by FilmInk Staff
UNSTOPPABLE, a proof-of-concept short action film starring Australian Paralympic skier Sam Tait, premiered on Sunday in Sydney Film Festival’s Screenability program, with a second screening for Thursday 13 June, at Dendy Newtown.
Producing the first-ever action film starring a paraplegic lead was a long and challenging road for its grassroots writing-directing team, first-time Melbourne filmmakers Jack Byrnes and Marcus Porcaro.
“When the idea first came to me, I thought: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before’. And that was very telling, you know? Why hasn’t there been an action film with a paraplegic lead?”, says Jack.
Jack, with a background in Creative Development, and Marcus, who had studied Film and Television at RMIT, had been honing their creative process between day jobs for a couple of years when the idea struck.
“We were slowly developing projects where we could find the time, and so when Unstoppable popped into our heads we immediately began working on a script. But the ambitious nature of the concept, and how difficult it can be to get the industry to embrace untested ideas, led us to eventually put it in the drawer for a few years,” adds Marcus.
It wasn’t until Victoria emerged from its lengthy Covid lockdowns, that Jack began to prioritise his goals for the future. “Jack told me: ‘We love this idea, we believe it’s important, so let’s make it happen. Let’s make a short’,” says Marcus. “After accepting how difficult it would be to do something that, as far as we knew, had never been done before – ourselves – we embraced how exciting and meaningful it could be to so many people if we pulled it off.”
A completed short film screenplay, co-written with filmmaker friend Adam Ciancio, gave much needed encouragement that this first-time undertaking was, with a lot of luck, doable. It would cost them their modest life savings, and even then, they’d need to rely on the generosity of others, but the partnership was prepared to roll the dice. Yet before they could push the button, the pair knew that the only way to move forward was to find a lead actor and collaborator with lived experience.
“That was a non-negotiable for us,” says Jack. “From the script to the stunts, the shoot and beyond; it was essential to collaborate with, not just direct, someone with lived experience. They would be the only one who could authentically inform this project at every stage.”
Inspired by the world of professional sport, a sector where people with disabilities have thrived, the pair began their search. “Despite the surprise in people’s voices when we pitched them what we wanted to do, they were incredibly keen to support our search.” And it wasn’t long before they were introduced to Sam Tait.
Sam, a Paralympic skier and the first person with paraplegia to climb Mount Kosciuszko, immediately took to the ambitious project. “When I read the script, I was in right away,” says Sam. “I hadn’t seen an action film with someone like me as the star before, and the idea was incredible. Halfway through reading I forgot that the character was even in a wheelchair. In a good way you know? The way the script was written, it felt like these guys were committed to getting it right.”
Sam’s lack of acting experience didn’t faze Jack at all. “He had a magnetism that was so undeniable, it was calm yet confident, and there was something behind the eyes that told me: ‘when push comes to shove, I’ll go all the way’. This was our guy.”
Sam joined the team as the short’s lead actor and Consulting Producer and the trio got to work refining the script, taking on Sam’s suggestions, and tailoring the part to him. “Sam has a quiet confidence about him, which was something we wanted to harness in the performance. So, we took that cue, keeping dialogue simple, sparse and straightforward,” says Marcus.
“We knew this would help ease the burden on Sam, being a first-time actor, and give us crucial time to shoot the fight sequences,” adds Jack.
With Sam eager to jump into this once in a lifetime challenge, the logistics of planning on a small budget, meant things took some time. Locking in a location that met the demands of the script proved difficult within their budget, and aligning the tight schedules of the Melbourne crew also became a challenge since many were busy forging ahead post pandemic.
But when a quiet patch suddenly opened up a narrow window of time, just four weeks away, everyone went into overdrive to make it happen.
“Thankfully, I had already brought the brilliant DOP Adam Howden on board, as well as our amazing stunt co-ordinator Warwick Sadler. So, when we said we had four weeks to go, Warwick recruited a phenomenal fight choreographer, Yasushi Asaya, and his team. Warwick and Yasushi have worked on the longest list of incredible productions, including Upgrade, The Invisible Man and for Marvel. Then Adam jumps to the challenge and tells us that Arri Australia have generously provided a couple of Alexa35s, and Robbie Hansford – the legendary key grip who’s worked on everything from Queen of the Damned to La Brea – has agreed to lend a hand. So, despite the rush, we were snowballing into a powerhouse team,” says Jack.
Fellow producer Tom Davis (The Legend of Burnout Barry, AACTA award winning short film The Mirror), who the duo enlisted for his seasoned physical production experience, was key to rounding out the crew, which included award-winning production designer Rennie Watson (Lost and Found, Wizards of Aus). Marcus adds, “Tom also secured the incredible location,” “Flickers”, a cavernous textiles factory in Melbourne’s north-west.
Before they knew it, the sleepless nights of the mad rush toward production ended with Sam, flying from his home in Perisher NSW, to Melbourne, and heading straight to a stunt gym in the city’s South East.
Sam had committed to performing all of his fighting, and stunts, himself – an important element in the team’s quest to show that an action star in a wheelchair could, in fact, do it all.
“We had a limited window with Sam, we knew he had to completely focus on training with the stunties, so he could perform confidently and safely,” says Jack.
Sam’s background as a Paralympian served him well. Jack recalls, “I kept asking Sam: ‘How are you feeling? Do you want to scale the fighting back?’ Sam just looked at me laughing and said: ‘I’m good mate, I’ve got this’. And of course, he does, he skies down terrifying slopes and climbs mount Kosciuszko!”
“Huge praise goes to the incredible Team Yas who got Sam fight ready in just a few days,” says Marcus. “They helped bring a kind of action to life that none of us had ever seen before.”
After four intensely focused days with the stunt team, which left only hours to run lines the night before filming, Sam was on location. His first time on a film set.
Sam would be performing the role of James Marks, an ex-defence contractor mourning the death of his brother when his workplace is raided by gunmen on the hunt for information in his possession.
“While the main goal of the short was to prove that the action could be achieved at a cinematic level, we also weaved in strands of the feature we’d started developing all those years before,” says Marcus.
All three agreed that the protagonist’s narrative should not focus on a struggle to accept his disability. “That’s so limiting and wouldn’t do this project justice,” says Sam. “We’re trying to expand people’s perception of characters with disabilities, not box them in.”
“It was important to Sam, Marcus and I that, alongside the groundbreaking action, we conveyed a universal theme of rediscovering your inner strength after the loss of a loved one,” adds Jack.
The challenging shoot had four nights to achieve everything on the page, including several fight sequences that Sam had committed to performing himself. “It was a lot of repetition to get it right”, says Sam, “But each time I felt myself getting more into the role. It was gruelling but I had one of the best times of my life.”
And did he achieve his goal of doing it all? “It was me in every shot except one. See if you can figure out which,” he says.
Jack adds, “It was incredible to work with him while he’s pushing his body and his emotions across such a wide-ranging performance. It felt like we were directing an action star in the making.”
With the shoot over, and the production out of money, post-production house Arc Film and sound design mavericks Rumble Studios moved heaven and earth to get the film finished in time for the team’s Sydney Film Festival submission.
The end result was a nail biting and never-before-seen action performance by a paraplegic lead that landed the passion project with a world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in the Screenability program.
“We’re so grateful to the Sydney Film Festival and the Screenability team. For a grassroots, self-funded and fully independent production like ours, created by a team with members that exist across the spectrum of disability, it’s just incredible that we have these spaces to show what we can do,” says Jack.
“It wouldn’t have been possible to achieve this without the passion and generosity of some of Melbourne’s best cast, crew and companies. There were so many who gave their time and energy. And Sam is at the centre of it all. We’ve never seen someone work so hard, dedicate themselves to learning so many new things and achieving them all. It was inspiring.”
Unstoppable had its world premiere, playing alongside the Slamdance winning feature, Good Bad Things on Sunday 9 June, with a second screening taking place this Thursday 13 June at Dendy Cinema Newtown.
Link for tickets on the SFF website: https://www.sff.org.au/program/browse/unstoppable
