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Cradle of Flame: Australia’s First Volcano Spectacle · Cinema Yūgen

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  G'day. That's right. It's that time again. Time for... CINEMA! YOOGEEEAAAAAAA!
• 1:07
  Welcome back, Yugenites. Can't tell you a little cinema, Yugen.
• 1:13
  Things get volcanic. Travis Bain of Sapphire Pictures joins us to talk about
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  his new disaster epic, Cradle of Flame, a high-stakes old-school spectacle in
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  the spirit of the great Erwin Allen.
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  Thrillers like the Poseidon Adventure and the Towering Inferno reimagined for
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  Australian soil for the very first time deep in the small town North Queensland
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  a young geology enthusiast
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  Sees it coming first, a dormant volcano waking him up. No one believes him.
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  The mayor looks away. The town carries on, but nature doesn't wait.
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  And when the mountain finally blows, everything goes with it.
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  What follows is pure sentimentic chaos, lava, collapse, survival,
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  and a wildly unexpected ensemble thrown together in the blast zone.
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  From battling men's shed legends and feuding twins to a no-nonsense retired
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  science teacher and a nursing home resident who simply refuses to be left behind.
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  This is disaster cinema with heart, humor, and heat. You can almost feel on
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  your skin. It's so close.
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  Travis takes us inside the making or the development of Cradle of Flame.
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  You can be a part of it too, folks. Get down to the links in description.
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  How to build an eruption on a low budget. Why Far North Queensland becomes a
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  character itself and how Sapphire Pictures continues to punch above its weight
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  with films that travel from indie routes to global screens, practical effects,
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  bigger motion, bigger ambition.
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  And right now you can be a part of it. That's right. Cradle of Flame,
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  the Kickstarter is live.
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  Jump in, back the film and help bring this eruption to life on screen in the
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  only way that it was meant to be seen.
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  When this volcano goes off, there is no safe distance you can get to.
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  Get down to the links in the description and then be part of it and before you
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  do that take a moment to sit with me and welcome my guest that man that mighty
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  filmmaker from the tropical north here's,
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  trevor spain thank you can't a hell of an introduction there bro love it uh
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  sorry i'm just winging it at 8 30 here in the morning but yeah that's all right
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  i haven't had a coffee yet.
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  I'm used to it. I used to do a bit of brekkie radio. So it's, um,
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  yeah it's normally a bit earlier but um yes so
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  mate you're back the fourth feature film the
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  kickstarter is live get down to the links in the
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  description cradle of flame the disaster thriller currently
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  in development inspired by 1970s epics like the towering inferno travis when
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  i first saw your kickstarter mate i was reminded of that uh that scene from
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  hearts of darkness where francis is talking about you know this isn't made in
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  the tradition of david Alan,
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  you know, it's a big time sensoramic.
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  Blockbuster with high stakes tell us all about cradle of flame
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  mate yes well i mean in the
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  70s there was no bigger name in film production than there
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  with alan i mean he dominated that whole decade didn't he i mean you can you
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  can track his progress all the way through you know your classics like the poseidon
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  adventure and towering inferno and everything else and uh he sort of ended on
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  a bit of a whimper unfortunately with uh ironically enough a volcano film.
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  1980s when time ran out with Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bessette
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  and I always felt like it was
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  a shame that he didn't really pull that one off in quite
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  the way he intended and you know he's done
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  us all with amazing visual effects and that sort of thing and it always sort
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  of lingered in the back of my head and anyway cut to several decades later and
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  I've become an indie filmmaker And one day I'm looking at a little mountain
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  that's down south of where I live in Cairns. It's called Walsh's Pyramid.
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  And I was just sort of squinting at it and thinking, gee, that looks like a dormant volcano.
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  I believe it's actually the only pyramid-shaped mountain in Australia,
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  I think, or Queensland or one of those things anyway.
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  And, you know, as usual, the cogs in the brain started whirring and ticking over.
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  And i suddenly thought what wouldn't it be cool if i could marry the visual
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  effects capabilities that i've currently got with this mountain as the ultimate
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  you know physical location and
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  put the put put the two together and make a volcano movie set in australia.
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  That would do erwin proud basically he travels the peak basically and i ran
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  i ran it past my mate who handles my visual effects work and he was like yeah let's do it this is,
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  That's too good to pass up. This is very ambitious. I like to do things that
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  haven't really been done before.
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  You know, I've done a Lovecraftian, you know, film a few years ago.
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  Well, there's definitely never been an Australian Erwin Allen equivalent. No.
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  No, I mean, there's sort of been adjacent projects. Like there was,
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  you know, there was a miniseries made many years ago about the Granville train
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  disaster, but that wasn't a movie per se.
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  Anyway, there was the 80s film Chain Reaction, which was kind of like a nuclear
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  thriller, but it wasn't really a
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  proper disaster movie where nature is conspiring to kill a lot of people.
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  So I thought, I'm going to do one of those. I'm just going to swing for the
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  fences and just give it a crack, you know, because...
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  Why not? So here we are. And a Queensland-based Erwin Allen film too.
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  That's it. Yeah, no, the obvious most predictable things to do in Queensland
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  might be like a tsunami or, you know, in Southeast Queensland,
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  you could do a bushfire or something like that. Up north, it would be flooding, wouldn't it?
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  Flooding, yeah, that's right. You could do a hard rain type of film and that sort of thing.
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  And I did have a cyclone in my last feature, Landfall, of course.
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  But this is something completely out of
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  left field and i think a lot of people are maybe scratching their heads
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  over it but once they see what we're going to do they're going
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  to be like oh yeah this is pretty sweet yeah and you've
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  got an incredible lineup some uh returning legends in
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  vernon wells and as i talked to him the other
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  day and he's helping plug the kickstarter which
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  is people can get down the description roger ward the
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  mon roger and roger ward and i had a chat
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  yesterday and um yeah it's it's
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  fantastic to see these legends coming back and keeping
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  osploitation alive so to
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  speak yeah yeah the thing i love working about these guys is that they help
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  me sort of have that sort of connection with the old school osploitation films
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  in my projects and they're also there for the younger cast members too like
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  i've you know i frequently work with actors in their 20s and 30s and that sort of thing and it's
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  It's lovely to see the old gentleman mentoring them to an extent and giving
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  them advice on set and shepherding them through their acting journey.
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  And it's really wonderful to see. So I love to have sort of multiple generations
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  in my films. And these three guys are just a hoot when they get together.
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  We did that little zombie comedy, Zombies vs. the Men's Chair, three years ago.
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  So much fun, so much fun. So I thought, oh, we've got to replicate this,
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  but on a grander scale. So let's hope we get to our target in time.
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  Yeah, so the perks are all out there. For as little as $20, you can get a thank
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  you. $50, you can get a copy of the script.
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  $250, you can get a personalized video message from the stars,
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  Vernon Wells, John Ward, or Tony Bonner.
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  Yeah. You can even help be an executive producer for $1,000 or $2,000.
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  You can be an associate executive producer of the film too.
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  And we've had three people sign up for that so they're all
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  they're all snapped up now there's executive producer credits which is
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  wonderful they're going to get their names up there and they get you
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  know they get special access to me and the team and if they want to have a have
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  their dog cameo in the film we're open to that you know if they want to name
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  a character after somebody in the film there we're open to that as well we're
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  very flexible that's the whole thing behind these perks they're personalized
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  they're they're meaningful we're not just offering.
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  Baseball caps and t-shirts you know we all want to actually involve
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  posters or stickers or stuff like that yeah yeah you
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  know anyone can sort of offer that sort of made in
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  china type of stuff but we want to actually involve people
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  in the production bring them into the fold you know and make them feel like
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  they're part of the journey because it is going to be a fun journey and and
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  hopefully it's going to culminate with this film coming out in about 2028 which
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  will Tie in beautifully with my 30 years in the business. There you go.
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  I can't believe I'm saying that.
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  Yeah. Well, mate, look, it's like the Lotto. You've got to be in it to win it.
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  And, you know, never giving up is probably the best secret to success.
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  I speak to a lot of American independent filmmakers most of the time.
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  But, you know, what's the, you know, I mean, from your perspective,
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  having been in it this long, what's the indie scene like, in your opinion here
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  in Australia or Queensland both oh yeah.
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  Mate I've lost you you've turned off your mic back
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  again yep sorry sorry about that
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  you're yes well you know I've been in Cairns
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  now for nearly 20 years and I've seen the indie film scene blossom here when
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  I when I first came here there was nothing really going on to speak of and now
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  there's little little mini crews here and there little guerrilla crews making
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  this and that and a lot of them dabbling between you know short films and music
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  videos and things like that yeah I guess.
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  I don't know, I guess I've been out of the Brisbane film scene for so many years,
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  I don't know what it's like down there now, but it's just, it's always the same struggle,
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  you know, trying to find money to get your projects up, and then at least distribution
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  is probably marginally easier now because we have, you know,
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  streaming services and the rest of it, so.
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  You know, it's always been a challenge, you've just got to keep,
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  you know, keep going, keep chugging along, and, you know, that's all you can do, really.
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  And it's either one it's either one side or the
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  other it's either a fight to get the funding or a fight to get
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  someone to release the movie isn't it i mean
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  luckily we have a lot of tools at our disposal now to
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  put films online we have amazon prime and whatnot and
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  uh and you know you can always do the old classic four
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  walling of a cinema like i've done that with some of my films up here
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  in the north you know when when landfall was out a
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  few years ago we took that film to little country towns
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  like atherton and marieba and
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  ravenshoe and innisfail and we
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  just basically you know made deals with the local cinema
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  owners there and people love going to a night
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  out at the movies in little places like that and they're really interested
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  to see something local locally made that's that's novel for them they're not
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  seeing some big hollywood thing they're seeing something that was made in their
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  backyard so we had great crowds at those screenings and they really took off
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  so that's another way you can do it just go old school yeah i mean indie indie
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  films are kind of where it's at if you want to.
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  I mean, look, we're all inspired by other things, so the word original sometimes gets thrown around.
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  But it is certainly, if you take something, it's like I listened to a bloke
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  on a podcast the other day talking about Martin Scorsese, who was talking to him about Raging Bull,
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  and all Martin Scorsese would point out was where he ripped off certain scenes
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  from certain filmmakers that he liked.
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  Now, the person that he was telling to couldn't see the references,
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  but Martin says he could, which is to say that even though we're all inspired by.
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  Erwin allen for for conversation sake even if
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  you it's a template i mean probably the
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  the best sort of the modern takes of that
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  erwin allen style filmmaking was probably independence day
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  for my money yeah have this laundry list
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  of of big stars in a disaster movie
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  and and you know everything looks like
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  it's going to hell but in the end they win and all that sort of thing but once
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  it it passes through you and you inject that into story it does really become
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  yours you've you've taken sure but um you feel that way as as far as like you
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  know the the status like you've got people who just rip stuff rip stuff off
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  to take for cash in the sake and then you have people that
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  generally go well this this template kind of fits the story i want to tell is that how you feel a bit?
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  Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's filmmakers like George Lucas and Tarantino and you
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  can tell if you're a film lover yourself, you can easily tell where their influences
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  come from, but they haven't just done a copycat sort of a deal.
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  They've absorbed all those influences and then processed them through the lens
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  of their own creativity and then produced their own original work.
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  And I guess that's how I've always viewed myself,
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  there are definitely antecedents to my own work like my monster movie throwback
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  was inspired by Bigfoot films of the 70s of course but you know you put it all in a blender and you,
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  put your own spin on it and put your own seasoning in there and you know it
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  becomes your own and I remember when Tarantino first took off.
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  There was a massive slew, you probably remember them yourself,
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  a massive slew of copycat type of films, Tarantino-like films,
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  which didn't have anywhere near his panache or finesse or skill with dialogue.
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  It was just a bunch of people making a lot of pop culture references because
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  they think it's what he does.
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  Yeah, trying desperately to be cool, and they filled the shelves of video stores
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  there for a while, but the directors and writers behind those films never really
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  went anywhere because they weren't really, you know, bringing their own original take to things.
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  And that's why people like them. They were trying to catch a wave, so to speak.
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  Yeah, that's right. And I think that's where Roland Emmerich sort of became
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  the heir apparent to Owen Allen in a way because he took those 70s disaster
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  tropes of, you know, big-name casts and all that.
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  But he did something unique with them and brought them into the 90s and the 2000s and whatnot.
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  And he, of course, did very well out of those. And that's another film.
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  Did you see that moon for it? That was tremendous and wonderful and silly, that movie.
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  I didn't actually get around to that one. I sort of looked at the reviews and
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  thought, I might give this one a bit of a mess.
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  That's a good movie if you're drunk one night at home and you've had a few beers
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  and you want something just to laugh, happy hour for.
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  Because, mate, there's stuff in that movie. Like Independence Day was probably
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  his most grounded, even though it was an alien invasion.
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  Sort of thing, but that, that, that moonfall just goes from,
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  from weird to silly to fucking ridiculous.
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  There's a scene at the end, I won't give it away for you, but there's a scene
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  at the end involving a space shuttle.
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  Um, and if you watch it, you tell me how ludicrous.
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  Okay. All right. Well, I'll come back to you on that. I sort of think that 20,
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  he sort of peaked with 2012.
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  I think that was his final word on disaster movies because it had everything in it.
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  That film, it had tsunamis and it had bloody, you know, earthquakes and God
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  knows what. And he threw everything at the wall.
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  And I think it's a disaster master, disaster piece, actually. Disaster piece. Yeah.
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  Cause it is, it is literally the, you know, you can't get worse than the end of the world.
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  Can you? the pinnacle yeah that's right but um since then maybe he's sort of
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  i don't know maybe he's sort of taken the piss out of himself or something i
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  don't know what's going on but falling into self parody but maybe i guess yeah
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  mate before we uh before we let you go and go off to great heights,
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  please tell our audience give them give them a jolt give them a thrill give
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  them say hey i want you to be part of my movie.
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  Well, guys, as we've discussed, we're making Cradle of Flame in North Queensland.
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  Hopefully, it's going to be Australia's first ever proper disaster movie.
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  We're leveraging modern visual
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  effects to turn a little mountain south of Cairns into a raging volcano.
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  So, we're probably about 70% of the way there on our Kickstarter so far. Very good result.
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  But with Kickstarter, unless you hit that magic target, you don't get anything.
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  So if this film doesn't raise at least $13,000 by the 13th of May,
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  we're not going to get this film made. So let's all band together and face this
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  challenge head on, guys, and see if we can get there and get this movie up and running.
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  Because I promise you it's going to be pretty damn spectacular.
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  And it's going to have a lot of the humor that you will probably know from my
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  previous films. A lot of nice character moments.
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  A lot of cool little drama moments in there as well. But also,
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  as Jeff Goldblum said, a lot of running and screaming as well.
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  So get behind us, guys, and you won't be disappointed, I promise you.
• 18:15
  Sweet as Travis Bain, Cradle of Flame. I love how that sort of rhymes.
• 18:20
  Nice alliteration. Yeah, Travis Bain's Cradle of Flame.
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  It's almost like James Wan's Aquamart.
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  It writes itself, doesn't it? Yeah. Travis Baines, Cradle of Flame, ladies and gentlemen.
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  Get down to the links in the description. The Kickstarter is live.
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  We're getting closer to success for Travis. Get over there right now.
• 18:41
  Get down to the links in the description. Travis, thank you for talking to me, mate.
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  I really hope that you get to roll on Emmerich this up there in the tropical
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  north, and I hope everyone gets behind it because, yeah, we need more good genre
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  movies made in Queensland, I say.
• 19:00
  Thanks, Kent. Always a pleasure. And to paraphrase Matt Damon and the Martian,
• 19:04
  I hope we can Roland Emmerich the shit out of this thing.
• 19:08
  Sweet as thank you for being on the show, Travis. And mate, I really hope that
• 19:11
  you get to bring this one home.
• 19:13
  Here's mate. All the best. Yes. Travis Bain's Cradle of Flame,
• 19:17
  like James Wan's Aquaman.
• 19:20
  Aquaman by James Wan.
• 19:22
  Travis Bain's Cradle of Flame. you can
• 19:25
  get down to the links in the description now and be
• 19:28
  a part be a producer get updates get
• 19:31
  a video sent to you from the legends vernon wells
• 19:34
  and roger ward it's all there waiting for you and a great film in store if you
• 19:40
  support it cradle of flame by travis bain get down to the links now in the description
• 19:46
  and as always my little eugenites thank you for listening to us on spotify.
• 19:52
  IHeartRadio, or wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts.
• 19:56
  I'm Kent Hill, and until next time, you've been listening to us on Cinema U-Games!