Julia Sammut

Broken is an Australian short film production from 2014 Film & Television graduate students at Swinburne University.
On a rural farm, a young girl must learn the realities of adulthood as her family and lamb best friend suffer through an unrelenting drought.



9-year-old Sophie lives on a sheep farm with her parents, grandmother and Daisy, the lamb. But with the heat of the summer scorching the land, the farm begins to fall apart. Sophie must deal with the failing health of her best friend, Daisy, and soon too with the disappearance of her mother, who is forced to flee to the city in the hope of work. Desperate for a solution, Sophie decides she must find a way to make it rain in order to save both her family and Daisy from the drought. At last the rain falls, but at what cost?

The team behind this project are experienced, passionate, and committed to making Broken an unforgettable film. However we need your support in order to make our vision a reality. While the project will be largely self-funded, we have set around 15% of our budget to be raised via crowd-funding. Our target $2000 will help get us over the line, and enable us to bring this film up to the high standard it deserves.


WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO?

We believe the script and creative vision behind the project deserves the beautiful, cinematic quality of 35mm film. However, given the limitations of a student budget, shooting in this quality format can be difficult to achieve. Your donations will help us in purchasing film stock, as well as covering the high costs of developing the film and scanning to a digital format for editing.

Donations will also be put toward the production design of the film. Set in the 1970s, in rural Australia, quality, detailed production design will be integral to bringing the story to life. Donations will help us to purchase appropriate costumes, set dressings and props.

Besides these two major elements, there are many other costs involved in filmmaking which your donations will help alleviate, including: equipment hire, transporting and feeding a volunteer crew, promotional work, and entering the finished film into festivals.



HOW TO PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Click the PLEDGE NOW button at the top of the page. You will be asked to select your Pledge amount and a Reward. From there, you will go through the Pozible checkout and payment process.

It's safe and easy to do, and every little bit helps us to make Broken the best that it can be. We greatly appreciate any and all support of the project.

However, we do have a deadline! If our funding target is not reached by the campaign's end on MAY 25th, pledges will not proceed and no payments will be processed. Please help us make sure we reach our target!
Remember you can also show your support by liking us at the Broken Facebook page, and getting the word out about the project.

THANK YOU!

Filmmaking is all about problem-solving, but particularly for this project the major tests for us are based around the weather. Being a university project, there is a strict production timeline which unfortunately means that we will have to shoot mid-winter. As the drought-stricken landscape is integral to the story, finding locations that are both practical for a Melbourne-based crew, and also dry and barren enough at that time of the year is our first major hurdle. Through family of the crew, we already have some great potential locations to work with. The other side to the weather is that in the final scenes the script calls for rain on a large scale. We have built and tested our own, full-scale rain rigs to this end. In production our greatest challenge will be scheduling in a way that allows us the flexibility to make the most of the right weather when we get it. In this regard being a low budget production will be a great advantage.

Our only other noteworthy and non- weather related challenge is working with animals, and already we have a specialist sheep-trainer on board who will be training, and also on set to handle the lamb playing Daisy.