Crosshairs

Beau and Jamie, two brothers from a rural Western Australian town are caught poaching a lamb from a neighbouring property. When Beau refuses to go quietly his younger brother becomes a pawn in a violent showdown.

The seed of the idea for Crosshairs came to me while attending a barbeque last year when I discovered the spit-roasted lamb had been stolen from a nearby farm and butchered by the hosts themselves to keep party costs low. When I started thinking about the possible consequences of such an action I realized the situation was fertile ground for a dramatic short film.

Oscar nominee Peter Templeman (The Saviour), Dan and I had been looking to develop something together for a while and so a short film seemed like a good starting point. I wrote the first couple of drafts and then Pete took it from there, eventually delivering a tight, complex script about two brothers whose relationship is destroyed by ego driven violence.

Casting, as always, is crucial and was a particularly lengthy process on this film. The character of Beau, the volatile older brother, was especially hard to cast. Finding a guy in his early twenties with natural authority and confidence of a man much older was the challenge. In the end we had to go east, to Sydney, and cast Lindsay Farris, who I had seen as a seventeen year old in one of Pete’s films years earlier. With Lindsay, Michael Muntz and Luke Ledger, I truly had my best experience as a director working with actors.