Your Big Break

YOUR BIG BREAK ENTRY

JULIET BERGH

WELLINGTON, New Zealand

BACKGROUND:

2009 New Zealand School of Film and Television Graduate

2009 Screenwriter for Graduation film "Scrap Heap"

2009 Director for Graduation film "Putangitangi"

2009 Co-Director for "Mouse" Music Video Finalist for Handle the Jandal

2009 Director for 48 Hours Film competition entry "Raising Cane"

SYNOPSIS

'Highlands' is a romance with the high country of the South Island and its men and women who work and live in its remote beauty. Their resourcefulness evolved out of necessity. Their affinity with the land shaped their character.

A lone man living in a corrugated iron hut in the high country of the South Island goes about his daily work. The man and his dog are united in partnership in a vast isolated country with few inhabitants.

He uses his Kiwi ingenuity to make do with whatever he has on hand to repair a boundary fence. The beauty of the landscape is not lost to the man who finds the time to collect a Mountain Buttercup for the woman he loves who lives down in the flats.

Scene 1. EXT.Mountain Range - Early Morning. Day 1

It is early morning in the high country of the South Island. Sheep are dotted across the open landscape of hills, dwarfed by the surrounding alps.

On the distant slopes works a solitary man, TOM, kept company by his Huntaway dog, MUTT. Man and dog are rough, dirty and weather beaten.

SCENe 2. EXT.Mountain Range - Early morning. day 1

Tom is repairing a section of felled fence, weighed down by unseasonal snow fall.

He whistles and barks out orders to Mutt who is rounding up the sheep back across the fence line.

Tom picks up and discards a broken post. He replaces it with a crooked branch from the timberline, using a shovel to bury its base deeply.

Tom uses pliers to rewires the fence line while his dog lies patiently warding the sheep.

Tom rummages around in a hessian wool sack that holds his tools. He has run out of No.8 wire and is only left with short ends.

Tom looks around trying to find a substitute. There is nothing on the hillside but tussock grassland and sheep. Giving up he looks down at his old leather belt.

Tom and Mutt walk off down the hill, the rewired fence framed them in the foreground. Tom's belt is joined post to branch by the two short ends of No.8 wire.

Scene 3. EXT.Mountain Range - MiDDAY. Day 1

Tom and Mutt are walking along a steep cliff edge, following the fence line down the mountain. The Alps rise up in the distance. Tom carries his shovel and sack over his shoulder.

Tom scans the view as he walks. He looks down, squints and abruptly stops as he sees something down the distant rock face.

A Mountain Buttercup grows in an outcrop of difficult to reach rocks. Tom starts walking towards the plant.

Scene 4. EXT.Valley - LAte Afternoon. Day 1

A small corrugated iron hut sits in an isolated at the base of an alpine mountain range. Smoke blows from its chimney in the dying light of late afternoon. The Huntaway dog lies on the porch by the door.

Scene 5. INT.Hut - Late Afternoon. Day 1

The potted Mountain Buttercup sits on a bench. Next to it is a new roll of No.8 wire.

Tom is applying after shave to his face humming happily.

He tucks in a clean collared shirt into a pair of dress pants. He holds out the loose belt line and looks over towards the bench.

Scene 6. EXT. Homestead - Evening. Day 1

Tom knocks on the door of a well kept wooden Homestead. The door opens to a beautiful YOUNG WOMAN who is very happy to see him.

Tom holds his gift of the potted Mountain Buttercup. His hair is neatly combed, his shirt buttoned and tucked into his dress pants which are held up by a belt fashioned out of No.8 wire.

The Young Woman gives the Tom a loving kiss and bustles him into the house.

THE END