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Indi is soon to grace the silver screen.
Any eyes that weren’t fixed on the North East electorate during the federal election soon will be with a documentary on the history-making campaign on its way.
Three filmmakers — Melburnians David Estcourt and sound technician Jamie Carolan, and Philadelphia-born producer Rebecca Hanssens-Reed — followed independent MP Cathy McGowan’s path to victory, interviewing nine of the 11 candidates, and some of Ms McGowan’s 600-plus volunteers and local Indi-watchers.
Estcourt said the presence of the campaign volunteers was one of the reasons for their interest in the electorate.
“Cathy’s campaign had such a broad volunteer base, they began to label themselves a movement,” he said.
“It was really interesting to see people even taking leave from work to be involved.”
The crew is now sifting through footage of interviews with Ms McGowan, the emotion of election-night parties and the fun of Friday’s celebratory bush dance at Oxley.
“We’re trying to decide how best to build the narrative,” Estcourt said.
“We have a lot of good footage capturing something very important, so we want to make sure we do it justice.”
Estcourt said it would take at least two months to edit the film and they hope to use production professionals to ensure its quality.
They have looked to online crowd-funding website Chip In, one of the platforms Ms McGowan’s team used to gather almost $120,000.
Estcourt and his colleagues plan to enter the film in national and international festivals.
They also plan to release it on Vimeo, a video-sharing website which, unlike YouTube, allows the viewer to make a donation.
“It gives the consumer power to pay for what they think the film is worth,” Estcourt said.
And of course, there “absolutely” will be a screening in Indi.