Before Dawn Movie Premiere: Cast hit Belmont red carpet for WA-made World War I drama releasing April 4

Hollywood has come to Belmont, as the stars of Before Dawn, a WA-made World War I drama, walk the red carpet at the largest movie premiere in the State’s history.

Before Dawn castmates Levi Miller (A Wrinkle in Time), Travis Jeffrey (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Ed Oxenbould (Paper Planes) and Myles Pollard (How To Please a Woman) were among the 1500 invited guests at the world premiere, who turned up to watch Perth filmmaker Jordon Prince-Wright’s feature.

For Prince-Wright, the glitz and glamour of tonight’s black-tie event was the culmination of four years of work that, at times, was anything but glamorous.

“I never want to see mud or sandbags ever again,” the 26-year-old director joked to The West Australian.

With a scale and budget to rival the most ambitious movies ever made in WA, Before Dawn painstakingly recreates the Anzac trenches of the Western Front, based on diary entries of Diggers who were there.

“I got to read these diary entries back in high school, and, looking at those diaries and then looking at the film now, I just hope that I’ve done the Anzacs proud,” Prince-Wright said.

To put the scale of the film in perspective, the production required $900,000 of earthworks to turn Esperance farmland into hundreds of metres of trenches, and the smallest set on the film was made from 30 tonnes of timber.

And, to depict an epic barrage on the Hindenburg Line, Prince-Wright needed $1.4 million dollars of pyrotechnics.

“Months and months of planning went into that particular scene, for 15-20 seconds in the movie,” the director said.

“I was 600 metres away with the camera people and I felt the ground shake ... so can you imagine what it would have actually been like being in those trenches?”

Raising awareness of the ANZACs beyond Gallipoli was one of the goals of Before Dawn.

“If I can try to create some emotions, and have people walk away and realise the sacrifice that those guys and girls did for us then, yeah, job done,” Prince-Wright said.

Before Dawn is released national in theatres on April 4.