The idea behind One Moment came from the year I spent overseas travelling, living out of my backpack, having crazy times, meeting even crazier people and just experiencing the joy and buzz of travelling. Travel is one of those experiences that can change your outlook on life, and can alter your perception of the world and the people in it. It’s something that is at its most exciting, when it’s unplanned and unexpected. In my experience, the nights and times where things happened randomly and where we let our plans go out the window were the ones that I remember and enjoyed the most. It’s those times and feelings that I wanted to explore and capture in One Moment.

I’ve written several shorts (and half-finished several more), but the idea behind One Moment always stood out to me as the one that I felt the strongest for, it was the one that I related to personally, and also the one that I believe people (especially travellers) could really identify with. I find that a lot of short films try to produce something that is dark, disturbing, quirky, weird, violent, or controversial, I didn’t want to go down that path for my first one since University. I set out from the start to produce a short film that an audience could enjoy, that’s not too heavy, and something that doesn’t shove anything down the audience’s throat. From the start, One Moment was to have a realistic feel, a style similar to the doco-drama style of shows such as The Office and Battlestar Galatica. I wanted One Moment to feel as if we are following the two travellers around, living with them, like a fly-on-the-wall approach. I wrote the ending first, something I do with most of my stories and scripts, and then the start. When backpacking, relationships are always short lived as eventually you both will leave down different paths, but it’s the time you have spent together and the connection you make during that time that matters the most. This is what formed the theme for One Moment, those lasting connections made between people who are far from home, and whose curiosity of the world brings them together in the transitional dorm rooms of a hostel, and leads to real change in who they are.

Something else I felt was important to the story and theme was the choice of locations, One Moment had to be shot on location and at interesting places that were relevant to the scenes and also to the setting (Melbourne). During the writing process, I choose places that showcased Melbourne City and St Kilda, two places any traveller to Melbourne would spend a majority of their time in. Shooting on location was never meant to be easy, especially without a budget, but the style of the film suited a gorilla style approach which would make it easier to shoot the scenes required (I wanted to use as much natural and source lighting as possible).

After having the start and ending worked out, I mapped the rest using a story outline, where I wrote the 2 main plot points, and divided the story down into a 3 act structure. From there, I built individual scenes, swapping and changing the layout, bringing in new characters and then removing them, and playing with the setup until it fitted into a coherent story and arc that would lead naturally to each plot point. The scene with the goon bag was the last scene included after a couple of readers had commented that there needed to be an action somewhere demonstrating ‘Peter’ leading, the change of passive to active, where you realise he has opened up to ‘seizing the moment’. He does this in two parts, first by approaching the drunk guy and buying a goon bag (something that takes ‘Maddy’ by surprise), and then secondly by initiating the kiss on the pier.

The characters of One Moment were really great to write, and I tried especially hard to steer away from the cheese that sometimes can tarnish a romance story. Dialogue was kept to a minimum, and montage scenes used instead to develop their relationship. The two characters are realists, especially Maddy, and she’s a livewire, the kind of girl who you’d love to go out with as she embraces things and runs with it. Peter on the other hand is more reserved, he’s got a mystery to him, and with Peter you get the feeling that there might be more to his travel reasons then just having a good time. He intrigues her on that level, and I think she gets a kick out of forcing him to live in the moment. They are in total opposite situations, he’s embarking on his first trip, she’s heading home from another trip (of many), and this is something that initiates their interest and then draws them closer together.

The writing of One Moment started in November 2009 and finished in February 2010, and I was super keen to get started.

-Rob Innes.