Factory293

Writer/director, Roderick MacKay, transforms Western Australia’s capital into a snow-swept Russia in his upcoming short ‘Factory 293’.

For writer/director Roderick MacKay, the starting point for his short films can be traced back to the worlds they inhabit. “I’ve always had a taste for stories that require world building and really draw on the full arsenal of storytelling tools unique to filmmaking,” he says. Never one to feel boxed in by geographical limitations, the filmmaker’s debut short, Trigger, was set in 1970’s Sicily and his upcoming short, Factory 293, plays out in industrial Russia.

Also pivotal to his decision was the fact that he stumbled upon the Midland Railway Workshops in his home state. “This immense, hundred year old precinct was once the beating industrial heart of Western Australia,” MacKay says, “but it was shut down in the 80’s and luckily, since beautifully maintained; suspended in time. I couldn’t believe how much production value was sitting there idle and I knew it would make the perfect skeleton to build a world upon.”

MacKay, however, knew that he had to pen a script that matched its setting. “From then, the overarching story premise materialised quite quickly, but the exact execution took me about six draft scripts before I felt it was ready. The story had to live up to the world I was trying to build. Story is king.”

The subsequent story unspools on a day in the lives of a ragtag group of women munitions machinists and their despondent factory manager (played by Drift’s Myles Pollard), and digs into what is lost when people are forced to live their lives in an assembly line.

MacKay was particularly interested in the “battle between truth and propaganda”, which he was struck by in his research, and which permeates his film. “In this global age of constant and instantaneous access to information, it’s easy to forget how malleable people’s perceptions were back then,” he says. “Literally, all people had were radiobroadcasts, posters, letter writing and for some, the telephone. When these limited means of communication are dominated by one single agenda, well… that’s scary.”

These themes have been integrated within the impressive aesthetic of film, which saw MacKay working closely with his DOP and Digital Visual Effects Artist, Andrew Gordon, as well as snow-FX specialists. “The howling blizzard constantly constrains our view, coupled with the towering factory walls to create the present sense of confinement and shortsightedness," Mackay explains. "Perspective is lost in the whitewash of the blizzard, as well as the static ridden radio broadcasts.”

It’s been an epic journey for MacKay, who received funding from ScreenWest and is a testament to hard work and perseverance. “It took at least two and half years from starting the first draft script to the first day of filming,” the filmmaker reflects. “I applied for funding twice unsuccessfully during this time and almost gave up after the second time, but stubbornness won out and I tried for a third time and finally, received a green light, which was as terrifying as it was exciting.”

With the first trailer just released, and MacKay gearing up for a festival run before he releases the film online, the scales have certainly tipped toward excitement now.

http://filmink.com.au/
April 2014