Rising Sun - a mini-series

One of the outcomes from my honours.

It is a draft of an opening credit sequence to a mini-series I am developing about Asian ANZACS. I reckon such a story is highly relevant at the moment, in light of the Billy Sing feature film fiasco.

It is a DRAFT, so not perfect. It's just a way of exploring our options. Will hopefully be able to get out there and shoot the real thing soon.

The title Rising Sun was an interesting decision process. Whilst brainstorming ideas for a title, I started off literal and dragged out titles like "The Diggers" and "The Forgotten". I was trying to capture a sense of the forgotten nature of the ANZACS that have slipped through the cracks of mainstream modern Australian history, including those from the indigenous population.

I arrived at Rising Sun because the symbol of the Australian army is the "badge of the rising sun". But what also occurred to me was that the term Rising Sun is often associated with the Empire of Japan - land of the Rising Sun. Because of this, I became a little unsure, and a began to ask everyone around me what they thought when the hear the phrase "Rising Sun". But then I thought, maybe this plays to an advantage. Since I am focusing on Asian ANZACS, and Rising Sun has the Asian connotations of Japan, maybe the confusion would suit the series purpose on the whole.

I reckon it's interesting that the symbol of the ANZACS is similar to the symbol of one of the former enemies of Australia, and I dunno, that might add an interesting element to it, especially in terms of marketing the show.

Anyway, here are some details of the vid:

Filmed by Changas, again on his d3s.

Music composed by yours truly in garage band, with the orchestra JamPack.

Ending title graphic was knocked up in 10 minutes in AfterEffects with just some jpegs of a hill, the Rising Sun badge, and a digger - sunset flare created with Video Copilot's Optical Flares.