Keeping Mara - A Short Film

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Mara has a brain tumour; one day it will kill her but first it will take her mind. Unwilling to become a shell, she must convince her sister to let her go. But can memory ever be a substitute for time?

Theatrical Release Poster

Teaser Posters

Keeping Mara was developed over a year, with Pre-Production lasting 5 months, Production running for 2 and Post-Production finishing with another 5 months. Around 40 students helped make this production a reality. The film premiered at the Flinders University End-Of-Year Screening, thus completing the project.

We utilised a full Adobe workflow, writing the screenplay and production notes with Adobe Story, then utilising Prelude and Premiere in post-production with After Effects assisting. Nuke X was also used for additional visual effects. The software helped us to achieve post-stabilisation, optical flow, and render the particles and visuals, as well as remove any mistakes and clean up the plates.

I'm very lucky and eternally grateful to have worked with such a talented and skilled group of people in bringing this project to life. Many thanks go to Louise and Madeleine who are fantastic actors and were wonderful to work with. In no particular order, I should also thank Tom and Hannah who were there from the beginning, Anita for lending her talents in writing, Jason and Link for editing what I threw at them, Gere for creating a touching soundscape, and Reece, David and the crew who gave up their weekends and pressed on through long shoot days. Thanks to Sheydin and the pre-production crew for creating beautiful concept art, and thanks to Dante, Jacqueline and the rest of the VFX crew for breathing life into the footage and erasing our mistakes.

I also want to thank Cole, Helen, Shane and Katie, as without their input and assistance Mara wouldn't have been made.

Promotional Photography