The Nicolson name isn’t the only one that appears repeatedly in the film’s closing credits.

Picture/sound editor and foley artist Gareth Van Niekerk (Ash vs Evil Dead, Tammy Davis’ Born to Dance, Jason Lei Howden’s Deathgasm) “helped me with so many things”; Craig Ellis, Zephir Delamore, John Munro, “were always keen to help in so many ways.

“People like that are essential.”

Plenty of others volunteered their time for a specific aspect of the production. Alana Cotton from Images & Sound who, in recent years, has also worked on other lower-budget features including Deathgasm, David Blyth’s Ghost Bride and Rene Naufahu’s The Last Saint, “went to great lengths to do the grading”; Sam Prebble (Mathew John Pearson’s Contract Killers, Steven Speilberg’s Tintin, James Cameron’s Avatar) “did all the effects himself – amazing”.

Karl Steven did an amazing job of the music, as he has on several dramas for Screentime (How to Murder Your Wife, The Monster of Mangatiti, Venus and Mars and the upcoming Bombshell) and South Pacific Pictures (800 Words, Tatau, The Blue Rose).

“He approached me which was so cool,” said Nicolson. “He just got it. Everyone’s given a huge amount.”

The actor who departed at the start of the second round of shooting was right about one thing. The shoot didn’t finish five months after it started, but ran for around 18 months. It was, Nicolson noted, a period of spending pretty much all week every week making and gathering the stuff required for the coming weekend’s shoot.

Inevitably that had financial consequences, and Nicolson funded the film through selling his artwork (his normal method of earning a living). At times during the shoot he needed to stop working on Boulder so he could complete artwork for an exhibition, sales of which would fund the next stage of production.

All up – including the $14,000 for the RED and the money spent in post – Nicolson reckoned he’s spent around $100,000 making the film, pretty much what Make My Movie was offering.