Nearly 10 years after shooting Primer (2004), Shane Carruth is finally back with Upstream Color, and it turns out the movie has been shot on the Panasonic GH2!
Primer had been shot on Super16 for $7000 and Shane had been quite vocal about how unhappy he had been for making it for so little. He felt the resulting compromises had damaged the film. Personally I thought it was great but then it wasn’t my film and I don’t know what he had in mind.
After that he had been working for some years to get a sci-fi film called “A Topiary” off the ground but it would appear that he sadly failed in these efforts, describing it as “the thing I basically wasted my whole life on”.
I think it’s great that technology seems to have stepped in to allow him to make a new movie on a low budget without feeling he had to compromise in the same way as on Primer, although apparently there were still the stresses of making a movie on a very low budget.
Shane is also marketing and distributing the film himself as a completely independent filmmaker in the truest sense. He is even selling the movie on his website: http://erbpfilm.com/
It’s great to have him back and I’m glad he seems happier with this one. Apparently he is already planning to shoot yet another new movie shortly. It will be called “A Modern Ocean".
Check out the trailers for the film below: