The film-making process was broken into three separate stages.

The first stage was "Discovery" which began with Melanie's acceptance of a commission by the Mutitjulu Community Health Clinic to make an anti petrol-sniffing film to assist in combating the damaging practice that has ravaged its young people.

Whilst shooting the film, Melanie became aware of the "Why?" in the petrol-sniffing equation.

Community leader, Uncle Bob Randall, discussed with her at length the many factors that afflict young people in remote Indigenous communities. They talked for hours, many, many hours in fact!

When Melanie arrived home to Sydney she realised she had not one, but two films from the footage she had shot at Uncle Bob's home at the base of Uluru.

Once the petrol-sniffing film, "Petrol Wiya," was complete, Melanie embarked on the second stage of Kanyini's creation.

Through hours and hours of sorting through her collected footage, a story emerged, both heartbreaking and uplifting.

Melanie extracted the key themes of Uncle Bob's words from over thirty hours of footage and set about creating a linear story.

Uncle Bob then flew from Uluru to Sydney where much of the 'talking-head' footage was shot, in a studio in Melanie's backyard at home. This was then followed by several days spent back at Uluru where Bob guided the film�s eventual aesthetic quality via shooting in and around his traditional homelands.

The third and final stage of the film's creation was back in Sydney where Melanie edited the 3-chip footage into a beautiful narrative, accompanied by a stirring and quite stunning soundtrack, and some truly majestic black and white archival footage sourced from museums and libraries all around Australia.

Kanyini carries an ancient spirit into this modern world. Right throughout the film-making process, people have donated their time, energy, music, footage, guidance and support. To have made Kanyini without this spirit, support and generosity simply would have been impossible.