ORIGINALLY a private thank you note to clients, a short film showcasing Andrew Crowe’s barley farm 50km north of Moree has been seen almost 12,000 times online.
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The film was created to thank Barrett Burston Malting for making the Crowe farm the sole supplier of malt barley for the Peroni beer brand, and Andrew was blown away by the response to ‘High Flying Beer’.
“We really only did this to thank our client, there was nothing else in it,” he said. “I really am a pretty simple sort of guy and I had no idea this was going to do this.”
With sweeping shots of a mob of kangaroos hopping along the fields at sunrise, a cheeky clip of Andrew throwing beer from his bike to a low flying small plane and scenes of his six children working and playing on the farm, it’s not hard to see why the film, by local filmmaker Sascha Estens has captured the imagination of so many.
“There's a lot of people that are really proud to be from the bush and I think the film sort of captures that,” Sascha said.
There's a lot of people that are really proud to be from the bush and I think the film sort of captures that.
- Sascha Estens
“The fun that that family has together, you know, riding motorbikes and spending time with each other and helping out. All the kids love working on the farm and I think you can really see that.”
Andrew agreed, and said growing barley was very rewarding.
“It’s a really good business to be involved in. Everybody on the farm feels like they're making a contribution. That’s really important.
“You're working in a business where you can visibly see the results of your hard work,” he said.
Admitting he lacked movie star status, Andrew said the success of the film was due to Sascha’s skill.
“The only reason the whole thing works is because of Sascha,” he said.
Sascha enjoyed getting creative with a drone and figuring out how to capture the perfect shot. She sat backwards in the open boot of her car with her camera on a gimbal (stabilising equipment) to film Andrew riding his bike beneath the plane.
Requiring perfect timing, the blooper reel makes it clear how many takes it took to get right.
To film the enchanting clip of the kangaroos was difficult, with Sascha needing to figure out exactly where the mob would be and set up the drone as quickly as possible.
“It is a lot of effort. It's amazing for two seconds of footage, the effort. Staying the night to get up at the crack of dawn to get it,” she said.
She was amazed by the response to the film and said she believed people loved to see such a good news story coming from the country.
“It was really easy getting such a good story because they’re such a great family,” she said.
“They're absolute rippers, they're the salt of the earth.”
