Frontier filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner are back with a new short that sees the brothers having themselves a little Australian adventure…kinda…when a preacher travels down under to save the soul of a man who has lost his faith.
We spoke with David Zellner about “Redemptitude.”
So, did you guys actually make it out to the Australian Outback to shoot this film? ^ Unfortunately that wasn’t in the budget, so we found a ranch in East Texas that was virtually identical to the Outback in terms of terrain and atmosphere. To fill in the gaps we employed the use of stock footage.
Australia sure is popping up a lot in movies these days. What’s up with that? ^ I attribute it all to the wild popularity of Foster’s Beer and quaint chain eatery Outback Steakhouse.
What inspired the making of “Redemptitude”? ^ The original script was a Flannery O’Connor-esque Southern Gothic tale called “Redemption”, but that title seemed boring and played-out, so we opted to make up a word and settled on “Redemptitude”. As the project evolved, we decided to change the film’s setting to a more exotic locale. We first considered the Austrian Outback, found out that it didn’t exist, and thus chose the Australian one. It also became more comedic as we went along.
What was the biggest challenge in getting this film made? ^ The fact that we had never been to Australia and weren’t particularly familiar with its geography. Since both Nathan and I were the stars of the film, we also had the challenge of mastering the accent. At first this was all daunting, but we took comfort in that we’d seen the Mad Max Trilogy dozens of times, and were peripherally aware of the existence of Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious.
What’s up next for you guys? ^ We have an exciting new feature that is getting underway.
