THE cartoon series “The Road Runner” and legendary silent-era comedian Buster Keaton are the unlikely inspirations for a new short feature film about the founding of modern Belconnen.

In Justin Bush’s “The Surveyors”, a highlight of the coming Belco Flicks V – Belco50 marking 50 years since Federal minister Doug Anthony laid the foundation stone, writer/director Bush creates a comic view of the hard-working men who helped plan the present-day district.

In a piece of serendipity, Bush only recently discovered that he has a surveyor cousin in Yass – convenient, as he was able to source a genuine  theodolite from the 1950s.

Shot partly at Tulip Top on the Old Federal Highway and in his family’s property near Yass, the film shows two 1972 land surveyors who are unwittingly assigned the same plot of land – the bumbling accident-prone Oliver (named after the director’s one-year-old son) and his antagonist, known simply as “The Rival”.

Like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the pair are constantly on the lookout for the way to defeat the opposing surveyor – sabotaging chairs with glue, arranging a black eye and even resorting to a strange explosive bearing the label “Acme” – now that’s definitely one of the Coyote’s weapons.

Oliver is a nerdy public servant surveyor played by local stage actor Miles Thompson, while the smart, tougher one is performed by Zachary Drury.

It’s a far cry from the documentaries on the Canberra Railway Museum which Bush, by day a researcher at local ABC, has done undertaken before with his company Austography Film Image Inc.

“It’s a ‘hauteur’ sort of approach,” he says. “Expression is through movement, you don’t need talking, let the audience figure it out on their own.”

Composer David Williams believes that his music brief was to recreate the era of silent film, but when he saw it, he immediately responded to the comedy.

“The element of Buster Keaton, so introduced a bit of ragtime and some roots and blues,” he says.

Editor and co-producer Ryan Kerlin says: “Hopefully, it’ll get a laugh” – we’ve seen it and we think it will.

“The Surveyors” premiere, theatre@bcs, Belconnen Community Centre, Swanson Court, 6.30pm, Tuesday, November 8; at Belco Flicks V Festival, November 5 and BCS on November 8. Free, but all details at bcsact.com.au