Ming Genom.  I advised them to break-down the script into scenes and start practicing their lines.  The team started identifying talents to play various roles.  They also organized themselves and worked on preparing themselves while I left for the city.  

Throughout that year (2006), the group identified various locations for the shooting to be made and prepared costumes, materials and necessary items to be used during the shooting.  One of the thing I had in mind was to limit the use of modern materials except video camera, so I relayed the idea to the team for them to identify natural pigments that could be used to create various special effects for blood, smoke, fog and stunts.  This is the interesting part which made the costume designers use their hidden creativity.  I also had to do few research on pigments to be used to create different smoke effects and blood effects which I supplied to them.  Everything went well, the year came to an end so I went home for my 2006 break.  

We did final preparations and scheduled the beginning of 2007 to do our shooting.  2006 ended and 2007 began.  On the first day of 2007, we shot the first scene.  We had to walk the whole day up the mountain to shoot the scene.  It was the most enjoyable moment I've ever had at home moving around with the boys from one location to another shooting the different scenes.  It had taken us the whole week to shoot the main scenes.  This was like their first screen performance so I already expected a lot of failures.  To me, it is the second phase and I hoped to use this as a learning curve to polish the main production which should happen after this production.

The last night was to be dedicated to burning the village, which is one part of the story so we had to use my dad's generator and floodlight to improvise on this scene.  Again, it was a night filled with fun and everyone have learnt a lot from this production.

For us, this was the first-ever home based production shot and edited in the village using what we termed as "Traditional Technology".

Below are few of the many shots I took during the making of the movie drama "The Dire Trade".

 

 

 

We hoped to secure funding to continue completing the final movie drama.  Works are underway as we continue to find potential donors to support the drive.