After taking a true story of backpackers in peril and shaping it into a tense outback thriller shot with live salt-water crocodiles for Black Water, Traucki is once again returning to the truth for The Reef, drawing on a 15-year-old story of what happened to four travellers when their boat overturned off the coast of Australia.
Armed with more than double the budget of his debut film, Traucki will stalk his four tourists with sharks this time round, principally a 15-foot great white shark, as they swim through the cold ocean from their boat towards an island reef.
Traucki told ScreenAnarchy he has already undergone two bouts of filming so far for the film, recently shooting the climatic finale with the key actors off the coast of Bowen in Queensland, and earlier this year capturing the great white footage over four days at Port Lincoln in South Australia - yes, using real sharks.
"We used real crocodiles in Black Water and that was praised for its realism, so for The Reef we have already shot with real sharks, so it won't be CGI or lame animatronics but will hopefully be as realistic as possible," he said.
While Black Water co-director David Nerlich did much of the special effects compositing for that film, Doug Bayne is a surprise choice to head up the visual effects department for The Reef. He has previously worked mainly in TV comedy doing effects for Double the Fist, The Chaser's War on Everything and Lawrence Leung's Choose Your Own Adventure and more recently he was an animator on anticipated low-budget creature feature Primal.
Leading the cast of The Reef are breakout Australian actors Gyton Grantley (Balibo, Underbelly), Damian Walshe-Howling (Underbelly), Zoe Naylor of McLeod's Daughters and Adrienne Pickering (Out of the Blue). Kieran Darcy-Smith, who was most recently seen in Aussie noir The Square, completes the cast.
Traucki's producer on Black Water, Michael Robertson, is again on board for The Reef, having just completed Road Train - another outback horror, and another film that seems to homage Steven Spielberg, this one referencing Duel in its version of a supernatural truck.
The team are also planning what appears to be a first for an Australian film, a live stream from set of The Reef for one or two days of filming. Traucki said the crew will rig up two cameras on the Hervey Bay set and stream footage and interviews live from November 3 (Australia/NZ) and November 4 (US/UK/rest of world) due to time differences.
Stay tuned to ScreenAnarchy for more details on the live stream, or check out the film's website: http://www.reefmovie.com/