One of the keys to making a high quality low-budget feature film is to limit the numbers of locations. Stef Harris’s “Blue Moon” demonstrates that this approach works. It’s intense, filled with surprises, and has some of the best performances you’re likely to see anywhere. Following the trailer, Harris discusses his unusual background as a movie maker. (Spoiler alert, he’s a cop!)

Interview with Stef Harris

MMM: How did you learn to make movies?

Harris: I’ve always dreamed of being a film maker. I made Super8 movies as a teenager, and we had a kids movie contest on TV where I was a finalist and Peter Jackson won. His film was inspiring: a stop motion Plasticine cyclops chasing kids. And the kids killed the cyclops.

MMM: And then?

Harris: I won an arts grant as a 17 year old to make a short film on Super 16MM film. The finished film was 24 minutes and was lost forever when the post production house went bust. My film wound up in a rubbish skip. I gave up my dream and joined the police in 1990 and settled down to raise a family. However in 1999 I became interested in my part Maori heritage and published a novel about a Maori Land claim. The book was called The Waikikamukau Conspiracy. It was a humourous story about a serious issue and received positive  reviews at the time. Book reviewers unanimously said it should be made into a  film.

MMM: Did you make the movie?

Harris: We spent a long time trying to raise one million dollars to make the film but it was too tough and we gave it up. I had a mid life crisis in 2005 and decided to have one last attempt at being a filmmaker. I figured out a plan to make the film without the million dollars. I raised a budget of $15,000 NZD and invited professional actors to come and make the film over a seven-day shooting week in the Christmas holiday. I rented a Scout Camp in the small town of Waimate for bunkhouse accommodation. I provided all the cooked meals and complimentary drinks and some transport costs. It was agreed no one would be paid and we were a group of like minded artists working on the project. It was like a movie camp with a small group of trusting professionals with half the town assisting as extras. We shot on a broadcast news video camera.

MMM: And the result?

Harris: It was a feature length film called “The Waimate Conspiracy.” No one can describe my surprise when it went on to win the DigiSPAA Australian Screen Producers award for best film, The Wairoa Maori Film Festival Award best film, the Dreamspeakers Aboriginal Film Festival award Best film and New Zealand’s top film award the Air New Zealand Screen award best digital film. Everyone who contributed to that little project was really pleased.

MMM:  Did you go on to make videos for your police department?

Harris: No, my whole 28 years in the police has been front line uniform patrol.

MMM: Moving on the “Blue Moon,” could you give us your summary of the concept?

Harris: “Blue Moon” is essentially a drama concealed within a genre crime story. At the heart of the story is the relationship between two sad middle aged men, Horace Jones and Darren Cates who have not seen each other in forty years since boarding school. Something shocking occurred at school, an event so unspeakable neither man will mention it directly. Now forty years later, in the midst of a scramble to secure half a million dollars of drug money, they must face the past. The film has the feel of a stage play and features extraordinary performances by the two lead actors. Although at first glance “Blue Moon” is a crime suspense story it’s much more in the tradition of “Dog Day Afternoon” and “The Crying Game.”

MMM: Where did the idea come from?

Harris: My day job is as a front line police officer. It was 4:20 am and I was putting petrol in my patrol car when I glanced back at the gas station. It was lit up like a spaceship in the night, silent, austere and beautiful. Without thinking I took out my police issue iPhone from my Kevlar vest and took a shot. That photograph became the founding document of “Blue Moon.” I wanted to tell a story about the people of the night. The clerks, security guards, taxi drivers, the police and, of course, the villains.

MMM: Speaking of your two anti-hero protagonists, how did you find those terrific lead actors?

Harris:  Mark Hadlow, who plays the gas station owner, was in that lost 16mm film. Since then he has carved out a career for himself in entertainment and has been very successful. By the time I was ready to shoot “The Waimate Conspiracy”  Mark was already a big name in NZ entertainment circles, but he loved the story and came along to play the part of a lawyer in the film. I met Jed Brophy, the guy with the gun, through Mark about five years ago and recognized a real talent. They both liked some of the stories I was writing and wanted to work with me on something. So I wrote “Blue Moon” as a film we three could make with an iPhone and a little help from our friends. I live in a small town called Motueka on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Forrest Park. They are  both based in Wellington so my budget was mostly travel and accommodation and feeding the crew of course.

MMM: I can’t think of another case where a working cop is the writer-director of a feature movie.

Harris: I knew I could only do this if I could get my community to actively support the project. I wrote an eight page treatment and on the strength of that recruited my professional actors who worked for  free. What can I say, they loved the story. Over the next 12 months, I wrote a fresh draft every month racing against my own deadline toward the shoot day. Key to success was limiting the story to the single location of  the gas station and shooting in real time, nearly. The story unfolds over one night from 4:20 to 6 am.

MMM: The camera work is remarkable.

Harris: One of my cop buddies Ryan O’Rourke is also a cinematographer. Ryan suggested we shoot the movie on an iPhone 7+ with the Moondog anamorphic lens affixed the whole time. The camera application was FilmicPro. We used a gimbal and hand held camera almost the whole time. For the smooth tracking dolly shots in and out of the petrol station we had a rickshaw that Ryan borrowed from an old folks retirement home.  I trusted Ryan completely, and I think that confidence scared the hell out of him. We were committed. We got some local friends to donate a crane and a couple of drones too.

MMM: What about other resources?

Harris: We set up a Facebook page “Blue Moon – NZ Film” and started posting the great news that a feature film was soon to be shot in our small town! Pretty soon we had donations of luxury accommodation, food, computer hardware and  a production base, which was a Video EZY store right next to the location. I got lucky when the owner of the gas station turned out to be the stunt driver from one of New Zealand’s earliest films, “Shaker Run.” He thought a movie would be good for our small town and threw me the keys without further discussion.  A lovely chap saw the story in our local paper The Motueka Guardian and volunteered to help. He was Ben Dunker, a sound engineer recently moved to town from Hollywood, where he had worked on  Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.”  Another local filmmaker, Dan Hennah (L.O.T.R Oscar winner) came to my aid with some sorely needed special FX help, Dan also works with Peter Jackson on Lord of the Rings but I was local so he helped me for free. I attracted a small group of very accomplished actors and rounded out the cast with real off duty police officers who came to help me and had a great time. One of the funniest lines is delivered deadpan by Sergeant  Rob Ballantyne.

MMM: How long did the shoot take?

Harris: Six days on a budget of just $12,000 NZD.   We had a great time making this film and we surprised ourselves mightily when it was selected for the New Zealand International Film Festival.  All the great people who helped for the fun of it were thrilled at our success.

MMM: Could you talk about the sound track?

Harris: Our editor Judd Resnick put the “Blue Moon” song on as a temp track on our teaser. Of course we all fell in love with it because at its heart the film is a kind of a screwed up love story. We made the enquiries and it turned out to be too expensive to get the rights so we can’t broadcast that teaser anywhere. As a result I contacted a composer Tane Upjohn-Beatson, who was the sound engineer on “The Waimate Conspiracy.” Tane did  a great job on the score of our movie, and now we are in love with that music.  We’re a small country so we all work together on projects over and again.

MMM: Did you encounter any big problems during the shoot?

Harris: Ben Dunker (sound engineer) and Janja Heathfield (sound mixer)  and I realized that we had a major problem with the buzz from all the fridges and freezers in the gas station shop where we were filming. We were shooting from midnight to 5 am for six days. So we ended up unplugging the freezers and putting ice bags on top of the goods. Despite that, all the ice creams were soggy all week.

MMM: What advice would you give to someone who dreams of making a first feature?

Harris: Just do it. Don’t worry if you don’t have the best camera or other equipment. All we had was an iPhone and a separate sound kit. If you are aware of your technical limits at the writing stage, you can write your way around technical problems. Write a simple emotional story. Audiences have seen plenty of fancy camera work and pyrotechnics, but what they really want is emotion on screen. You can make the biggest difference to your film at the writing stage. Writing is about 60% of filmmaking.

MMM: Anything else?

Harris: Approach the best actors you can find. Accomplished actors will work with you if they love the story.

MMM: Now that the movie is finished, how do your bosses at the police department feel about it?

Harris:  They have been very supportive of my efforts over the years, even so far as giving me paid cultural leave to attend film festivals.

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking Magazine have chosen the “Blue Moon” trailer as a Mobile Movie of the Week. We’ll make an announcement when the film itself can be seen in theaters and online.