Picnic at Hanging Rock poster art by Scott Saslow
October 15, 2024
By Tim Pelan
My only worry was whether an audience would accept such an outrageous idea. Personally, I always found it the most satisfying and fascinating aspect of the film. I usually find endings disappointing: they’re totally unnatural. You are creating life on the screen, and life doesn’t have endings. It’s always moving on to something else and there are always unexplained elements. What I attempted, somewhere towards the middle of the film, was gently to shift emphasis off the mystery element which had been building in the first half and to develop the oppressive atmosphere of something which has no solution: to bring out a tension and claustrophobia in the locations and the relationships. We worked very hard at creating an hallucinatory mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotise the audience away from the possibility of solutions… There are, after all, things within our own minds about which we know far less than about disappearances at Hanging Rock. And it’s within a lot of those silences that I tell my side of the story. —Peter Weir
Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), an adaptation of the 1967 beguiling mystery/horror novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay (written quickly, allegedly after a particularly vivid dream), is arguably the film that put that country on the world cinematic map. The plot primarily concerns four Victorian teenage girls, Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith, students at Appleyard College, a restrictive Australian boarding school for young ladies, who climb a great ancient rock during a Valentine’s Day school outing, their schoolmates preferring to rest at its base. As they ascend, Edith tires of the climb and considers her companions are acting as if under some strange power. She runs, screaming, back down the rock to the rest of the class and teachers. The other three girls disappear within a crack in the edifice—only Irma is found again, four days later, unconscious, with no sign of struggle or ill effect. A teacher who also ascended never descends again, or indeed is to be seen again. Lindsay’s book, and Weir’s film, can be seen as Australian Gothic romance/horror—they each establish the strangeness of a “time out of joint” from the off, with these introductory words: “On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace…”
February 14th fell on a Wednesday that year, not a Saturday. Did the missing girls step through a crack between worlds? Were they swallowed up by the ancient rock? Both filmmaker and author deliberately muddy the waters of what is real or not. The repressed hothouse atmosphere of the college and the hysteria following the girls and teacher’s vanishing is also redolent of the suffocating building nervous tension of the nun’s community in Black Narcissus, or the reaction to Clint Eastwood’s Civil War deserter interloper in another ladies college in The Beguiled. The film successfully drew from respected European cinema and elevated the local scene at a time when Australia was trying to define itself beyond tired colonial tropes. Martindale Hall, the location for the college, had an equally unhappy history. It was built by a suitor for a woman from Britain he fell in love with. She told him if he built her an exact replica of the home she grew up in, she would come to Australia and be his bride. She reneged however, and he eventually lost it gambling. Martin Sharp, the artistic advisor to Peter Weir, said of it, “You can feel the anguish in the place.”
As the film begins, we see the girls rise for the day ahead, opening Valentine’s cards (it is foretelling that Miranda’s is of a swan, a creature of grace she is compared to), cutting a heart-shaped cake (breaking hearts and bonds), and lacing one another’s restrictive corsets, in a human chain. As this unfolds, popular girl Miranda, a “Botticelli Angel” as teacher Mademoiselle de Poitiers calls her, breathily invokes Edgar Allen Poe:
“What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.” Poe’s mysterious poetry here is acting as the overture for the dramaturgy to unfold. In Swan Lake there is also an air of anticipation and celebration, in the case of Prince Siegfried’s birthday. The swan queen, Odette, with whom the prince falls in love, can be compared to the gracefully swan-like Miranda, an equally obsessive fascination for Michael. As Odette turns into a swan during the day, it seems that Miranda turns into a swan at one point when after the girls disappear Michael imagines he sees her as such in the garden (in a discarded test, he alternately sees her as a nude Venus, emerging from a shell).
Nineteen girls and two teachers set off that fateful day—spiteful, austere (jealous?) headmistress Mrs Appleyard keeps rebellious orphan Sara behind, merely because the ward cannot keep up the boarding fees, a singling out that will lead to them both mentally unraveling later. Sara is besotted with Miranda, who looks kindly upon her. The film, according to Weir, created “a hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up and got into the enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.”
The dreamlike idyll and unsettling layers around the central mystery are also suggested by DoP Russell Boyd’s cinematography and almost immeasurable slow motion via altered frame rate. He utilized special film stock and a variety of bridal lace and muslin to cover the lens for a diffused look—the picnic itself echoing impressionistic painters like Monet in its composition and use of light shafts picking out detail. Boyd recalled that “light played such an important part,” with the filming of the picnic itself scheduled for an hour of “magic time” each day for several days over a week. The film’s aesthetic most likely inspired the dreamy “girl in a field” long-running Cadbury Flake adverts.
Several haunting musical pieces and underlying sound effects also permeate and infuse the serenely sinister unfolding events, particularly the incredible theme on pan pipes. Bruce Smeaton settled upon Flute De Pan by Romanian musician Gheorge Zamfir, after he and Weir considered artists as varied as Chopin, Stravinsky, Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. Weir considered the pipes to evoke “pagan feelings of the old Gods.” The “ghostly choir” effect of Smeaton’s compositions around the unnerving ascent is achieved via a Melatron, or tape loop recording effect.
There is a powerful sense of the ancient rocks bearing down on these white western intruders, malevolence or at least metaphysical force indifferent to their transient fates within this six-million-year-old, 105-meter-high behemoth located in Wurundjeri territory, near Victoria’s Macedon ranges. The outcrop, a natural dividing point (ley line?) for four Aboriginal territories, held such a degree of power to the tribes who had lived in the area for more than 26,000 years that they refused to climb it. Western arrogance is embodied in the line, upon seeing the rock for the first time, that has been “waiting a million years, just for us.”
Picnic at Hanging Rock is probably the definitive example of the pervasive Australian “White Vanishing Myth”—hundreds of urban myths of Caucasian settlers lost and disoriented in a hostile land that must succumb to Western impositions. Elspeth Tilley, author of White Vanishing: Rethinking Australia’s Lost In The Bush Myth, says that, “there were obviously real white vanishings, but they became over-told. They became retold and fictionalized intensively. So probably for every five real vanishings there were about a hundred to 200 retellings that were fictionalized exaggerations.” Lindsay leaned into this (there are similarities in her story to a magazine article about a school trip) especially with the stopped watch trope—Lindsay claimed she could never wear a watch without it stopping for no reason. She believed geological forces, like the dormant volcanic site the girls visit, also had a similar effect. As the school party and two men also visiting picnic, two watches stop dead at midday. Miranda remarks she no longer wears hers, as she can’t bear its ticking above her heart (more shades of Poe here).
“European people bring Cartesian ideas of time when they come and colonize,” Tilley says. “They just impose them on places as though that’s what time is. But our understanding of time is actually cultural—time is what we have chosen to describe it, it’s not a thing that exists as a material reality. Indigenous peoples have their own measuring of time. So when colonizers come and impose these things, there’s always an underlying anxiety or recognition that they have put something arbitrary in place and pretended that that’s the way that things are.”
“It’s almost like a repressed knowledge. Colonizers know that they’re colonizing when they do it, but they kind of try and tell themselves that they are civilizing and being very generous. But there’s always this repressed knowledge that, ‘Actually, we just marched in here and used a legal fiction to steal the land, committed massacres…’ That knowledge is there, and that knowledge seems to come out via anxieties about space and time. Anxiety erupts in that everything we think of as normal and rational might actually come undone if we stray off the path a little bit.” Speaking of paths, the filmmakers left behind a tarmac track upon which they could dolly the camera, blatantly disregarding the heritage of the land. Hanging Rock is now despoiled by the annual Hanging Rock Picnic (late February), and the New Year’s Day Hanging Rock Horse Races.
As said before, music powerfully underpins the unsettling atmosphere layered over seemingly normal events; it draws us in, lulls us as much as the girls succumb to an unknowable force compelling them. The fugue–like piano and synth piece accompanying the girls’ ascent is a remarkable harbinger of doom. Hauntingly beautiful and sensual too, as they (with the exception of Edith) remove their thick boots and stockings to silently lay down in an unspoken tacit agreement on the hot rock. As the sun beats down on their supine form, beetles crawl over Miranda; a lizard crawls up to Marion. No creatures approach Edith or Irma. Another subtle indicator of unease is the girls enter the frame from the right, not the left (the traditional, “hero” avenue of approach). In a study conducted at Cleveland State University, participants were asked to watch a scene where the characters’ movements went from left to right, then from right to left, and then share how each video made them feel. They responded that watching the right-to-left footage made them have more negative feelings than the lateral movement from left to right. Our brains are wired to view left-to-right movement as an indicator or progress.
Returning to Miranda’s Poe quote, what is happening with the girls may be linked to the Aboriginal Dreamtime belief system. There are at least four aspects of Dreamtime: the beginning of all things; the life and influence of the ancestors; the way of life and death; and sources of power in life.
Could the girls be possessed by an ancestral Aboriginal force, channeled by the primal power of the rock, drawing them back to “the eternal”? A dream state threads through the narrative. The characters fall in and out of sleep, daydreaming in a way that suggests they may have woken up in a different reality. Are the creatures crawling beside Miranda and Marion their spirit totems? When they drowsily arise, Irma remarks upon the people below and how what they are doing is of no importance. This scene and what follows is repeated in the final chapter of the book, published posthumously to maintain the mystery (not that it really provides a conclusive solution!). Miranda smiles, “Everything begins, and ends, at exactly the right time and place.”
The girls then silently rise or ascend through gaps in the rock to their implacable fate, disappearing from view forever without a backward glance or word; as the tension builds and builds, the camera zooms in on a hysterical Edith who lets out a hair-raising scream, before stumbling back down the slope. It invokes the horror of Donald Sutherland’s character at the climax of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, possessed/replaced by an alien force. A genius touch is the heat ripple that plays across the rock face as the last of the girls passes within.
From the posthumous 18th chapter:
“It wasn’t a hole in the rocks, nor a hole in the ground. It was a hole in space. About the size of a fully rounded summer moon, coming and going. She saw it as painters and sculptors saw a hole, as a thing in itself, giving shape and significance to other shapes. As a presence, not an absence—a concrete affirmation of truth. She felt that she could go on looking at it forever in wonder and delight, from above, from below, from the other side. It was as solid as the globe, as transparent as an air bubble. An opening, easily passed through, and yet not concave at all.”
Searches conducted draw a complete blank, yet clues are strewn everywhere—where once the rocky path was smooth, now rubble lines the path. Irma turns up days later, petticoat tattered and hands scratched, yet bare feet unmarked, with no memory of her displacement. With no guide, did she fail to pass “beyond” where Hanging Rock swallowed her friends?
The young man Michael who met them briefly at the base when they picnicked has become obsessed with finding Miranda, found after disappearing off on his own to search, disheveled, fist tightly clenching a torn, grubby scrap of petticoat. He’s found Irma, but it’s not her he seeks. Even the men are simpatico to the hysterical mythology sprung up around an unexplained, bloodless horror. When Irma takes her leave of the school (becloaked in scarlet, another unsettling image), the girls in the gymnasium swarm her hysterically, demanding of her to tell them what happened to the others.
It seems the fear of the unknown, especially an “alien” force (the book refers to the rocky promontory the girls march towards as “a monolith”—shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey?), still has the ability to chill souls, no matter how much nature is tamed. Weir says the film is “a mystery without a solution and that’s what will keep it alive.”
Further invaluable information on the film can be found via the Australian National Film & Sound Archive online exhibit of the film.
Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »
A monumentally important screenplay. Screenwriter must-read: Cliff Green‘s screenplay for Picnic at Hanging Rock [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray/4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir and director of photography Russell Boyd, is available from the Criterion Collection and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.
Interview with Peter Weir.
In conversation with Andrew Ford, Peter Weir discussed the power of his pictures and their music—and, the ‘swizzle stick’ effect.
A Dream Within a Dream: The making of ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’—a feature length documentary on the making of the film featuring interviews with Peter Weir, Hal and Jim Mcelroy, Patricia Lovell, Cliff Green, Russell Boyd, Bruce Smeaton, Jose Perez, Helen Morse, John Jarratt, Christine Schuler and Anne Louise Lambert.
A rare interview with Picnic at Hanging Rock producer Pat Lovell has been discovered in an old edition of Cinema Papers magazine. Published in March-April 1976 Producing “Picnic” reveals Lovell’s comprehensive management of a film credited with the local industry’s resurgence. Her interest began in 1971 after reading Joan Lindsay’s novel and expanded to buying an option for the book, finding investors, creating a unique corporate structure to team up with the McElroy brothers, managing the film’s budget, casting crew and actors, and general control. The interview also divulges the reason behind using foreign actors for some key roles. Lovell still had to do other things outside the movie industry to stop herself from going broke despite working 18-hour days to keep the project going. —Picnic at Hanging Rock filming locations
RUSSELL BOYD, ASC, ACS
Picnic at Hanging Rock is widely considered to be the film that put Australian cinema on the world map. Shot by Russell Boyd, ASC, ACS, it was one of the movies that ushered in a new era in the country’s film industry—an era referred to alternately as the Australian New Wave, the Australian Film Renaissance and the Australian Film Revival. Boyd was a seminal figure in that movement, as was Picnic’s director, Peter Weir. —Russell Boyd, ASC, ACS: Vision Accomplished
“I Am Your Eyes”: Interviews with Russell Boyd, ACS, ASC conducted July 9–21, 2012. by John C. Tibbetts. This is a condensed version of one of the most excellent interviews we have ever come across. We highly recommend acquiring the book: Conversations with Filmmakers Series: Peter Weir: Interviews.
~ ~ ~
A magical and supernatural light stands against the natural obscurity of things.
—Charles Baudelaire
[Editor’s note: From his early years as one of the prime architects of the Australian New Wave in the 1970s, to his years working in Hollywood, capped recently by his Oscar for Master and Commander, Russell Boyd is in the front rank of today’s greatest cinematographers. He belongs to a generation of remarkable young Australian cinematographers who have gone on to global success. Boyd’s legendary collaboration with director Peter Weir has to date produced six features during a span of more than thirty-five years.]
Russell Boyd was born in 1944 to a Victorian rural family. After working as an amateur still photographer, he went to Cinesound in Melbourne as a news photographer. Moving to Sydney, he worked on television news and commercials at Channel 7. He shot his first feature film, Between Wars, in 1973, for which he won ACS Milli Award as Australian Cinematographer of the Year. A year later he teamed up with Peter Weir for Picnic at Hanging Rock (for which he won a BAFTA award for Best Cinematography)—followed by The Last Wave (1976), Gallipoli (1981), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Master and Commander (2003, for which he won an Oscar), and The Way Back (2010). He and Weir, declares Martha Ansara in her history of Australian cinematographers, The Shadowcatchers (2012), work “through a process of extensive visual and historical research and consultation to infuse [their] films’ closely detailed images with something subtle, something seemingly more than meets the eye.” His American films include titles as various as the two Crocodile Dundee entries, Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies (1983), Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs. Soffel (1984), and two films for Ron Shelton, White Men Can’t Jump (1991) and Tin Cup (1995).
Mr. Boyd has been a member of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) since 1975 and member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) since 2004. In 1988 he became the first of only two cinematographers to be recognized by the Australian Film Institute’s Raymond Longford Award, which is given to “unwavering commitment over many years to excellence in the film and television industries.” He was inaugurated into the ACS Hall of Fame in 1998.
I met and talked with Russell Boyd at his Newport home on three occasions during my stay in Sydney, July 9–21, 2012. He is the most congenial of spirits and exerts a rugged health and blunt, down-to-earth amiability. Our first meeting transpired in an impromptu fashion on July 16, 2012, when we were joined by Peter Weir. When I realized that their respective work schedules had kept them apart for many months, I suggested they get together for a chat. They welcomed the opportunity to catch up on things and share some memories with me.
I. Interview with Russell Boyd and Peter Weir
Picture the scene: We are in a park near Newport, sitting on a picnic bench in the hot, greening afternoon. Bird calls stitch the air all around us, and somewhere in the distance a groundskeeper is trimming bushes. Boyd’s and Weir’s greetings stumble over each other. Indeed—
John C. Tibbetts: [breaking into the preliminaries]—You guys are finishing each other’s sentences!
Peter Weir: You must have been surprised, John, when you asked, do we see each other often? Not really; but even after a long gap between films we can just pick things up.
Tibbetts: But you’re not talking about films at all—
Russell Boyd: Well… we’re talking about gardens, actually!
Weir: Yeah, Russ is the real thing, you know, a real gardener!
Boyd: His wife is, too!
Weir: I just labor in the garden, but I love it. [turns to Boyd] Maybe we should talk about making films about gardening! [laughs]
Tibbetts: All right, let’s do that—but about your real films, at least. Russell, when did you first meet Peter?
Boyd: He was shooting The Cars That Ate Paris. My friend, Michael Thornhill, who had directed my first feature, Between Wars, and I drove out to observe Peter’s night shoot. The second time I met Pete was in a car on the way to the airport to scout locations for Picnic at Hanging Rock. Believe it or not, there had been no serious conversations or interviews before that.
Weir: One of the producers, Hal McElroy, had recommended him.
Tibbetts: What were some of your concerns about taking on the project?
Weir: [turns to Boyd] The light. The first thing I began to notice about your work was how you handled light, and moody night lighting, headlights flaring in the lens, torchlight in a cave, neon light flashing. But this?—[gestures around him]. But how do you shoot in this, in the light of midday, with hard top light? It’s great at dawn and great at dusk; but how do you shoot throughout the day? But I had noticed Russ had a terrific look in his day scenes and landscapes.
Boyd: [nods] Australian light is quite harsh. We have a much smaller population and therefore not so much pollution in the air. The bigger cities in the U.S. and Europe and India have a lot more pollution, which has the wonderful effect of softening the light. We have had to learn how to manipulate this harsh light with what tools we have, like filters and lots of “fill” light to soften contrasts; things like that. To work in the middle of day with that harsh, overhead sun takes real skill. And we had only five weeks—[turns to Weir] Was it really five weeks?
Weir: Maybe six.
Boyd: I can’t believe how we got through it in that time! And we had limited access to equipment and paraphernalia—not just because it was difficult to get up there on the Rock, but because there wasn’t that much equipment to work with in Australia at that time.
Weir: Sometimes we had only an hour or so each day for some scenes—
Boyd: —Around the noon hour. Like the picnic. Remember? It took us a week—
Weir: You insisted on that! I remember that parachute silk you put above them—
Boyd: —To soften the light, yep.
Tibbetts: That reminds me of that magical opening shot of the Rock coming out of the fog. It’s got to be one of the greatest rack-focuses in the history of the movies. Who wants to talk about that? [Weir nods toward Boyd]
Boyd: We were all in the car driving to the set one morning, and as we came over the hill, we got our first view of the Rock that day. It was all shrouded in fog. It was pretty sinister. So we decided to shoot that effect right away. We flagged down the camera truck behind us and started rolling. Actually, John, it’s not a rack-focus. It’s a “locked-off” shot used twice—one with the fog covering the bottom of the rock; the other after the fog had lifted.
Weir: I remember we had to hurry about it. I don’t think a film like this would be made today, either because of the subject matter or because it was of its time.
Tibbetts: When did you guys first realize you had something pretty special with this film?
Weir: Well, the dailies were pretty promising. I always wanted to project dailies in as much of a theater situation as possible. Even on location. The phrase I use in the cutting room is, if the fates are kind, “it’s working”; which has nothing to do with the expected public reaction, but with the way you intended it. And it’s a great relief when that happens… sometimes at the eleventh hour. Everything was so new, then. I was in Adelaide when it opened at a house with four cinema screens. I think it was one of the first theaters in the world to have been rebuilt for multiple screens. I think Godfather Part Two was also playing there. To see the big marquee and people hurrying in… that was a thrill.
Tibbetts: Is it possible to overestimate now the importance of Hanging Rock had in the international recognition of Australian films?
Weir: Yes, it is. I think it meant a great deal here; but it was not successful in America, and it took a long time to sell. In fact, my next film, The Last Wave, was sold first. But a mystery story without a solution—which was the challenge in making it—and to create a mood where the audience didn’t want a solution—
Boyd: And viewers knew straight away there was no solution!
Weir: But the Americans thought that was a problem in distributing the film. There’s a story that a distributor threw his coffee cup at the screen and said, “There’s no goddam solution.” But it found a home on college campuses.
Tibbetts: What a contrast the visual “look” of your next film was!
Boyd: In The Last Wave, we didn’t refer in any way to how we shot Picnic in any way; the story was so different. You know, Directors of Photography often get typecast, although we like to turn our hands to different subject matter; and so this was a different road to go down. And in prep, we did talk a lot about the “look” of the film—
Weir: The rain was particularly interesting to talk about. I love to watch rain on the screen.
Boyd: But not in the theater!
Weir: [laughs] So I’d talk to Russ about how we can get this or that effect. How to get a harder edge.
Boyd: And we had John Seale again as the Camera Operator—
Weir: Johnny was the third member of the team.
Tibbetts: Time is short to have you two guys together, so let’s skip ahead to your recent films together. Russell, after twenty years, Peter comes to you about Master and Commander. He tells you: “We’re going to climb to the top of sailing ships and we’re going to the Galapagos Islands”—and you must have said, “Are you talking to me???”
Weir: [confiding] Russ is a sailor, you know.
Boyd: Remember, Pete, by chance we were together on a plane to L.A. to work on different projects. We were sitting at the front—
Weir: —the only passengers—
Boyd: —and you told me whole story of Master and Commander; and I thought, Gee, I’d love to shoot that movie! [turns to Weir] And then you called me at my hotel that night and said you were sending around the script—
Weir: —And then we met at a Thai restaurant—
Boyd: —I remember it clearly—
Weir: But it was actually on the plane that the whole thing got started. And it was within “X” number of weeks that we found ourselves on the New Endeavor! And we had to get up to the top of those shrouds! And using the Panavision camera with anamorphic lenses. It was a new thing when I had first used it on The Cars That Ate Paris. But I burnt my fingers on that one. But it was Russell who encouraged me to look at it for The Year of Living Dangerously. He thought it was the best format for that picture. He loved composing for that format—2.35 to 1 screen ratio—
Boyd: —A painterly frame—
Weir: —And he eased me into it; and the screen was alive with information. And we used it on Master and Commander.
Tibbetts: In 1930 Sergei Eisenstein proposed that a square frame was the best aspect ratio. Would you consider shooting that way?
Weir: —In black-and-white, yes. Put it another way. I think it makes sense in controlling the elements in the frame. I prefer to look through the viewfinder—
Boyd: [turning to Weir]—Unlike some other directors I’ve worked with in the last decade!
Weir: —Because I grew up with that system. And because I direct from the side of the camera.
Boyd: Right. One of the only directors I’ve ever worked with who actually stands beside the camera.
Weir: [turns to Boyd] Is that right?
Boyd: Most use the digital monitor. Now we’ve got video cameras in the film camera that relay back to the director’s monitor.
Weir: You’re sitting away from the set, your head buried in the monitor, calling out instructions either verbally or through the mic to the camera about the framing. But you’re composing for a theater space; but here you are with your head this big in front of the tiny screen, so you tend to compose too close or too wide. But when you stand back beside the camera, you’ve got basically a beautiful wider view of the whole scene, and you tend to compose better with the naked eye. But it was different in Master and Commander, because I couldn’t get in those tiny spaces. We didn’t want to build extra room for those cramped ship interiors.
Boyd: The beams would clout your head! [turns to Weir] And there are also the nuances of the performance itself. You can’t tell that when you’re so far away.
Weir: But, you know, I talk about the “Hindenberg Balloon Theory.” No one ever talks about what the picture format was for the moments when the Hindenberg goes down in flames. And think of the Zapruder film. Both tragedies. It’s the power of the moment, of the film, that takes over.
[The conversation breaks off for a moment. The sounds of a leaf blower in the distance are growing louder. Distracted, Weir shouts to the workman, “Thank you! That’ll be fine! We’re trying to shoot a film here!” He pulls a finger across his throat. Boyd is laughing. Weir points to me and calls out again in mock exasperation, “This gentleman has come out here all the way from America!” I can’t help but note that off the set, neither of these two master filmmakers have any control over the world at all.]
[Both are laughing.]
Tibbetts: Will we see you two sometime soon in another project together?
Weir: We’d like to… but I work so infrequently. The clock is against us, somewhat. But I do know with Russ that we can work for those ideas that are just out of our reach. I may be the leader of the expedition, but I can say to him, “Help me to reach it!” [reaches above his head] If you can just touch it, that’s what you’re after. And that’s what Russ can do. [Turns to Boyd] To have worked with each other… You and I were a good match.
II. Later Interviews with Russell Boyd
Two days later Russell Boyd has invited me to his weekend home in Newport, forty-five minutes north of Sydney for the first of his solo interviews. His two grown sons and their families frequently come up here on weekends. Outside the window in the sparkling sunlight lies the Pitt Water Sound, with dozens of white sails bobbing in the water. Inside, we are sitting in the kitchen before a large table piled high with files and photo albums. His entire career lies before us, inviting his comments as he sifts through the papers. Although we talked about his career in America, presented here are those remarks pertaining specifically to his work with Peter Weir. At this moment Russell has just returned from shooting a television commercial.
John C. Tibbetts: Do you shoot a lot of commercials these days?
Russell Boyd: Mostly, nowadays. As you know, I’ve been on the road for forty years making films, away for five to seven months at a time. It’s a long, long time to be away from family and friends. It’s time to spend more time at home. I’m sixty-eight years old now, so shooting television commercials, which I enjoy anyway, keeps me at home.
Tibbetts: And while we talk, looking around, I see some paintings—
Boyd: —That’s a painting by an artist by the name of Adrian Lockhart and it’s called “The Surfer.” I know him, and he surfs nearly every day of his life. He’s quite a successful artist who has exhibitions several times a year. But the reason I love that painting is the way it evokes the water. [He turns back to me.] As you can see, my place is very sparsely decorated, because it’s mainly a weekend place. I just love it because of its simplicity and the wonderful view. Summertime is quite hot here. The sun sets out to the west, and at about seven o’clock in the evening, when the sun’s just about to set, it comes pouring in here. We’ve got shutters that we drag across to get away from the heat a little bit.
Tibbetts: Now what’s the best time to be out on your boat?
Boyd: Ahh, anytime really. Or around lunchtime when the wind gets up a little bit. It’s a twenty-two-foot “trailer sailer,” as we call it. It has a keel that drops. You wind the keel down so you can actually be birthed in quite shallow water. My wife named it actually, but I’ve never had it painted on the side. She named it “Tickle Pink” [laughs], because the hull is a pink, or a magenta color, which was by design. I had the boat made. It’s a small yacht, a very small yacht. I don’t sail nearly as much as I would like to. Sometimes the garden takes preference to boating.
Directors of Photography vs Camera Operators
Tibbetts: Your credits list you as a Director of Photography. How is that different from a Camera Operator?
Boyd: We tend to work in the English, or the American system here. In the English system the film director works very closely with the Camera Operator, which is how Peter likes it. The Camera Operator is the one who during a take will either turn the wheels on the gear head or operate the pan handle. He will set up the camera and help choose angles and lenses that may be specific to that story or specific to that scene. He and the director and the Director of Photography will have a three-way conversation about how the scene is choreographed for the camera. So the Camera Operator’s role is incredibly important; he can be a major contributor to the movie. The Director of Photography’s main role really, apart from working on camera angles, the film stocks, et cetera, is mainly in the lighting. Lighting is a whole different department. As Director of Photography, I work with my gaffer, who’s a senior electrician, on how we should light a scene after we see a rehearsal.
Tibbetts: In Bristol once, I interviewed David Watkin, a British cinematographer. He almost boasted about the fact he never looks through the camera.
Boyd: Yeah. I’ve heard that about David. I understand [laughs]—here’s my telling tales out of school—I understand that once he’d lit a scene, he’d sit down with a newspaper for the rest of the take. Look, it’s “horses for courses,” the way I see it. I like to adapt to whatever way a director wants to work. Either Peter might bypass me to deal much more directly with the Operator, or he might bypass the Operator to go through me. I like to play it either way. I don’t let my ego get in the way. I don’t have much of an ego, anyway. In the States, Directors of Photography are much more attached to the director. Directors who have come up through the States don’t tend to view Operators in the same way as we do. There’s a subtle difference. For the films I made in the Hollywood system, I’ve always collaborated strongly with the Operator anyway. And directors, I think, respond to that as well. But if the director just wants to deal with me, that’s fine too. Take Ron Shelton, for example, who I’ve made a few films with—he likes to work with his DP probably more than the Operator. Like I say, it’s “horses for courses.”
Tibbetts: It seems like we don’t know enough about what you guys do on a film. You don’t see many interviews with cinematographers.
Boyd: I think when we do talk we like to pass on information that might be useful to other cinematographers. We don’t talk to pat ourselves on the back. I certainly don’t. There’s a lot of sharing of knowledge between cinematographers, or Directors of Photography in the American Society of Cinematographers and the Australian Cinematographers Society, which is a much smaller organization. At least once a month, they’ll have a technical night where somebody will bring some equipment in and explain it to all the younger guys or girls or budding cinematographers. Yes, it’s a field of endeavor that’s unusual, and it’s evolving rapidly now because of the digital explosion. One thing I do know, which strikes me as kinda funny whenever I go to the US to work—is that I get an “O-1 Visa,” which is sort of a media or entertainment business visa.
Tibbetts: There is such a thing?
Boyd: It’s so I can work legally in the States. When you hit Los Angeles airport, often the immigration are pretty grumpy. So you walk up and hand them your passport and they look at your visa and say, “What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m working on a film.” “Oh, what film?” “And who’s in it?” “Mel Gibson.” “Oh, Mel Gibson!” And they go nuts. It’s so much a part of American culture, the movies. The whole movie business is very much in the forefront of the American psyche, I think.
Tibbetts: All right, it’s the 18th of July 2012, and we’re back again at your lakeside cottage. Shall we call it your “weekend estate?”
Boyd: I guess you could call it that!
Tibbetts: A few days ago you and Peter talked briefly with me about coming together for your first film, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Let’s get into that some more. What did you know about Peter Weir at that point?
Boyd: I didn’t know much about Peter. I probably had seen Homesdale. And I certainly knew that he was emerging as one of the fine talents in the Australian film industry. It was during that time when so many young directors were coming from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School [AFRTS], like Phil Noyce, Graham Shirley, John Papadopoulos, Gillian Armstrong, and others. They were all making short films at the time. Michael Thornhill was the first director to give me a feature film to shoot. He wasn’t part of that nucleus of people, but he was definitely of that generation, and he knew them all, too. Here was this mix of young twenty-five-year-olds attempting to make films. It was a great time.
Tibbetts: For the cinematographers, too, I would think.
Boyd: Yep. The cinematographers were very lucky, because the directors would make four or five films in Australia, more than likely with the same Director of Photography. So when they later went to Hollywood, as a bit of a security blanket, they took us as well. So we were able to get the proper visas and work in the States. We were incredibly lucky. I was very aware that we were going about raising the consciousness of Australian culture. I don’t why, exactly, but I felt it was an important thing to do.
Tibbetts: And so was shooting Picnic at Hanging Rock!
Boyd: Michael and I went up to Bathurst, which is in the Blue Mountains, several hours from here, where they were shooting The Cars That Ate Paris. Peter was coming back to Sydney for the weekend, so he lent us his room in the motel. So we sort of met, passed like ships in the night. The very next time I met Peter was, I think, when we headed off to Hanging Rock to do location scouts. And we talked, you know, non-stop about the film.
Tibbetts: But it sounds so casual, almost.
Boyd: We in those days didn’t have a rigorous way of going about things. Films were almost made by the seat of our pants, to a great degree; whereas, in the States and nowadays here, it’s a much more structured way of going about things.
Tibbetts: So at that time, how would you describe yourself as a young artist? Cocky and determined or insecure and ambitious?
Boyd: Ambitious, no. Insecure, yes. Not cocky. It takes quite a while to master the art and craft of cinematography. As you can understand, it’s quite technical as well as needing visual imagination. The two separate parts of the craft take a while to harness. And as I said before, even on Picnic I was scared shitless on what was going to come back the next night from the lab. ’Cause I didn’t know near as much as I do nowadays. Nowadays, I feel much more confident, obviously. I’ve always felt that getting that technical thing behind you, that’s when you can really start being creative.
Tibbetts: But you were a known commodity by that time.
Boyd: In the commercial world, yes. And also in low-budget, weekend films, what you might call student films now. I made a few of them with Michael Thornhill. You know, as you say, I was in the right place at the right time. I was lucky. I actually did something on Cars, by the way—shots of one of the wrecked cars. I was second or third camera. Probably uncredited, I’m sure.
Tibbetts: I guess in those days a film like that said a lot about the social protest movement going on about Vietnam?
Boyd: Yep. It was Vietnam and there was a lot of social unrest. But it’s more important that Peter loves to get hold of a story that really interests him, whether it’s set in the year 1500 or in the future.
Tibbetts: Now, I assume at some point you read Joan Lindsay’s book?
Boyd: No. I’ve never read the book. I tend to steer clear of reading a book, if I already have the script, the screenplay, in front of me.
Tibbetts: Of what I’ve seen of the screenplay, there’s nothing in it that indicates visual effects, like slow motion, or any special kind of lighting set-up.
Boyd: That’s something that a filmmaker like Peter would add.
Tibbetts: So, was that the first time you had ever seen Hanging Rock?
Boyd: It was. It was. And you’ve just been there yourself, haven’t you? The Rock really doesn’t look as treacherous or threatening as we made it look in the film. We stumbled around the Rock for a couple of days, choosing little locations where we might shoot certain scenes. We found that flat, table-like area, for example, where we could shoot the girls lying down to sleep.
Tibbetts: Did you have a still camera with you as a kind of notebook, to keep track of the locations?
Boyd: I’m sure I did. I don’t have any of those photos anymore, though.
Tibbetts: There’s a Visitors Center there, now. And in certain places there are steps cut into the rock to help climbers.
Boyd: There certainly was not a visitor’s center then! We had to trudge up to the top of the Rock on dirt paths. And driving there was just on a dirt road. I could see right away it was going to be very difficult to get our equipment up there.
Tibbetts: This is a young man’s game. It must have been tough for you guys charging around the Rock with heavy equipment.
Boyd: Absolutely. I think I was twenty-nine when we made Picnic. Peter’s just a couple months younger than I am. So he would have been twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine. So, we were youngsters really. Not so much in age but in terms of experience, with a lot more experience ahead of us! I guess you could say we were “gung ho!”—but really, we were just given a job to do to the best of our ability. Fortunately, we pulled it off. We set up on a Sunday and started shooting on a Monday. We had a number of lights we wanted to take up to the Rock. There was no power up there, of course, so we had to helicopter in a few small generators, one to the top of the Rock and one halfway down. They were very difficult to manhandle, quite heavy. And the helicopter dropped one of them that Sunday, so the gaffer came to me and said, “We’ve only got one generator up there.” Oh no, I thought, oh god! That’s when I decided I had to use more bounce light.
“Into the Light of Things”
Tibbetts: Now, when you say “bounce light,” are you talking about big reflectors?
Boyd: I’m talking about big sheets, John, about ten feet by ten feet, or twelve feet by twelve feet. Often, it was a flat piece of polystyrene. The sort of thing you make coolers out of. They were on metal frames. But also, I often used a hand-held piece of polystyrene, about three feet by three feet, to get in close.
Tibbetts: All the time I was climbing around, I was thinking, “How in the world did you guys find enough space for the cameras and for people holding bounces?”
Boyd: First, we had just one camera. In those days, you only ever shot with one camera, ’cause you could only afford one. What happens is as you go closer in on an actor, you have to bring your light in closer. So on a lot of those close-ups I used only a hand-held piece of polystyrene. I would stand right next to camera and just direct the reflection of the bounce light onto the actors faces. It’s a very flattering light and a very soft effect. A small light source is like the sun from millions of miles away.
Tibbetts: And gauze over the lens, sometimes?
Boyd: Yes, always. Entirely on Picnic I had gauze over the lens as a diffusion. I used gauze over the front part of the lens, rather than the back. Even up to the Sunday before we began shooting, I was cutting cardboard cutouts of the diameter of the lens and attaching what was like a mosquito cloth. We did very shallow depth of field, otherwise you could see the outline of the net in the shot. I had to open the lens up as much as possible. And I was constantly adding neutral density filters.
Tibbetts: Was John Seale a part of all this?
Boyd: Well, he had to be as operator. Of course he went with it.
Tibbetts: Gosh, the kind of impressionistic “look” of that picture created a sensation on the international scene.
Boyd: Well, you know, that eventually led to my career in America, to be honest.
Motion Control
Tibbetts: The slow motion sequences… is slow motion something that can be done in post? Or do you have to shoot it in slow motion in the first place?
Boyd: You mean, like when the girls cross the stream?
Tibbetts: Sure, that and so many other moments.
Boyd: Although we normally shoot at twenty-four frames per second, we can easily switch to forty-eight or fifty or seventy-five.
Tibbetts: Can you switch speeds during the take?
Boyd: Nowadays you can, but what it does is it affects the exposure, so you have to have a link between the aperture of the lens and the speed you’re shooting at. It’s called “ramping.” I did a lot of it much later on White Men Can’t Jump. That’d start at twenty-four frames and we’d ramp it up to fifty or a hundred.
Tibbetts: But you couldn’t do that with Picnic?
Boyd: No, but we could set it before the shot. Peter would say, “Let’s shoot at forty-eight frames,” which is exactly double. So we can dial it into the camera to shoot at forty-eight frames. But don’t forget, we didn’t have a lot of time. Peter’s very efficient. If he’s got a performance he wants in take two, or in take one, sometimes, he’ll move on. So, he’s not a director who does multiple takes and experiments a lot. I think the schedule was just six weeks for that movie.
Tibbetts: Now, if you were shooting that film today, with all of the ultra-modern equipment, and crew and everything else, could you have done as good a job as you did then?
Boyd: I doubt it. I don’t think I would approach it any differently today. We would have equipment that was light and more mobile, I probably would have had more electric light up on the Rock, because the generators are smaller and more powerful. But, you know, one of the great things about Picnic was that everything was fairly raw about it, if you know what I mean. The amount of equipment we had, the money we had to spend on it, the time we had to do it in. And don’t forget, it wasn’t all shot at Hanging Rock. Appleyard College wasn’t in Victoria, but in South Australia, in Adelaide. And that was a major part of the film. The school actually was Martindale Hall. It still exists.
Tibbetts: Did you have to use different equipment for the school scenes?
Boyd: You see, when we shot Picnic, Panavision hadn’t long been in use before that. Their main production camera was quite a big, heavy sort of rehash of a Mitchell camera, which was used in the thirties, forties and fifties. The Panavision camera was too heavy to lug around up and down the Rock. So, we used the latest Arriflex camera, which was a BL, a sound camera, a little bit noisy in those days, but much lighter and more user-friendly. When we went to shoot at Adelaide, we were able to use the Panavision camera. All the interiors of the school were shot at Martindale Hall. And the exteriors, too. So when the girls came back from the Rock, it might have been three weeks later that we did the scenes where the horse and the cart came back. Getting back to your question, I would hate to think that if we were to make that film now that I would treat it any differently. I certainly would have treated the visuals the same and hopefully we would have had John Seale there and Peter there as well, obviously. Yeah, I don’t think it will ever get remade though. I hope not.
Cast Calls
Tibbetts: Now, a study in contrast is Anne Lambert as Miranda and Rachel Roberts as Miss Appleyard. You must have been working closely with them.
Boyd: Of course.
Tibbetts: So, by contrast, what did Lambert know about the vision you were creating? Did you tell her you wanted some sort of angelic “look”?
Boyd: When Peter cast her, he would have made that very clear to her.
Tibbetts: But did you tell her how you were going to light her?
Boyd: Pretty much. Funnily enough, I had actually worked with Anne Lambert on a television commercial before that. Probably a year or so before that. Then, she was fourteen or fifteen. And she was absolutely beautiful. She still is a beautiful person, actually. But she was absolutely gorgeous and the commercial that she was in was for a soft drink. And she was known as “Fancy Nancy” [laughs] in that commercial. So what I’m getting at, is she had some experience as either a model or a budding young actress; so she didn’t come to Picnic entirely without experience. She knew some of the ropes for sure.
Tibbetts: And you had Rachel Roberts, a real veteran.
Boyd: Absolutely. She was married to a playwright [Alan Dobie]. She was a strong person on the set. You know, actors sometimes play their roles off screen. They like to stay in character. I’m not saying that she was staying in character, exactly, but she always had that persona about her as the school headmistress. No question of it. And we also had the gorgeous Helen Morse as the French teacher, who was a very well known theatre actor.
Tibbetts: Have you had occasion to work with or run into Anne Lambert after this?
Boyd: No, but I’ve seen her. One evening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales there was a twenty-fifth retrospective of Picnic. So it must have been around the year 2000. Anne was there and Peter went and made a speech. The screenwriter was there, the producers were there, quite a few of the other performers as well. It was a good night, actually.
Tibbetts: You would hope an iconic performance like that would not turn out to be some kind of a curse for her, limiting her in other roles. I know she played other parts that were a lot different.
Boyd: She probably may never have been in the sure hands of a director like Peter again, though. I think she did a reasonable amount of television after that, and I think she went to London to make a career there. But around here she disappeared for quite a while.
Tibbetts: Which is appropriate!
Boyd: Yeah, yeah.
Tibbetts: She must get those jokes all the time. [laughs]
Sounds of Music
Tibbetts: How does the cast react to Peter carrying around a big boom box on the set?
Boyd: On all the films I’ve ever made with Peter, he’s done that. Peter would play music over the first few takes so the sound recorders wouldn’t get anything usable; but he’d just play it while the actors are performing. Then he’d switch it off and do another take.
Tibbetts: You would hope that your actors would not be tone deaf! Otherwise they might wonder what this guy’s doing, charging around with a boom box [both laugh]. It could be a joke, easily.
Boyd: I know, but I think people take Peter too seriously for that. Actors, particularly. To get to work with Peter would be the high moment of your career as an actor, I would think.
Tibbetts: So… when did you guys all begin to realize what you had?
Boyd: Pretty early, I think. Once the film started coming back from the lab here in Sydney. It was two days before we saw what we’d just shot. At night we’d set up a projector and see what is known as the work print. They’d print all of the rushes, all of the negatives we shot and we’d sit and watch it. Pretty early on we realized there was something special about the locations, about the girls, obviously about Peter’s direction.
Tibbetts: And you didn’t even know about the pan-pipe music yet.
Boyd: No, not at all. Not until the film was in postproduction. But I must say this: I’m often asked by film schools to talk to students or whatever about certain films that I’ve worked on, often with Peter. And every time I see Picnic, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that it was Peter’s second major film, really. There’s subtle things in that film that I still see all these years later that I didn’t realize were going on in front of the camera. It’s extraordinary to me. It often happens, actually. I’m talking about the way he constructed scenes as well. And the way he manipulated them in the editing to get the story across, to push the story on, if you know what I mean. Peter liked to shoot fewer takes but lots of alternatives. He’d probably change angles after a couple of takes rather than, like some directors who will sit there on the same angle for fifteen takes.
Tibbetts: Is it true that you shot another ending?
Boyd: Yes, we did. We must have done it in principle photography, where we had make-up and hair and all the departments still together. Yes, we shot an alternative ending where Mrs. Appleyard decides to go up to the Rock to find out exactly where the girls disappeared. (You can still find photos of Mrs. Appleyard with her umbrella setting out for the Rock.) And one of the scenes we shot was her body being carried back down on a stretcher. Peter just decided not to use it.
Tibbetts: Are you glad?
Boyd: It would have made no difference to me. I thought the story was well told the way he did tell it in the final cut.
Tibbetts: Did Picnic have an immediate impact on your career?
Boyd: Without slapping myself on the back, I did become sort of “the first cab off of the rank.” Do you know that expression? It means you take the first cab that’s on the cab rank. I think the younger directors considered me that way; first choice to shoot their films. Peter elevated my career. It gave me the reputation of being able to put something on the screen.
Snapshots
[During our last interview, Russell Boyd leafs through the pages of a splendidly illustrated limited edition of the novel and script of Picnic at Hanging Rock, published in 2002 by the Macedon Ranges Shire Council. The photographs bear ample testimony to the luminous beauty of the film. Immediately catching his eye is the famous opening shot of the fog-shrouded Rock.]
Tibbetts: You and Peter talked about that shot earlier with me. Would you elaborate on that now?
Boyd: Okay. We were driving to the set and as we turned the corner and got our first glimpse of Hanging Rock, Peter said, “Ah, look at it, it looks absolutely fantastic!” It was shrouded in cloud and the Rock was menacing but beautiful. And I think it might have been a bit backlit. The camera truck was behind us by ten minutes or so. So he said, “Stop, stop, stop, stop! We must shoot this!” We didn’t have the cameras with us, so we waited until the camera truck caught up with us. We flagged it down and grabbed the equipment out of the back of the truck and shot the Rock in that early morning light.
[Boyd turns to another image, the famous “picnic” with the girls and the other characters disported around the grassy area in the soft, golden light. It has all the nuance of a Renoir outing.]
This shot here is nearly halfway up the Rock, actually. When we first scouted the scene, I had known Peter for only about two days! We eventually shot a big long pan around the area, which also ends the movie as well. When we chose the location, I said, “I think we can only shoot for an hour a day here, when the light’s just perfect.” You see, in the morning, the area was too shadowy from the trees. By late morning, it was perfect, with lots of overhead light. After an hour, it was completely in shadow again because the sun had moved further around. I asked if there was any chance that we could come back every day and continue, one shot at time or two shots at a time? I’m sure they thought I was mad. Actually, I was terrified. As I told Peter the other day, I was terrified I was going to get fired off of the movie then and there! But eventually the producers agreed, Hal and Jim McElroy and Pat Lovell. And the assistant director, Mark Egerton. Mark was a keen photographer and understood exactly what I was talking about. He said, “I think I can make it work.” So he would schedule time just before lunch each day for that five or six days; and we’d go and shoot one or two more shots of that scene.
Tibbetts: And the world is forever grateful!
Boyd: Well, I’m forever grateful that I didn’t get fired! [both laugh] And if I had, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now talking to you. [looks again at the photo, pausing, remembering…] Here’s the lovely hill and moss. That’s the backlight on the girls and parasols. See that light on Helen’s [Morse] face? I’m sure, that was bounced light from in front of her. It’s just beautiful, soft, molded, and rounded. And it falls off nicely into shadow.
Tibbetts: It’s hard for us to imagine looking at a shot like that somewhere back behind it all are a camera, crew, and people holding up reflectors. [laughs]
Boyd: It’s difficult to tell from the photograph but obviously some of the girls with their white parasols are in shadow, but these girls [points to a detail in the photograph] have backlight on them. The sun obviously was just about to go behind this big rock. We chose to shoot this scene at the same time of day just before lunch. But you can only work with what you’ve got. I guess that’s where the skill comes in; you don’t learn that in school.
Tibbetts: Ultimately you are subject to the whims of the sun, aren’t you? I mean, you can only control so much.
Boyd: Exactly, you are left in the lap of the gods, totally.
Tibbetts: Did the white gowns and the tops of the parasols serve as reflectors?
Boyd: To a degree, yeah. Although usually, we don’t use bright white in costumes. Normally, we dye it down so it doesn’t jump out so much; so it’s not quite as bright.
Tibbetts: And I guess it was hot at those times… and lots of flies?
Boyd: Yep. But you don’t see the flies. They stayed down by Catering!
[Russell Boyd turns the pages and gazes at a beautiful color photo of Miranda’s last moments on the Rock before her disappearance. Her head is slightly turned, her right arm is upraised in a tentative gesture—A greeting? A farewell? The shallow-depth image keeps her in focus, surrounded by a foreground and background of a blurred abundance of lush green foliage. A wisp of golden hair falls across her face.]
Ahh, so beautiful… Gee, I haven’t looked through this book for a long, long time. I discovered it in an old bookstore not far from home, about ten or fifteen years ago. I grabbed a copy of it. I don’t know how far up the rock you got, you probably passed that without realizing that’s where Anne—Miranda—disappeared through the cleft in the rock.
Tibbetts: I found so many areas where there are little clefts in the rocks.
Boyd: Yeah, the Rock is littered with them. I’m not sure I could even find that exact spot anymore. [turns the page] That’s the girl, Edith, frightened, running down the Rock. I remember the screaming sounds on the soundtrack. That’s looking down from a helicopter shot. I remember, Peter and I went up and had only a half an hour to get that shot. He specifically wanted that angle.
PETER WEIR: DAVID LEAN LECTURE
A director of distinction and finesse, Peter Weir discusses his filmmaking style and offers advice to first time directors. Event recorded on 6 December 2010.
“There’s some hook in it that’s drawn you in, a scene or a moment that resonated profoundly. That particular moment is generally impenetrable and mysterious, and it becomes critically important. I remember what it was in Fearless. There are two men flying on a plane that’s in trouble, that’s going to go down, and one of them, the Jeff Bridges character, says to his partner, ‘I’m going to go forward and sit with that kid up there.’ And then the script says, ‘He moves down the aisle and sits beside the boy.’ It’s maybe an eighth of a page. That was the line that struck me—not what he says to his partner, not even his sitting down with the boy. Just his moving through the aircraft. The moment’s gone now, because I actually thought it through intellectually and photographed it. When we came to schedule it, I told the AD I wanted half a day to shoot it, which I think was a bit of a surprise. It’s always hard to speak about what interested you in a piece, because it’s often something unknowable. It’s the nonintellectual, the unconscious that’s most important to me.” —Peter Weir
Peter Weir answers questions after delivering the 2010 David Lean Lecture at BAFTA.
PETER WEIR: BITS & PIECES
“Peter Weir is an international filmmaker with universal appeal whose films have spanned six continents with their emotional sweep and haunting beauty. As part of the Australian New Wave that rose up in the 1970’s, Weir rose to international fame by making wonderfully hypnotic films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave. Like his fellow Aussie George Miller, he eventually helped establish Mel Gibson as an international star with his projects Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously. Weir came to Hollywood and made films such as Witness and Dead Poets Society, which are the two films he’s most known for in the States. Unlike many filmmakers of his generation, he has never been a ‘flashy’ director who calls attention to his films with brash editing and clever camera tricks, and has frequently defended his simple directorial style that allows viewers to become absorbed in the story and not the filmmaker. My montage may call attention to his wonderful voice in a way his films never do. But I think it’s only fitting to heap praise to an underrated master of cinema who deserves to be lauded. Here is my tribute.” —Alejandro Villarreal
PETER WEIR’S ADVICE TO BEGINNING DIRECTORS
“There’s a curious Polish influence on this film. There’s a director who has just struck me and inspired me, Krzysztof Kieślowski. I saw The Decalogue on TV in Australia and The Double Life of Veronique. I found myself playing various Polish composers on the set, as I do, and at dailies. Most noticeably, Henryk Górecki.” —Peter Weir
Jeff Bridges honors Peter Weir at the 13th Governors Awards.
Peter Weir receives an Honorary Oscar Award at the 13th Governors Awards.
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Photographed by David Kynoch © British Empire Films Australia, The South Australian Film Corporation, The Australian Film Commission, McElroy & McElroy, Picnic Productions Pty. Ltd., Archive News Corp. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.
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