Directing the Dead
Yolanda Ramke is no stranger to playing varying roles within the film industry, having been credited in various Australian productions as an actress, props assistant, producer and most recently, a screenwriter and co-director. Her first feature film, Cargo, is achieving landmarks in the Australasian entertainment scene, becoming the first ever Australian Netflix Original Film and with the script winning the Australians In Film “Gateway LA Script Prize” in 2015. Although this is not Ramke’s first pass at writing and directing as she has developed several award-winning short films, it is the first feature length film in which she has played such a pivotal role in its conception, script and direction.
The movie started its life as a short film concept that garnered more than 14 million views online, which then evolved into a feature-length version premiering at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Cargo is a genre bending feature film that is fearless in its exploration of the saturated zombie movie category. Melding the drama-thriller-horror is Emmy and BAFTA award-winning British actor, Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, Sherlock) portraying Andy, the pivotal character. Cargo expands on the generic thrills and gore to explore a father-daughter relationship and the lives of an indigenous family. The father is thrust into a time-tight journey after the incapacitation of his wife as he tries to save his daughter from himself and from the unforgiving post-apocalyptic setting. At the same time, we uncover the life of Thoomi, a young indigenous girl. Her family experiences and views the supernatural occurrence differently to the father-daughter pair and she is learning to adapt to the state of the world and the resulting family tensions. The two storylines become inevitably intertwined, and Andy and Thoomi ultimately rely on one another to survive their expeditions. M2woman spoke with Yolanda about the development of Cargo, her experiences working in the industry and her plans for the future.
Q: Cargo was originally a short that became viral when it was featured in Tropfest as a finalist in 2013. What was the process of developing the short film into a feature length film?
A: So basically, after the Tropfest Festival, [the short film] ended up online and we just had the really good fortune to get picked up by a bunch of pop culture websites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed, and that’s what allowed us to get traction online. So it went viral and it was off the back of that, that we got some eyes on it from America. We had an agent reach out to us, who basically invited us to come to LA to pitch a treatment for the feature version. We did two weeks of meetings and came home from that trip with two American producers attached to developing a treatment with us and once it became clear that it was going to become an Australian-set film, we had our Australian producers from Causeway Films come on board and it all snowballed from there. It was about three years of development from that treatment to pre-production.
Q: Was it difficult to re-imagine and recreate the premise of the short in a longer context with a different creative team and cast?
A: There were absolutely challenges in terms of going from something that was seven minutes long to 100 minutes. We knew that what we needed to do was really try to hold onto what it was that worked about the short film, which was this very humanity-driven story that is very much about a father and daughter’s relationship, and the[ir] love story and [the] sacrifice of parents. And then, [we thought] about how we would do that family in terms of what we hadn’t seen in this genre before, [which] was the presence of these indigenous survivors and how native people might react to an outbreak like that. What about a culture that is so old and [has] such fascinating ways of being able to survive off the land and actually benefit, and allow them to flourish [in a post-apocalyptic land]? And out of that way of thinking came this idea of, why not do a kind of a yin and yang-type situation and go from on the one hand, our father who is trying to save his baby daughter and on the other hand, we have a young indigenous girl who is trying to save her own infected father; we have those stories kind of dovetail and that was kind of the process of thought for that.
Q: So, the filming was done in the Australian outback. What was that experience like?
A: It was pretty challenging. We did not make it easy for ourselves in terms of a first feature. We had very isolated locations that were quite far apart where there wasn’t a lot of infrastructures. We were shooting on the water, we had babies in almost every scene, an 11-year old girl who had never acted at all in almost every scene and we also happened to be shooting in South Australia at the time at which they had their wettest winter in years, so you know for a film that is sort of predominantly exterior scenes, it could be pretty tricky at times. Mostly it was the weather that we were battling with more than anything, I think.
Q: Cargo is unlike many zombie films in that instead of jump scares or gore, we get a closer look at the characters and also a parental love element that is rare in such films. How was the idea of focusing on the characters in a zombie movie conceived?
A: We just thought about what we’d seen in the genre before and [it was] sort of wanting to deliver it and try to put our own stamp on it. In terms of the sorts of films that Ben and I have been watching particularly in this elevated sci-fi genre – and there are a lot of really brilliant films out there that have sort of been trying to keep it about a human connection and have some extra layers of depth there – we were watching things like Children of Men and District 9; films that are more than just the action and are more about what it is to be human. I guess that’s just a sensibility thing and that was just the case with Ben and I’s tastes, and we tried to infuse that into the story.
Q: What was it like getting Martin Freeman, an incredibly talented actor, on board for your first film?
A: [laughs] It was quite surreal at first. We had sent the script to his agent not really believing that something would happen and then when it came back that he was really interested in the script, we were just a little blown away. It was really a case of once you’re there, in the room together and talking about the script, that stuff starts to fall away and it becomes about you having access to one of the most accomplished, interesting actors today. So it is an exciting thing of how do we let him off the leash to kind of go and do his thing and bring what he’s going to bring to the material. It became a really lovely meeting of the minds and he’s an amazing collaborator – incredibly creative and a bit of a walking truth detector – which I think really helped to ground some of the more surreal aspects of the story.
Q: Cargo is the first Australian Netflix Original feature film. Is this shift into streaming services a move you had planned from the start?
A: It wasn’t actually. When we went into making the film, we certainly thought we’d just be taking the more traditional theatrical festival approach and try and get the film out there territory by territory. It wasn’t until we were just starting the edit[ing] process, so we didn’t even have a cut of the film yet, when our Australian producers at Causeway Films took a rough trailer and the script to the American film market and at that point, Netflix saw the trailer and asked to read the script and was interested. So it wasn’t something that we anticipated and obviously, that was a big conversation we had to have about how do we feel about taking that approach? But I think at the same time, it was a very easy “yes” for us because we’d been watching a lot of Netflix ourselves and the theatrical market these days is challenging, but the idea is in going with the platform that has 125 million subscribers in 190 countries and has this ability to market its material to its audience globally. We thought as filmmakers, your goal ultimately is for your work to be seen and you don’t get much bigger of a platform than that, so we were really chuffed when that came along.
Q: What’s next after Cargo? Is there a sequel coming or are there any genres you’d like to kind of explore as a screenwriter and a filmmaker?
A: It’s been interesting. I’ve been really lucky that in the course of the post-production of Cargo, I’ve been working as a writer on other projects that are in development. One of those was a World War 2 feature, [another was] one of those a television crime theory pilots. For me as a writer, actually Ben and I as collaborators, we’re very interested in a lot of genres and a lot of different types of material but maybe something with a bit of sci-fi for Ben and myself as a team is probably where we would head next. And we’re just having a look at some things at the moment and generating some original ideas. I think something that really interests us is the idea of episodic storytelling in television and how you have eight to ten hours to tell a story rather than an hour-and-a-half, and how exciting that platform is.
Q: Fifty percent of movie viewers are women, but only eight percent of directors are women, meaning that they are severely underrepresented and the minority in the film industry. How has your experience working as a woman screenwriter and director been? Are there any barriers that you’ve experienced or noticed for women in particular?
A: It’s been an interesting experience for me because I spent seven years working in the industry in various departments before Cargo got off the ground and I certainly experienced my fair share of treatment as a woman. So I understand what that is and I think it’s a huge problem and I’m glad that it’s finally being discussed. But I guess for me, I’m also aware that as a first time filmmaker with just a couple of short films under my belt, I’ve also been given some really wonderful opportunities in terms of getting to jump in and making a feature at this point in my career, so it’s been an interesting rise for me. Also working with a male co-director, it’s been an interesting thing for us to navigate this whole movement together and I think I’m particularly fortunate to be working with someone whom I’ve had a friendship with for a decade and he’s always treated me as an equal, so in terms of our partnership and especially on the shoot for Cargo, we had a really wonderful team of people around us. I was lucky to not experience any of that, but I understand that is not the case for a lot of people out there and I think it’s actually quite an exciting time to see these changes starting to finally come through.
Q: In an even wider context, what is some advice you’d give to aspiring screenwriters or filmmakers?
A: That’s always a tricky question. I guess it depends on how you work, because for me I’m quite a meticulous, studious kind of person, so I personally got a lot out of reading scripts of films that I loved and respected, and reading books about screenwriting to kind of wrap my head around kind of conventional process, and then if you choose to run with that, [it] is ultimately up to you. For me as a writer, that’s the sort of thing that I found super-useful but from a practical standpoint, I think there’s a lot to be said for just getting out there and getting a group of friends together and making something because the kind of mistakes and successes you have during that are huge learning curves that you can take into your career as it kind of advances. I think the biggest thing I’d just say is if you want to write, then write and don’t just sort of talk about writing; just put your fingers to the keyboard and do it and don’t put pressure on yourself for every aspect of that to be perfect because it just won’t be and you have got to just work the kinks out a little bit. I would just say commit to doing rather than overthinking it and what you’ll learn on the way will be incredibly valuable going forward.
