Andrew Brinsmead

"Thug" was inspired by incidents from our director  Steve’s personal life during his teenage years, growing up in Springvale.

“Thug” is a short film about John, a teenager from a rough neighbourhood, who dreams of being more than his brutal street world allows. The only person who can see past John’s street-tough guise is Tina, the girl of his dreams (and who's parents don't approve of him). John has finally convinced Tina to go on a date, only to have his violent past catch up with him.

We’ve spent months casting our two lead actors, Iopu Auva'a & Rinjila Pradhan and we’re very excited by them! They both show great talent as actors, and we’re excited to be offering them an opportunity to showcase their extraordinary acting talents.

Our writer & director, Steven Arriagada has a strong background as a professional cameraman covering major sports events (such as AFL football and the Australian Tennis Open), media events and electronic news gathering. Steve also has a broad background in film and television production, building his skils & knowledge through a variety of key production roles, such as first assistant director, production manager and editor.

Our Producer Andrew Brinsmead has worked as a professional film & television editor since 1993, and has recently moved into producing. His skill & experience in film making means that we’ll be making a professional, high quality film, that we hope will enjoy a lot of success on the international film festival circuit.


 

We’re hoping to raise $6000 to add to the $7500 that Steve has already saved, so that we can provide our volunteer crew with all the resources that they need to tell this story in the best way possible. Because of Steve’s industry connections, a number of Steve’s friends in the television industry are donating their time and a significant level of professional quality equipment to help us stretch the value out of our budget.

For our five day shoot, although we've already got a lot of our our professional equipment and have been given a lot of gear at "mates rates', we still need to hire some extra equipment and resources:

Lens hire - $2900
Catering - $3000
Grip / Gaffer gear hire- $2400
Steadiicam hire (one day)- $500
Sound recording equipment - $1000
Location hire $1600
Production design $1000
Radio communications $440
Contingency $1300
Petrol $230

Some of the challenges that we're facing are working with young inexperienced actors, so we've got additional drama coaches on hand to help us get the best performances from our actors.

Fortunately we're shooting most of our scenes in doors so weather won't be too much of a problem, but we will have one exterior night shoot planned, so we'll be scheduling this early in our shoot, with some flexibility so that we can change the date  for the exterior night shoot if we need to.