Talent on the big screen
Short film showcases our region and its ‘amazing’ people Frankie Jean & The Morning Star is a short film about a plucky, rugby-obsessed 8-year-old girl who dreams of becoming an All Black. After the All Blacks lose in South Africa she sneaks out of her h
The district has two stars in a short film to be shown in Tauranga later this month.
Frankie Jean & the Morning
Star was filmed in Maketu¯ and Little Waih¯ı and the lead character is played by Te Puke’s Mckani-rose Clarke.
Hannah Marshall wrote and directed the short film, which centres on the disappointment of an All
Blacks loss and the repercussions of rugby-obsessed Frankie Jean sneaking out of her home to brood about the defeat.
“When I first wrote the film I had always conceived of it being in the Bay of Plenty because, although I live in Auckland, I grew up every summer going to Whakata¯ne and O¯hope Beach and my parents before me had done that. “As we got older, our parents had a place in Pukehina and at the time it was such an untouched place.”
Initially the film’s location was simply somewhere on the North Island’s east coast.
“These things are conceived in your head, but when I got the funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, it was ‘okay, how actually are we going to shoot this’. I had taken
We got swept up in this amazing community that opened up its doors
to us and made us feel like locals.
Hannah Marshall wrote and directed Frankie Jean & the Morning Star. bits and pieces from the areas in my mind and you have to start piecing them together and work out how to shoot the thing.”
A trip to the Bay of Plenty with director of photography Dave Cameron brought things into focus.
“We needed a bridge and a beach and a coastal area and it’s all set pre-dawn, so it was challenging anyway. We hung out in Pukehina and went through Maketu¯ and that coastline is gorgeous, but we needed a field we could somehow link it to in the story.
“We were driving through Maketu¯ and went up to the top where the reservoir is and then came down over the crest into Little Waih¯ı. I had grown up seeing Little Waih¯ı across the estuary, but all I
Writer and director Hannah Marshall