In My Image was filmed in 2001, and released on DVD in 2003. It was the first film I ever made, and I decided to jump in at the deep end and make a feature.
David Miller is an idealist in the colonial frontier of highland New Guinea in 1938. Having given away law to work as an anthropologist and gain a greater insight into the traditional beliefs of the natives he finds himself once again drawn back into law when he reluctantly agrees to represent T’Laupo, a highlander charged with murder, after a traditional pay back killing.
As David investigates the case and re-establishes an old friendship with another highlander, Jainantu, he finds that all is not as it seems – and the greatest lessons are the ones we learn ourselves.
An intelligent drama that studies the psychology of religion and aetheism, and the colonial treatment of New Guinea
I was inspired by the interplay of personal responsibility, religious beliefs and Australia’s colonial history with Papua New Guinea.
Being a first film it’s got a few amateur elements to it, and unfortunately Kodak had a manufacturing problem with a few of the Super 8mm cartridges at the time, so occasionally it has some technical issues. But that all aside it still conveys its message really well, and making it was one of the most enjoyable and worthwhile things I’ve ever done.
You can watch the movie on youtube now
And I also made a making of video
and I’ve archived the original web site here too so you can see the production diary etc as well if you want to.
I did a radio interview (which I don’t have a copy of), the Courier Mail ran an article
and the film had a lot of buzz in the independent/Super 8 community worldwide in the early 2000’s. It really was fun reaching out around the world on forums like filmshooting.com and Mike Brantleys Super 8 forum, on the early days of the internet before social media.
There’s not much more that I can say here that the original web page or making of video can’t say better. But despite its production flaws I’m really proud of it and its themes and subject matter still stands up today.
I should mention too when I started editing this all I had was a Celeron 300 MHz system with a 40Gb hard drive and Adobe Premiere 5 – which I’d never used before! There was a lot of learning involved! To say nothing of the fact the Super 8 was transferred to about 25 miniDV tapes which took up 13Gb each! But it was fun!
