When Wickow man Antaine Furlong set out to make his first feature film, a sci-fi thriller entitled Rising Wolf, he didn't know that he'd have a global pandemic to contend with. With Rising Wolf set for global release next month, Antaine recalls a filmmaking baptism by fire...
The last time I was on a film set I was a 24-year-old production runner who got to meet my idol Christopher 'Superman' Reeve before his tragic accident - fast forward many years later, and I'm walking onto the film set as the director.
When I set out to make Rising Wolf, I knew I was the underdog. Not only because I was an Irish man living in Australia with zero film connections, but genre filmmaking barely exists here, especially sci-fi.
I was an untested rookie director who knew the story had to fit into the budget we had to spend; I wanted to create as much of a thrilling experience as I could. Any movie with 400+ VFX shots is not cheap, and the way I wanted to shoot it meant further limitations when it came to sets, and locations. Every decision has a price tag, and my focus was to make a story that could potentially find a wider audience.
Day 1 of the shoot was electric; it was everything I hoped it would be. All my energy went into not making a show of myself and trying to elevate the simple story my co-writer Kieron Holland and I wrote 12 years ago. All we cared about was making our first film: "We’re doing it!". We may have even jumped up and down like children, now that our dream had materialized into reality.
Every hurdle we hit, we got back up - we had to finish this film.
We had to generate enough energy from simplicity, and do so in only 20 days. A woman trapped in an elevator - how many shots can one do? Trying to maintain a strong performance day-in and day-out and using the playback on the screen as the only source for our leading actress Charlotte Best to work with had its challenges. It was exhausting for both her and I, but we got there.
Covid struck. It nearly sunk us. We had just started postproduction in Fox Studios when the world came to a halt. For a low-budget film, every dollar lost was a big loss. At one point we were the only production in Fox Studios. It was like a ghost town. Most of us worked from home, communicating via Zoom. It was a difficult time, and creative decisions were greatly impacted. My vision for this film was slipping away.
It was a Herculean feat of remote collaboration by everyone from the VFX squad to the sound team and our composer, David Hirschfelder. Losing one of my voice actors to Covid was a heavy blow. Every hurdle we hit, we got back up - we had to finish this film.
I never got to achieve everything, and I don't not want to dwell upon it, either, as so many people have suffered in this pandemic. This film is ironic to me. Our character is trapped, trying to figure out why, while we spent 8 months of our lives in isolation trying to complete it. It was a difficult notch in the belt to earn as a first-time director, with the challenges of the pandemic, but I am wiser for it. Do check it out if you can.
Rising Wolf is currently available on digital-on-demand and cable platforms worldwide.
