Australian swimming champion Anthony Fingleton grew up as part of a well-known family that produced two swimming champions. His life out of the limelight was however far from easy.

"I grew up in a time that was particularly hard because the war had come hot on the heels of the depression and it was very much an era of deprivation," says Fingleton. "My father was a wharf labourer which was a tough job at best- and that was when there was work available. There were of course long periods of unemployment. I think my father carried a lot of demons as a result of the depression but of course men didn't talk about those things back then. So he turned more and more to alcohol and became more and more violent." Tony, who had never really felt connected to his father, turned to his beloved swimming for comfort and to escape the hardships at home, before eventually moving overseas.

In later years his younger sister would often visit and they'd talk about their earlier years growing up: "She was the only girl in a family of boys and I think it was especially hard for her. Our father didn't know how to deal with a little girl who didn't play sport. One night as we talked she became very upset and I suggested we should perhaps write down our thoughts about growing up in our family as a way to exorcise those old demons. We started exchanging chapters and it was extraordinarily therapeutic for both of us. After a while I began to think there was a great screenplay in all of this. I had the episodes and I certainly had the characters - it's such a strong story and it's a story about family".

Fingleton took an early draft of the screenplay to Howard and Karen Baldwin at Crusader Entertainment, with whom he had worked previously. They thought it was a great story.

"We actually thought it was a very important story to tell," says Howard Baldwin. "Here's a young man Tony, who had a very difficult upbringing yet who grabbed at an opportunity in the form of swimming and achieved success at the highest level against the odds. It's a very uplifting story."

"It really is a movie about family and I think it's the kind of story that everyone can relate to because of course no-one has the perfect family," says Karen Baldwin.

The Baldwins had worked previously with director Russell Mulcahy (Highlander).

"When I read the script I thought that it was something that Russell would do really well," says Karen. "He read the script and loved it and that was that, we had our director."

"I thought it was a very moving story. I saw a lot of my own father in there so it touched me - it hit a certain spot in my own personal history," says Mulcahy. "On one level it's a story about a young man who loves to swim and strives to be an Australian champion and to go to the Olympic Games. On another level this story is about a father who has never quite made it and then uses his sons to try and accomplish something that he never achieved. Then on a third level you have a story about the family. I thought it was something that was really worth capturing on film."

The producers sent the script to Geoffrey Rush and were delighted when he agreed to play the role of Harold Fingleton, Tony's father, a hard-working wharf laborer struggling to support a wife and five children. Says Rush: 'I think Harold's generation was served a very bad period of history in terms of living through the depression following on into the war. These men struggled with their demons, as did Harold and were very frustrated by lack of work and money. They carried a lot of anger. I think they were also very poor communicators - Harold certainly was." He continues: "Like Tony, I grew up in Brisbane and saw a good deal of my own father in Harold. So this was a project I was particularly keen to be involved with - I felt very close to it."

Judy Davis plays Dora, Harold's long-suffering wife and mother to the five children. Says Davis: "Throughout history both men and women have had tough lives - I don't think that's restricted only to females and to one particular era. But certainly Dora does have a very hard life as do the children because they are all dominated by an alcoholic father. So part of the story is about alcoholism and the effect that has on the immediate family and about one man's fight to escape that situation. The film is uplifting though in that it offers a happy conclusion."


Australian actors Tim Draxl and Jesse Spencer play two of the Fingleton brothers, John and Tony.

Draxl, a newcomer to film, was immediately drawn to the story: "This script really did stand out. It's an Australian story and an historical story, and it contains a lot of powerful scenes. It's a great acting piece for a young actor. For me the story is about the two brothers' fight against each other competitively in swimming as well as their competition for their father's attention. John was caught up in a situation that was probably not in his favor in that his father gave him a lot of false security and too much praise, which in the end was John's downfall".

Jesse Spencer who plays the central role of Tony Fingleton agrees: "It was one of those scripts that really struck a chord with me. I had done a lot of swimming in my childhood but obviously not to Anthony's extent. It was such a powerful script with a moving message. Emotionally it's a real roller coaster ride about Tony's struggle to get out of Spring Hill where he grew up."

Draxl and Spencer had some intensive swimming training before filming began. Says Spencer: "They put us through weeks of swimming training where we had to get up at five am to train. I'd already done a lot of swimming, but I was a free-styler, I never did backstroke. So when they first put me in the pool they took one look at me and said you're going to have to do a lot of work! So I worked really hard and got to a standard where I was very confident in the water."

Comments Draxl: "I had swum but I was never particularly gifted and definitely one of the hardest things was the very intensive training. We had our own swimming coach and at five am in the morning we were the first people at the pool! 1 actually loved the physicality of the role though."

Writer Tony Fingleton worked very closely with the cast and with director Russell Mulcahy throughout filming and was there to fill in any gaps about the characters.

"If you play real people, whether they are well known to the public or not, you want to honour their history and certain qualities that they may have had," says Rush. "But at the same time you also have to invent or imagine or create the character and part of that is always going to be fictional."

Much of the film was however true to life. Says Fingleton: "It was a very unsettling experience. I would walk around the set and bump into ghosts, seeing Geoffrey and Judy looking just as my parents did. And the film set looked so much like my old house. It was truly extraordinary."

Fingleton also arranged for eight very well known Australian swimmers to play cameo roles in the film. Among them were Murray Rose and Dawn Fraser. Says director Mulcahy: "Tony of course knew them all really well, so it was terrific. Murray plays a reporter and Dawn plays a swimming trainer. It was a really fun day for everyone."
 
Mulcahy and his crew, including director of photography Martin McGrath and production designer Roger Ford - had a very clear idea of how they wanted the film to look and used some innovative methods to bring Fingleton's screenplay to life: "The water theme was very important so even in the house we sometimes have a water ripple effect and people even float in rooms. The film becomes rather internally spiritual sometimes. Those metaphors were very important", says Mulcahy. The difficulties of filming underwater scenes were also overcome: "We used a remote head crane that could actually swoop up and into the water, which was a wonderful device. In fact we used every camera device known to man and even had cameras tied to some of the swimmers. I also worked with a lot of split screens which is a very 60's technique - very "Thomas Crown Affair" - which is actually one of my favourite films! But the split screen works well for the swimming scenes in particular, because you can compress the time and tell two stories at once."

Mulcahy continued this attention to detail and layers of meaning throughout the postproduction process. In fact, two editors were brought in to explore the distinct sequences in the film -Marcus D'Arcy was the ideal editor to capture the layers of family drama in all it's hand held gritty glory, while acclaimed commercial editor Frayne- Dyke-Walker was brought in to edit the swimming sequences which, by comparison are sharp, vibrant and stylised.

Similary, Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor, Andrew Plain, was presented with unique problems because of the viewpoint shifting between harsh realism of the family drama, the lead character's dream-like imaginings and the excitement and tension of the swimming races. A delicate balance had to be established: On one hand the nitty gritty of Tony's daily life with densely detailed sounds of the neighborhood beyond the house, as well as the sounds of domestic turmoil (yelling, fighting, bottles breaking), on the other, the fantasy world into which Tony escapes in particular the safety of his underwater sanctuary.

Mulcahy comments, "If you listen closely during the scenes in the house, for instance, you will hear layers of sounds of the neighborhood in the background-dogs barking, children playing-all included to expand the environment and give the sense of a far larger and real context. Andrew buried an amazing amount of layers of sound into every scene in the film and was also extremely creative in capturing, via sound design, the escalating spirit of the young man versus the doomed fate of his father and how their two worlds coincide. The race sequences then became a focal point for the quick shifting between these two sonic styles - the world above and the world below. Really, there was a slightly heightened reality about all of the sound. Andrew textured naturalistic sounds behind the day to day life of Tony but as soon as there is a race or a highly charged emotional scene, he weaved surrealistic sounds into the atmosphere."

Much as the sound was layered in a subtle and almost imperceptible way, there are many special effects that were used throughout the film which might come as a surprise to the audience. Atlab Digital completed more than 50 Digital Opticals for Swimming Upstream. The most challenging being the complex split screens featuring the swimming races. Working in the digital realm allowed the production to preview all elements of these complex sequences prior to committing to film.

Simon Whitely and the team at Sydney's Animal Logic Film were responsible for the many composite shots in the film. "Swimming Upstrearn" contains 45 visual effects shots, many of which are centered upon the construction of 1950s /1960s swimming pools across Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne. These shots required crowd replication, CG construction of grandstands and matte painting skylines. According to VFX Supervisor Simon Whitley, the effects work to provide "not only a level of authenticity to the period but a sense of size and scale to what was in reality a limited location."

Live action footage from a mixture of Australian Olympic sized pools from Brisbane to Perth were used to create the various period pools on screen. The Sydney pool required the addition of the Harbour Bridge, a cityscape and period boats. VFX Producer Amber Naismith says that "The addition of background details such as lights, boats and trains has enhanced the life and movement of these scenes". Some of the locations which formed the backdrop to Tony Fingleton's story no longer exist, the docks and ships for example, and some had been transformed from their 50's and 60's look. In addition, the production was based in Brisbane , Australia, but the swimming races central to the drama took place in many different cities, different pools, and all with huge crowds, so although many different pool locations appear in the film, there was only one pool that was actually shot, and the VFX team created backgrounds and extended crowds.

The visual effects were also integral to the dramatic structure of the film. In contrast to the naturalistic style of the pool scenes, shots such as the Hallway sequence serve a more abstract function, signifying trauma, confusion or escapism. Water being symbolic of escape, the Hallway sequence sees the protagonist float off the ground and the walls ripple as if underwater. In keeping with the Director's vision, this optical effect was created with homage to techniques of the period; the image colored, stretched and distorted for a look of authenticity. And so these surrealistic moments of Tony's fantasy world were expertly turned into stylistic representations of Tony's inner world - the world which inspired him to become a champion.

Howard and Karen Baldwin are delighted with the way Swimming Upstream came to life in Mulcahy's hands. Comments Howard: "Russell Mulcahy and the entire crew took Tony's great screenplay and really shaped it. Then the cast added to that and made it something very special." Adds Karen: "It's rare that you know you have something magical, but this film truly is."

anthony fingleton
Anthony Fingleton's film credits include as Writer and Executive Producer "Drop Dead Fred" starring Rik Mayall, Phoebe Cates and Bridget Fonda and "Blast From The Past" as writer and producer. Theatre credits include "Over My Dead Body", the comedy which ran for seven months at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End starring Donald Sinden and June Whitfield which was subsequently performed in numerous American theatres. It was also performed in Tokyo and later aired nationally on Japanese television. Fingleton also produced "Preppies" a Musical that was presented on Broadway in 1983, directed by Tony Tanner.
 
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