Aaron Wilson Canopy

Aaron Wilson Canopy

Cast: Khan Chittenden, Mo Tzu-Yi
Director: Aaron Wilson
Genre: Survival Drama
Running Time: 84 minutes

Synopsis: Wartime, 1942. Singapore. An Australian fighter pilot shot down in combat awakens suspended in the treetops. As night devours day, he must navigate through dangerous jungle in search of sanctuary. Transcending language and culture, Canopy is a cinematic tour de force exploring the collision of war, nature and its impact on humanity. Aaron Wilson's thrilling, breathtaking survival drama marks the debut of an exciting new voice in Australian cinema.

Canopy
Release Date: April 24th, 2014

Directors Statement

When you are adrift, cut loose by powerful forces, you are alienated from those around you. Even your environment feels strange.

Canopy explores the personal wartime experiences of one Australian soldier in the hours after crashing out of the safety of his plane over Singapore during the Japanese invasion of February 1942. The film focuses on the psychological effects of the sudden change in circumstance, injury, disorientation, and fear on the individual's psyche.

Canopy is not an epic battle film inspired from the history documents. It is one man's journey, told from a collection of true stories. Stories that I heard growing up in a small town in rural Australia about far away lands. Moments in time were vividly and fiercely recalled, embedded in fear and comforted only by the friendship of the men that lived it with them.

The Singapore jungle has a large part to do with this experience. It is not just a backdrop for Jim's journey; it is a powerful force in itself that Jim soon comes to feel and understand. It's not just an invading Japanese force that Jim has to negotiate, but also the foreign natural world that has consumed him. Nature offers protection but can also be devastatingly callous.

In a broader sense, the story explores Australia's place in the Asia-Pacific region. Singapore and Australia share a common history forged through empire and war. The common Singaporean/Australian experience is at the very heart of my film, the story and the production.

The film's issues are timeless, commenting on humanity's constant battle with war and nature. Canopy is a very personal story about; being out of your depth; in a world that is both foreign and life-changing. War is epic and all consuming, but in small connections and tiny moments of beauty, we can still find hope.
Aaron Wilson, Writer & Director, 7th of July 2013

Interview with Aaron Wilson

Question: Where does the story come from?

Aaron Wilson: Told through the eye of the individual, Canopy focuses on the psychological aspects of humanity's constant battle with war and nature. War is not just epic battles, it is extended periods of waiting, being in a state of hyper-alert, adrenaline-fuelled stasis: which in itself can result in the manifestation of new, psychological terrors.

Canopy is an intimate story inspired by first-hand accounts from Singaporean, Australian and Japanese returned service men and women. I was interested in exploring the birthplace of wartime trauma, the legacy of which continues to impact veterans and their families. Core to the film's story – and this wartime legacy – is the essence of mateship borne out of a shared struggle for survival.

Seventy-one years ago, Australia's position in South-East Asia was dramatically redefined. The invasion and subsequent fall of Singapore in World War Two is a key part of Australian and Singaporean history, and it informs us about our past and who we are today. Canopy explores connection between different cultures, but it does not allude to the difference in their backgrounds. In war, we are all the same. The scenario might be set in Singapore in 1942, but the feelings and predicaments are universal.


Question: Why did you make this film? The project really began in 2006 through a personal connection with Singapore, evolving from of my work on my short film, WIND (FENG). My producer and I met many Singaporeans whose families – like many in Australia, including our own – are still living with the legacy of World War Two. The project developed into a passion for telling a personal account of war told through the eyes of two men, a pairing, symbolic of the shared history between Australia and Singapore.

The common Singaporean-Australian experience is at the very heart of our film, its story and production. Many Australians have relatives that were serving during the war in the Pacific and in other arenas of battle, though most Australians of our generation have never experienced anything like this. It was important to us to make a film that was authentic and respectful of the stories from our grandparents' generation, and accurate and visceral in its detail so that you can almost feel the humidity and smell the jungle and incense. This is why we insisted on filming in the actual locations of the events that occurred; in Singapore's exotic jungles, Chinese cemeteries and the mangroves lining the straits of Johor.


Question: What was it like working with your two actors who speak different languages?

Aaron Wilson: Both of my lead actors work in very different ways when approaching character, so it was an exciting process developing the connection between them on set. I chose to rehearse individually with Khan and Tzu-Yi, so that they didn't properly meet each other until they were thrust together in the mud and dampness of the sticky Singapore mangroves and jungle. My Mandarin is pretty average, so I found myself conversing with Tzu-Yi with a mix of broken Mandarin and English during our rehearsals in the jungle location. It really challenged me to rely more on gesture and body language to communicate.

Once filming started, I found that the three of us ended up using – for the most part – non-verbal means of communicating. For a film with very little dialog, this process felt very natural and honest to me. In a way, it allowed the soundscape of the jungle and mangrove location to strongly inform us and affect the actions of the characters. There's no doubt that the natural spaces in Singapore, in and round the old Chinese graves, was a significant presence during our filming.


Question: What was it like working with two crews in two countries?

Aaron Wilson: In 2006, I made a short title WIND (FENG) that was filmed in both Singapore and Australia. This was a great experience in working with different crews, and helped to form the basis of a team that I would come to work with on Canopy. Bringing together crew members from Australia and Singapore on the same set was imperative for me. I'm very much into collaborating with great people, not just restricting myself to working in Australia. Each project deserves its own operating model, and this sort of international connection and collaboration is at the very heart of my film's story, so it was a natural decision.


Question: What was it like filming on location in Singapore?

Aaron Wilson: I'd been looking at locations for Canopy since I began writing the script in Singapore in 2006. I spent many months discovering natural spaces in Singapore, from mangroves to forest at the fringes of the everexpanding city of Singapore. Despite the city nation being so densely populated, almost 50% of the island is greenery. Still, it surprised many locals that we managed to find dense jungle in the heart of Singapore. The natural spaces in Singapore are magical places, because they are so rich with historical detail and unique sounds and textures.

One of the most special aspects of filming on location in Singapore is that there are old Chinese graves scattered throughout the jungle. These Chinese graveyards actually formed part of the structure of the Canopy script, so it was essential from a story point-of-view that we film in these spaces. During production, there was a great deal of respect for the spaces in which we were filming. For many Singapore Chinese, the jungles surrounding the graves are special, sacred places that connect them to their past. This fed out into the team as a whole, with everyone giving offerings before each shoot day commenced. It was such a special bonding experience.


Question: Who are your influences?

Aaron Wilson: There are many things that influence and affect me creatively. From other films, to paintings by Andrew Wyeth and Clarice Beckett, the photography of Rennie Ellis and Bill Henson and the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Everything becomes mixed together so you find yourself with a myriad of things that end up influencing who you are as a human being, what connects you with other people and how you view the world. My upbringing in rural Australia, where the natural landscape and environment is such an overwhelming presence, has also informed my filmmaking.

In terms of cinematic form, I am drawn to films that explore the subtleties and intricate details of everyday life, human behaviour and body language. Films like Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love, Hou's A SUmmer At Grandpa's, Ozu's Tokyo Story, Jia's Unknown Pleasure, Antonioni's L'avventura and Tarkovsky's Mirror have resonated with and affected me since I first saw them many years ago.

These directors capture sentiment and situation that is very natural and reflective, allowing an audience to contemplate and interpret character through gesture and action. There's something familiar in these sorts of films that I relate to the reality of my childhood growing up in rural Australia, where the natural drama of things is often revealed through gesture or physical interaction rather than through words alone.


Question: What's next?
Aaron Wilson: While Canopy is about an experience during war and the birthplace of trauma, I'm also very interested in exploring what it was like when Australians returned home from war, to a home that could never understand what truly happened. My next film will be about this, and most of it has already been filmed. Through the story of one family, the next film will explore the impact war has had – and continues to have – on the people in my country. That's a universal story the world over, and it's something very human at its core.

Interview with Katrina Fleming (Producer)

Question: Where does the story come from?

Katrina Fleming: Aaron's upbringing essentially started his thought process. Aaron grew up in Tocumwal, in regional Australia, which has a rich wartime history in WWII, as a small town designed to be part of the last defense against a hypothetical Japanese invasion. I grew up in a family affected by WWII, and lived in a secret explosives reserve in Altona, (Truganina Explosives Reserve), which stored and supplied ships with ammunitions for WWI and WWII.

When we met, the script Aaron was working on happened to be about WWII, its impact on the individual and the legacy that affected generations of families. This aligned itself with my personal interests and familial history, which led to Canopy becoming our first feature film. Essentially, having a shared heritage and a common interest in understanding what our grandfathers experienced in WWII is how a producer and a director agreed to capture the story of Canopy on film.

A lot of research, interviews with war veterans and volunteers (in Australia and Singapore) and our Grandfathers' stories provided the facts upon which Canopy is based.


Question: Why did you make this film?

Katrina Fleming: My Grandfather was a WWII veteran and I marched with his unit for many years on Anzac Day. I have witnessed the phenomenal connection our returned service people have with each other, and have always been interested in knowing more about what they went through defending their values, family and country.

'What was it like being in the war?" is a question I grew up asking. The truth of war; the hours and weeks of silence, waiting – and walking – with uncertainty, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, in countries where you cannot easily identify the good guys from the bad guys, and you don't speak the language but understand nonetheless. This is what you hear from the men after tall tales have all been regaled, and the last whisky has been drunk.

I wanted to honour my Grandfather and his unit by contributing to the collective works that curate Australia's wartime history, with a personal story that people of any age and era could relate to. I think we have captured in our film the essence of what it's like to be young, lost and out of your depth in a time of war.


Question: How did you get this film up and running?

Katrina Fleming: Aaron and I have been working together for 8 years. Both of us grew up in families that were affected by the Australian involvement with the conflict in the South-East Asian region, so soon after we made our first short together, we discussed our mutual interest in exploring a project that was connected to WWII.

We knew we wanted to make a film about the Australian/Singaporean friendship, and shoot in both countries. It had to be about the individual experience of war, common to every soldier, as opposed to the tradition of filming an epic battle war film revolving around a particular historical event. With that in mind, we looked to Singapore, where we had begun working on a short film, WIND (FENG) (2007). This short was filmed in 2006, in Singapore and rural Australia, and focuses on the lives today of two World War II survivors. Logistically and thematically, it echoed the themes we were exploring in the Canopy script.

The first three years were an investment into our working relationship. Our apprenticeship in short films and commercials led to screenings and awards at film festivals and markets, and developed our relationships and network of crew and industry contacts. The last four years have been about financing, filming and completing Canopy.


Question: What's next?

Katrina Fleming: We have a second feature in production, which is a companion piece to Canopy. While CANOPY is about the experience of war, the next film will be about the resonating effects of war on the families and communities of returned servicemen and women.


Canopy
Release Date: April 24th, 2014