By Dov Kornits & Matt Lowe
A near fatal accident can be life changing. In director Marc Furmie’s debut feature film Terminus, a low-budget sci-fi thriller set in Middle America, a man wakes to a devastating discovery that will determine the fate not only of his family but of the entire human race.
What sets Terminus apart from similar attempts to salvage the human race is Furmie’s commitment to making his film a nuanced character study. His points of reference approaching the film had less to do with disaster movies than the Vietnam War; more to do with New Hollywood auteurism than Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer.
“I looked at films of the late ‘70s for inspiration,” he explains. “Certainly Spielberg with Close Encounters and Jaws. Malick’s Days of Heaven. Hal Ashby’s Coming Home was also a huge influence for our scenes involving military veterans and Cimino’s The Deer Hunter was a big tonal reference. Terminus takes its time to develop its characters and that was where I was coming from. Even our casting was based on finding talent with off-kilter or real-world looks. I wanted the film to feel timeless.”
The film whose local cast includes Jai Koutrae, Todd Lasance, Bren Foster and Kendra Appleton is a thoroughly Australian production, with most of the filming taking place in Sydney. Regardless, Furmie made the decision to set the film entirely in the US because, as he explains, it was more appropriate to the material.
“This was a distinctly American story,” he says, “dealing with American concerns, socially, spiritually and politically. Had it been set in Australia it probably would have been a lot smaller in scope and frankly wouldn’t have felt realistic, for better or worse.”
When Furmie talks about the scope of the film, he is talking narratively. While setting the film in North America may have been an artistic choice, there were obvious practical considerations for filming it in Australia, not least a shoe string budget with which to accomplish the film’s sci-fi action special effects. Even then, he was competing with Russell Crowe and George Miller for crew members based in Sydney.
“We achieved a great deal despite our budget limitations,” Furmie tells. “We had a world-class crew and that was half the challenge, finding talented people during a period when Mad Max: Fury Road, Unbroken and Water Diviner were being shot simultaneously. Time is always your greatest enemy, and money buys you time. You’re shooting 3-5 pages of script a day for 30 days, often involving complicated set-pieces and it’s a race against the clock. Some of our action and sci-fi set pieces needed to be re-conceptualised to maximise the time we had but it made the story more focused and adds to the charm of the film. I knew that we could get away with not spending a great deal of money on blowing things up, when the heart of Terminus’ story is its characters.”
One of Furmie’s key collaborators on the film was fellow sci-fi director in crime Shane Abbess, who directed last year’s Infini. “Shane is very much a mentor and gave me very solid advice during scripting, pre and post production. He was busy shooting Infini during production and took a step back to let me do my own thing creatively, but his guidance in helping me shape the final film as a Producer was integral.
“We’ve been friends and mutual fans of one another since he made Gabriel,” continues Furmie. “In 2012 we met in LA and decided that we should work on something together. The following year, Shane approached me with his Executive Producer Brett Thornquest and offered me the chance to make my directorial debut on a low-budget genre film. I pitched them a couple of ideas and Terminus was the one that stuck. We scaled it back to suit the budget and Shane and Brett gave us the greenlight.”
With Terminus and Infi both among the spate of recent low-budget, high-quality sci-fi films coming out of Australia, Furmie enthuses about the support being admonished on local genre films and the way in which it nurtures future talent.
“I think the fact that any films get made at all in Australia is encouraging as a filmmaker. The fact that there has been a resurgence in sci-fi and genre pictures is very exciting for a director like myself. The tax incentives and intrepid producing by people who care has made this possible. It means our films have the potential to reach a larger, more passionate audience. I’m confident that over the next few years, we’re going to see the next Peter Jackson or George Lucas emerge from this country.”
Terminus is released in US cinemas, and will receive a global digital release on iTunes, Google Play and VOD on January 22.
It is available to purchase on DVD now from Umbrella Entertainment.
