New film from Sydney couple
Sydney-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaking couple Kane Senes and Hannah Barlow have finished production on their new film For Now, a feature-length “dramedy” the duo plans to submit to festivals later this year.
Kane Senes and Hannah Barlow
The Aussies met in Los Angeles, where Barlow had relocated to pursue an acting career after graduating from the famed National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA). Senes was in post-production on his debut feature Echoes of War, which went on to win a Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival before being released theatrically and on the Showtime network in the U.S.
Kane Senes tells what happened next…
“I was trying again and again to get the next movie off the ground and was getting very frustrated with the Hollywood system, which is all a numbers game”, laments Senes. “‘Who’s in your movie? Can you change these characters to twin assassins with bazookas in their bras?’ while Hannah was sick of the constant rejection that comes with auditioning. So we decided to make something for ourselves and on our own terms.”
Hannah Barlow added: “I was going through the scary transition of school to the real world, in a new country,” Barlow recounts. “We felt compelled to explore what it’s like to be in your twenties and not knowing if you’re making the right choices, or going down the right path.”
Teaming up with actress Katherine Du Bois, the team decided to play themselves in the film, a quasi-documentary aesthetic that blurs the line between reality and fiction.
“We knew we had to make the film for very little money, but we liked the idea of a road trip movie,” Senes said. “The cheapest thing we could do was to pack the cast and crew into a rent-a-van and set off up the Californian coast, filming the story in real time and working off a loose outline as opposed to a traditional script so that we could remain flexible and shoot fast.”
Doing away with lights and extraneous gear and employing a crew that consisted of only a cameraman, a sound recordist and a friend for extra support, the filmmakers were able to raise just enough money on crowd-funding site “Kickstarter” to get through a one-week shoot.
“We were truly humbled by the support we received from family, friends, even strangers online”, Barlow marvels. “We asked for help and people came. It really blew me away.”
Now, mid-way through the editing process, how is the film shaping up? “Really well,” enthuses Senes. “It’s been fun discovering our little story as we’ve gone along. Making something that falls somewhere between a classical narrative and a glorified home video has felt like a real experiment in filmmaking. Like film school all over again, in the best sense.”
And what about putting their relationship through such an intense experience together? “I was definitely apprehensive at first,” Barlow laughs. “But it brought us closer.”
Senes agrees. “I think we enjoyed telling each other what to do all week and getting away with it. That doesn’t usually happen.”
For Now will be released next year after a hopeful festival debut.
The film deals with those in their twenties who do not know what it is that they are supposed to be doing with their lives.
