Ryan Esselink, Chris van der Salm, Caitlin Kearney, Georgia Tangney, Brittany Mare and Eilee Robinson as the youth gang with a score to settle with Miriama.

The first day of shooting is always a mixture of excitement and blind pain and today was no exception!

Despite weeks of planning, for this shoot we have been scouring second hand clothes shops for young Arapeta’s distinctive costume and working with knives, razor blades and matches to make the your gang costumes look suitably live in.

Yet there is always so much to do at the last minute. No sooner had we picked up Sophee Hills, who plays the young Miriama, from Timaru airport than we were on the road to shoot the youth gang scenes by the railway track in the industrial area of Oamaru.

Mark and I had worked on the choreography for the fight in which Arapeta defends Miriama and at last wins her heart. The scenes needed to by gritty and ugly for Miriama’s transformation to have meaning. Despite all the preparation and a great new cast of gangsters, the shoot was difficult and radix cutting in post production will be needed to give the footage the edginess required for the story.