A fantasy adventure short set in Australia during the early 1950’s. – A teenage girl and her younger brother find their missing father.
Return Flight is a proof of concept short film with the allures straight out of a comic book. It teases a bigger story to come in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and adventure all set in an alternative timeline of Australian history. The concept is about a teenage girl that has given up hope on ever seeing her father return home from military service. But during a stormy night, she and her younger brother witness a mysterious figure fall from the sky, as they race out to investigate, they discover it’s their father returned home.
Return Flight came from a time in my youth when I was fascinated in both the spiritual and the supernatural. Day-dreaming during one of my art classes back in 2001, I first had a vision of man falling from the sky, tumbling through a tree before hitting the ground, the strike of thunder startles him, causing these grotesquely beautiful wings upon him to fan out and be revealed. I would sketch the same final image of a man with wings over and over. I began writing a story surrounding this imagery with intent for it be a comic book first and hope that it would be later adapted into a film. However as time went on life stuff got in the way, but this imagery always stayed with me. Now as filmmaker, I realised there is nothing holding me back from making a short film based on all the sketches, notes and writings from over the years. This is a story that I’ve always wanted tell, so I did.
The comic book storyline is all brought together by some inspiring cinematography, where we get a mix sense between the dark edge of X-Men and the mysterious nostalgia of Stranger Things.