Film Festival
Conflux 4 will present a program of new and little-seen shorts and full-length SF and horror-fantasy films.
You will find below a selection of interviews conducted by our Film Festival co-ordinator, Rob Hood with the creators of some of the movies that we hope to be presenting.
Screening of the films mentioned here is conditional upon approval being given by the Australian Film and Television Classification Board
First World
-- directed by Adam Starr, written by Mark Lund, 2007.
This short SF film is set against an alternative-history account of NASA's exploration of the Moon. It presupposes that in the early 1960s NASA's first probes discovered a vast and advanced civilisation on the Moon, and false images of the lunar surface were transmitted during all Apollo missions in order to cover up the truth. While this civilization was able to shield itself from Earth-based visual detection devices, Kennedy's famous speech from 1961 that declared an intent to "Put a man on Moon and return him safely to the Earth" was not designed to instigate a space race with the Soviet Union, but to establish contact with this newly discovered civilization. First World commences in the year 2018 as the Chinese government announces that it is launching a manned mission to the Moon. Political intrigue explodes on Earth and the stage is set for an historic confrontation. To what lengths will some go to protect Earth and our way of life?
The short film is based on a full-length screenplay of the same name.
Interview with Writer/Producer Mark Lund
RH: What is your background in cinema, Mark? How has it fed into the "First World" project?
ML: Well, aside from being a huge sci-fi fan (I love Space 1999 and UFO), my background is largely in television as an on-air personality and in magazine publishing. I started to write First World in the spring of 2006 and my goal was to create something original that wouldn't stop at just one film, but create a franchise. The overall concept has changed several times, but it's fairly locked down at this point.
RH: Perhaps you can tell us something about "First World": what's it all about (without giving any surprises away)?
ML: The general premise behind First World is as follows: In the early 1960s NASA confirmed the existence of some sort of civilisation in the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon that was shielded from all Earth-based visual detection technology. The race to get to the Moon that we are familiar with was not a "space race" between countries; it was only designed to look that way. When the US reached the Moon in 1969 and made contact with this lunar civilisation it was quickly discovered who they were and what they represented. Thus three World governments led by President Richard Nixon ended manned missions to the Moon in 1972. First World commences in the year 2018 when the Chinese surprise the entire world by announcing they are making their first manned mission to the Moon in 24 hours. This worldwide cover up is now quickly unraveling and while it is referenced in the short and the long versions of the film -- at the end of the long version in particular -- you can pretty much guess who these people really are. As it says in the trailer "All that is believed is over."
RH: What is the film's developmental history? How did it come about? What is your aim in making it?
ML: The film really started out from two inspirations. One, I love the beaches of Cape Code and New England in general. Imagine you are on the beach during what is a normal regular Sunday when these great ships that look like advanced Concordes begin to appear out of nowhere. Secondly, I've always had a fascination with stories surrounding the numerous conspiracies related to the Apollo space program as well as the countless biblical references that suggest our culture was shaped by an extraterrestrial influence thousands of years ago. My aim in making this picture was to appeal to 1) all those who love a great science fiction story, and 2) to speculate on possibilities as to what would and could happen if even part of this story is true. How would civilisation truly react to the knowledge? Would the reality be embraced or would there be a faction within our own people that would do anything in their power to keep a global society ignorant?
RH: As the writer, were you driven by these thematic elements, or did the story grow out of production necessities?
ML: There were certain thematic elements that did drive certain parts of the story, but the story really grew as I was writing it. How would these characters react, how would they deal with what they are facing? You have a President who realises that the entire world has been lied to and who slowly determines what he must do to achieve a global peace, even it means war against his own military, while on the other hand you have the leader of an advanced civilisation that has been here for over 5,000 years and is also wrestling with not just the leadership of his own people and their mission but the Worldwide awareness of them and the explanations he will eventually have to make.
RH: How exactly does this short version compare to the feature-length version? How much of the full version actually exists?
ML: The short is a 25-min "sampling" of what is more than likely going to be a two-hour-and-30-minute production. The story is vast and in-depth and while there exists a good amount of special effects to really bring the viewer in, the focus is on the story through the characters that start off in a seemingly calm but troubled world and ending in the establishment of a new world order. Presently only a 2-minute trailer and the 25-minute short exist. My goal is to create interest in the premise with the short and introduce the project to producers and investors so that the script could be developed through to production of the long version.
RH: Is taking this route (making a short version) common practice?
ML: Not from what I have seen. Of course, you remember Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow. There, a 6-minute short turned into a feature-length film. Unfortunately, the film was not very well received. I enjoyed it, but I could understand some of the comments against the storyline. I wrote my long version first. Showed it to numerous people and then produced the short knowing the overall story line. I think having a short film really brings life to your project and shows a very serious interest by the creators in making the project happen. As you will see in the short, we have five principal characters, over 30 extras, six locations along with live animals and children! I believe from an investor point of view, or from the perspective of a producer, if someone were to look at the short they would say, "These are serious people."
RH: What about cast and crew? And the director, Adam Starr? What sort of experience is there? How did you find them?
ML: I've known director Adam Starr for several years. He has worked on a variety of film projects and has won an Emmy here in the United States. We have worked together on a few television commercials and promotional videos, so I was very aware of his capabilities and we work great together. He is also very budget-conscious, which is great and very rare with directors these days. We produced the entire short for just over $15,000 USD. The other actors came about from advertisements I placed on a website called Craigslist.com. I hired Angelina (Elisabeth) and Zeb (Cedric) here in Los Angeles. But we produced the entire short in Massachusetts. I'm from that state so I was very familiar with all the nuances of getting something done. By example, my cousin owns the house where we filmed in Dennis. But the mother of the girl who plays Elisabeth's daughter was a great find. She saw our ad on Craig's list while we were looking for an equestrian and she secured the entire horse farm, arranged the other riders and the extras. She was just excellent.
RH: What do you hope will happen with "First World" from this point?
ML: My hope is that through the short being screened at conventions such as yours, and while proposals are being generated and considered by producers and investors, combined with our online presence, that all our effects will form a catalyst and within these groups someone will see the value of producing First World.
RH: Any other ambitions beyond this film, or is it too early yet?
ML: I confess I've already made notes for a sequel. Of course, I have to get First World made first!
Watch If You Dare
-- Interview with Watch Me Producer Sam Voutas by Robert Hood
Watch Me is a new Australian ghost movie, directed by Melanie Ansley and starring Frances Marrington, Sam Voutas and Tanya McHenry. It follows in the aesthetic tradition of films such as the Japanese Ring, Ju-On: the Grudge, Dark Water and Kairö. It tells the story of a film-school student caught up in a supernatural infection spread via email attachment, and involves a snuff video, a red-haired ghost and the deadly injunction to "Watch me!"
I spoke to producer (and co-star) Sam Voutas.
RH: What's your background in film, Sam? What led you to make "Watch Me"?
SV: I studied film at the Victorian College of the Arts, at their now defunct fusion school - the SSCA. At that time we had a lot of classes on horror films, starting I guess with things like "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari": your typical film introduction courses. But I suppose I really started to get into it by joining the State film library and just taking out obscure titles from them every week. Nothing like the stuff you could get at your local video store. So horror began to sink its way deeper into my mind. I studied a lot of Freud at uni too, and when you look at film, its basic purpose is to get a reaction out of you, whether it's comedy, horror, tragedy, pornography - you name it. It has to get that physical reaction. So that interested me about horror, making a film with the intent aim of evoking fear and unease.
RH: Some of the film's influences are fairly obvious, others less so. Elsewhere I've argued that it falls into the J-Horror school of ghostly cinema, which goes far beyond the Japanese Ring and Ju-on: The Grudge into Thai, Korean, even US films. Does the idea that Watch Me represents an Australian branch of an international J-Horror aesthetic movement sit well with you?
SV: I completely agree that we're talking about an international aesthetic now. It's by no means fixed to one country. Mainland China and Hong Kong films are coming out with J-horror style films, too. It makes sense really. Horror was getting a bit repetitive, self-reflexive as they say, then in came J-horror, which just felt completely different, so it's really added a lot of spice to the genre. Watch Me would be very happy to be added to that family. Even if it is only the tiny ugly cousin three times removed.
RH: What about the avowed influence of Argento [influential Italian horror film director]? Where does that fit in?
SV: I think Melanie really felt that in terms of the style of shooting, the vibe, an old-school Dario Argento look was needed. And I was a big fan, and was really keen on blending these Asian and Western ingredients and seeing what happened. First off, we found Jericho, Preuss and Huf, a Melbourne band that had done a lot of work with the Melbourne Fringe Festival. We had a few beers with them as we played them tracks from Goblin [musical collaborators with Argento - RH]. Goblin add such an intense energy to Argento's films, so we all felt that, likewise, it was pivotal that the start of Watch Me had that type of creepy electric guitar oomph.
Also one thing you've got to say about a lot of Argento's stuff, especially the early stuff, is how much colour there is in the picture. It's really bright, not dark - really brash art direction. Especially if you're watching it on old VHS tapes, as we were, and the red is just bleeding all over the place. So I know when Melanie was shooting, she always wanted more colour, more contrast. Also, this may just be me, but I really do feel Frances Marrington, who plays the leading lady, looks a lot like Jessica Harper in Suspiria! Uncanny really.
RH: Can you tell us something of the history of Watch Me? How did it came about?
SV: First, I wanted to produce a film that people would pick out at a video store! I mean, you've got thousands of titles; how do you choose? One way to do that is to have a title that just grabs you from the get-go. I'd made a documentary called "The Last Breadbox", and that was a film where when people heard the title, they just had a confused look on their faces. So, from a producer's standpoint, I was really pushing for a project that had a super marketable title, and was in a genre that would have a big audience. So I think we may have started with the concept of an internet virus, knew it had a great title that could work, and went from there.
RH: What problems were caused by low-budget independent production and how did you work to overcome them?
SV: On the shoot we had very few problems! People pretty much knew that this wasn't a big film and put their egos to the side. Indie film is really too small for egos. Of course, there were the usual technical or set problems, but doing things indie for the most part actually makes things easier. You do things your way, you have control. No need to take something to a higher authority and seek permission regarding content or style, as you have to do so painstakingly in TV.
RH: Any other production anecdotes that are worth hearing?
SV: If you're looking for the ultimate in a hellish horror filmmaking experience, you've got to check out "Demon Lover Diary" by Joel DeMott, about the making of a horror film in the late 70s. Much more exciting than anything that happened on our production! But poor Frances with her eyes taped open in the torture scene - I really did feel sorry for her. We had to keep re-applying those bandaids. But she was a real trooper, she kept on asking if the screams were real enough, and if for some reason there was a problem, she was always the first to put her hand up for another take.
RH: What about the other crew members, particularly director Melanie Ansley and lead actor Frances Marrington? What's their story? How did they get involved?
SV: Melanie was getting funding for a documentary up at Hot Docs when she approached me about doing a horror. I think she was just fed up with how difficult the doco rat race was and wanted to do something completely different for a change. Something that would be lots of fun, but also have an audience when it was done. A bigger audience than documentaries anyway! Frances was just this really spunky, confident actress who we both knew immediately was right. She's got the maturity and the shoulders to carry a film. She really analyses the character, looking for motivations, backstory, asking loads of questions.
RH: You did some acting in the film yourself, as Taku, the freak boy. How was that experience?
SV: I loved the experience. As we were writing the script I could tell I was itching to play this guy, and it really was the highlight of the entire project for me. I originally got into film through my interest in acting, and Taku really is a very meaty part from an actor's standpoint. He's the most complex character in the film; he's the most multi-layered, and the hardest to pin down. Is he a good guy, a bad guy, a jerk? You're never really sure whether you like him or hate him. I think people also warm to him because he's quite a naughty boy!
RH: What sort of role do you see independent films playing in the current cinema scene? Do they serve a purpose beyond being a "calling-card" for larger studios to see what talent they can draw from?
SV: I think the chances for exposure are opening up for indie filmmakers. Less and less film revenue is coming from the cinema and more is coming from new medias. This provides a chance for the indies as it's so notoriously hard to get your film into a cinema. Take China for example; the majority of the box office goes to Hollywood films, and the remainder goes to two local master directors, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Even if an indie gets into the cinema, they're competing with other indies for some five per cent of the pie. But DVD, pay-per-view, TV, and now the net - in these realms the indie has more power. So it's a far cry from the 60s say, when there were only a few people who could even have access to the equipment needed to make a film, not to mention the money required.
RH: How has the film been received so far? Have you been happy with the way audiences have responded and the exposure it's managed to get?
SV: The critical reaction from the online horror community has been great. It's amazing how huge horror is on the net; it's just an endless spider web of gore and shock lovers. So most of our publicity has come from the online community, people putting up links, reviews, interviews, TV web spots. We're actually hoping to take Watch Me back to Asia for a special Halloween screening and Q&A, see how that goes. It would be cool to do Seoul; if that doesn't work, maybe China somewhere. Now Japan, that would be something.
RH: What about plans for the future? Is there hope for a "Watch Me 2" - maybe a studio version with a bigger budget, as happened with Raimi's Evil Dead 2?
SV: Yeah, we've often joked around about potential sequels, and what their titles might be. Though "Watch Me Again" has a bit of a corny sound to it. I guess the last one could be "Watch Me Over and Over and Over Again". You know, we get asked this question a lot. If the audience wants it, there'll be another one.
RH: Finally, is Watch Me going to be officially available on DVD any time soon?
SV: Yes! But I don't want to let the cat out of the bag just yet. The thing with indie distribution is, it takes time. Your film has a two-year festival shelf life, and all that while it's gaining word of mouth and buzz - which are helping to build its market base. What I'm really hoping for is that we can find something in Australia. Typically it's much easier to get the film on DVD overseas, ironically! So a home-win for this one, just for sentimental reasons, would be the icing on the cake.
~
For more information regarding Watch Me, go to the website at http://www.watchmemovie.com.
Answering The Call
-- An Interview with The Call of Cthulhu Producer/Screenwriter Sean Branney (and director Andrew Leman) by Robert Hood
The Call of Cthulhu -- based on one of H.P. Lovecraft's most iconic stories and produced under the auspices of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society -- is a remarkable film not simply in capturing much of the tone and atmosphere of Lovecraft's fictional universe, but in taking a rather left-field approach to its conceptualisation. The film is made in the manner of a 1920s silent film; this is reflected in production design, acting styles and narrative technique -- so effectively that it would be easy to believe that it had actually been made back then.
I asked producer and screenwriter Sean Branney about the project.
RH: What is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society? Does it have a history beyond filmmaking? And if so, how did the HPLHS get into show business?
SB: The HPLHS was originally formed as a group surrounding our live action gaming activities back in the 1980s. We published a small fanzine for a few years and then formed a website. Andrew [Leman] and I are both theatre guys and eventually we produced a mockumentary film, A Shoggoth on the Roof. That led to several audio projects and eventually The Call of Cthulhu.
RH: Why choose The Call of Cthulhu to film? It's not an easy one! Was it your first film effort?
SB: It's very seminal to Lovecraft's body of writing, it's one of the more cinematic Lovecraft stories and it's never been adapted to the screen before. It seemed like a good challenge. We'd made a couple of other short films, but nothing approaching this scale and complexity.
RH: Why did you decide to film The Call of Cthulhu the way you did? It's a very unusual approach to take. How did that come about?
SB: One of the key elements of Lovecraft's work is the sense of atmosphere he creates. We wanted to keep that atmosphere and try and tell the story without adding a lot of superfluous elements (e.g. car chases, girlfriends, dogs, etc...). We thought if we adapted the story the way it might have been adapted back when Lovecraft was writing, we might be able to keep the atmosphere of the piece in our movie.
RH: Lovecraft -- in the purest sense anyway -- hasn't fared all that well on film in the past. Re-Animator is a deserved classic, of course, but not overly Lovecraftian in feel. There are others -- such as Die, Monster, Die, the 1970s The Dunwich Horror and the deceptively titled Edgar Allen Poe's The Haunted Palace -- that I enjoy as films, but again aren't very faithful to their source material. Stuart Gordon's more recent Dagon got fairly close, I thought, though not based on a single work. Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness was very Lovecraftian, but not based on a Lovecraft story. Your film is probably the closest thing to an accurate translation of a Lovecraft story to film. What are your thoughts on Lovecraft in the cinema? Why is Lovecraft so hard to capture on film?
SB: HPL is a very literary writer. He writes about ideas and atmosphere more than characters and plot. Some of the adaptations haven't succeeded because they've remained so close to the source material that they don't satisfy us dramatically in the way we've come to expect from movies. Others overcompensate by bringing so many of the trappings of Hollywood that they leave HPL and what made the story good out of the picture.
RH: Do any of those involved in The Call of Cthulhu have a background in cinema production?
SB: Oh sure. Most of the actors are professional actors here in Los Angeles. Leman and I both have Masters degrees in theatre and have worked on many movie projects. David Robertson, our director of photography and editor went to film school and works in television here in LA all the time.
RH: What problems did you face in producing the film? How did you overcome them?
SB: We had a lot of challenges, the biggest of which is that we were just two guys in a garage with very limited resources trying to make a fairly large movie. We leaned on the skills and good will of many friends to help us get everything done. We learned that finding a 1908 paddywagon is tricky, even in Los Angeles. But we got one. Mostly we overcame problems through a mix of creativity and stubbornness.
RH: Andrew, what artistic problems did you face in bringing the story to the screen? Any interesting anecdotes about the process? What were your personal aims?
AL: The main artistic problem was being true to the spirit and atmosphere of the original story while at the same time making an entertaining film. Lovecraft's stories lack or de-emphasise many of the elements (like plot, dialogue, character relationships) that movies need. By doing the film in the style of a 1920s silent picture, we believed we could bridge that gap. Another major problem was doing all this with the very limited resources we had at our disposal. The scope of the story is immense: numerous international locations, dozens of characters, fantastical underwater cities, hundreds of naked cultists in a swamp, boats and monsters, dreams and nightmares, the passage of decades of time. How to realise all this in an oversize garage in the suburbs of Los Angeles? My personal aim was to create a film adaptation that was as true to Lovecraft's story as possible, and to create a film that was as authentically 1920s as we could make it.
There are more anecdotes about the making of the film than would fill a book, but I'll tell you a couple that have to do with Australia. In his efforts to track down the fate of the crew of the Emma, the Man (played by Matt Foyer) travels first to Wellington, NZ and then to Sydney. We needed some period exterior shots to set the scene of his travels, so I went looking for stock footage featuring Sydney from the 1920s. It was extremely difficult, but I did eventually track down a General Motors promotional film from 1927 which included shots of Melbourne and Canberra. There weren't any images from Sydney, however, and the Australian cities that were included didn't look quite right for our purposes, so the vintage shot of the museum exterior you see in the film is actually from Brussels, and the Sydney government building is really in Stockholm, both from that 1927 GM movie.
There is a very important Australian prop in the film: a copy of the Sydney Bulletin. In doing my research I learned that there really was a publication called The Bulletin published in Sydney in the 1920s, which lives on as the glossy magazine of today. It may or may not be the same publication that Lovecraft was thinking of: he might have been referring to a daily Sydney newspaper, rather than the weekly magazine, but back in the 1920s the magazine was published in the form of a newspaper. Finding 80-year-old back issues of an Australian magazine in the United States was impossible, but I wanted to make our prop version of the publication as authentic as possible. So I sent some email to the reference librarians at the State Library of Queensland explaining the situation, and they very obligingly looked up old issues on microfilm and sent me photocopies. The prop you see in the movie is a detailed replica of the actual Bulletin as published in Sydney in 1927. We have a PDF of it on the DVD, and if you print it up you can read actual articles and advertisements from the real thing. You'll see that the Queensland reference librarians get a thank-you in the closing credits of the movie.
RH: What about the actors? Where did they come from? What was it like being an actor working in a rather unique setting?
SB: My wife and I run a small theatre in Los Angeles and many of the actors in The Call of Cthulhu are actors we've worked with in the theatre company. We also held open auditions and had hundreds of people submit their resumés for even some of the very small roles. Most actors actually found it pleasant to work on a set where the director can talk to them during the take. It lets you work a little more efficiently than you can on a set which has to be silent.
RH: What do you (all or anyone) think about the film, now that it's entered the world and has been introduced to the public? What kind of response has it received?
SB: We made the movie for ourselves and we were pretty naïve about the life it would have after we were done shooting. The Call of Cthulhu has been shown at major film festivals all over the world; it's won a number of awards and we've sold far more copies of it than we ever imagined possible. Lovecraft fans have really taken to it and on the whole seem happy to see a Lovecraft movie which really embraces the qualities that make HPL an extraordinary writer.
RH: What sort of role do you see for independent film production in today's climate? Is it merely a stepping stone to bigger and better things or does it have a value of its own?
SB: I think the indies have demonstrated that they are here to stay. People are making independent films that the major studios (and even their "independent" sub-labels) wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. As the technology has become more affordable, idiots in garages just like us all over the world can shoot their movies and actually find an audience for them without involving The Man. It's incredibly liberating. Some filmmakers will want to use their projects as stepping-stones to lead them to careers in the mainstream, but I think there are a lot of filmmakers who will also be very content to make their own pictures without pursuing a career that involves The Man.
RH: Tell us about your radio production of "At the Mountains of Madness" [mentioned on the website].
SB: "At the Mountains of Madness" is a terrific story, but to tell it well as a movie, we would need a whole lot more money than we have. So, we thought once again we'd turn to the technologies of Lovecraft's age. Part of what works so well with the novella is the spectacular images which you imagine as you read it. In a radio drama, we could provide sound effects and music that would be evocative, but the listener would still have the experience of conjuring these powerful images in their imaginations. We've been very gratified that so many of our customers who never listened to old radio shows have found ATMOM (and radio drama) to be a very exciting way to experience a story.
RH: What's next for your company?
SB: We're currently in pre-production for another motion picture. This time we're taking Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" and adapting it as a feature-length early 30s talkie. Sound is an important element in the story, so we didn't want to go silent with this one. We're scheduled to start shooting this fall.
~
Visit the Call of Cthulhu website at: www.cthulhulives.org
Sea-changes
-- An Interview with Liminals producer, writer and director Claire McKenna by Robert Hood
Liminals is a low-low budget SF film made by Melbourne-based Claire McKenna. It concerns a future in which genetic body modification has result in the rise of a new species of humanity, with resultant struggles over identity and territory. It is also a love story.
RH: What is your background in film, Claire?
CM: Media was one of my majors in Uni. Rusden (variously a Victoria College and Deakin campus) had a fairly extensive media course - I think a few filmmakers were spawned from it. But ... and it's a pretty big 'But' ... I was also doing biological sciences and I found that subject a hellavalot more interesting, so I never really considered the media studies as anything but points to a degree back then. How bad is that!
RH: Why did you go for this particular story as your first major venture into film-making?
CM: I already had a script written for it, and after Project Greenlight it was one that I had already psyched myself up into doing. [Note: Project Greenlight was a reality TV show that ran for a couple of seasons on pay TV, sort of an Australian Idol for filmmakers.]
RH: Tell us about the film, Liminals. What's it about? What were you attempting to achieve with it, artistically?
CM: It was combination of things. One inspiration was a conversation at Fast Eddies in Perth during a Swancon - 2000, I think - where we discussed how copper-based blood - haemocyanin as opposed iron haemoglobin - is present in some animals that live in low oxygen environments. Then there was a throwaway line in a New Scientist article ... "water is liminal" ... I can't even remember what the article was about. So I wanted to do a story about humans who were engineered for different environments and what conflicts might arise from that. It struck me how bioengineered organisms are the embodiment of what it is to be "liminal" to be permanently in a transitory state. There's a line in the movie where Sarah says, "it's awful being trapped in transition, neither one thing or another". The problem was how to express these ideas visually. There was a lot that was cut out of my original script due to expense and just unwieldy dialogue. There are a few subplots concerning the militarisation of technology, and trying to fix one problem by introducing another even less desirable element. Again, I felt the novella version conveyed things better than moving images do. I'm still biased towards prose.
RH: Obviously there was relatively little budget involved. What problems did this create for you and how did you attempt to overcome them?
CM: I had to resign myself that nothing was going to look real, and take on the theatre principle that if you suggest something - like a porthole in a window - people will interpret the rest themselves. Some creative editing helped! Then I had to spend the year keeping an eye out for locations. My best "find" was a section of old sewer pipe that was big enough for the only true "Liminal" shot in the movie.
RH: Do you have any interesting stories to tell about the production itself?
CM: A couple of funny things happened. We hired out a community centre for the lecture scene. Unfortunately we got double booked with a Hindi wedding, so it looked like we were going to have a Bollywood production on our hands. Luckily the centre managers let us go an extra hour for free. Another time was when we dressed Miranda Siemienowicz in her squid costume and a bystander stumbled upon the scene ... he ran away pretty quickly!
RH: Did the whole of the production side of things fall on your shoulders? Who else was involved?
CM: I couldn't have done it without a lot of people, but the guys who were there for EVERY SINGLE DAY - Steve Gleeson, Edgar Loutit, Jane Loutit and my partner Eric Friebel - helped all the way through. I couldn't have done it without them. Then there were people like Garfield Barnard, Russell Devlin and Darren Maxwell who helped out with props and expertise, and even Cat Sparks flew in from interstate to help out. That's commitment.
RH: What about casting? How did you get your stars? Clearly they weren't all like me - that is, in the film without knowing it until the first showing!
CM: Steve - as Arkady Fisher, the hapless protagonist - was the first cast. He is also an avid theatre actor as well as a writer, so I knew he would be sympathetic to the material. Edgar Loutit is one of my long-time partners-in-crime and he was willing to try anything. I put a call out on the various mailing lists and secured several people - a few had to quit for time reasons, but that's how I met Clare McDonald, who plays Kathy. A lot of people from Supernova Writer's group donated themselves or their kids. And, yes, occasionally I would find some snippets of footage that helped with the story - even if they weren't aware of it at the time!
RH: Post-production was a lengthy and thwart time for you, wasn't it? What was going on there?
CM: Oh god, I had a huge editing system crash when I pushed my computer to the utter limit trying to put a copy back to tape. What made it worse was that the Convergence screening was going to be that night! Luckily I had a saved copy of an earlier first draft edit on my desktop. I knew that people were depending on a Saturday screening to give the convention some content. Eric burnt a DVD and Terry Frost loaned his laptop to play it after we had interlacing problems.
RH: Are you pleased with the result?
CM: It looks nothing like what I imagined it, but it really is something that I'm not embarrassed to show to other people, at least!
RH: What role do you see for independent productions in the film industry?
CM: It's the training ground, I think. Sort of a demonstration of commitment when you want to take things to the next level and secure funding. That's the holy grail, isn't it?
RH: What advice would you give to prospective filmmakers?
CM: Delegate. Plan and plan and delegate. Then get the project finished. Getting it finished is probably the hardest thing. People get disappointed when what was supposed to be an enjoyable pastime and hobby becomes work, but that's the wall that has to be overcome every time.
RH: What sort of feedback have you had for the film?
CM: Even with the crappy first draft, people were saying "it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be". Which has to be constructed as some sort of compliment!
RH: What is the future of Liminals?
CM: Ultimately, Claire's Show-Reel Part One. And perhaps not even that, but at least less time than film school. You know, I have ideas for a sequel of sorts, but that'll need a bit more money and might be a long while yet.
RH: What about you? What's next?
CM: My next foray is into the 24-hour Film Festival Shoot Out in Geelong during September. That's the planning and shooting of a short film over 24 hours, all editing in camera. I'm writing a couple of scripts now. I want to do one more movie myself before I start blowing other people's money! The learning curve has been extraordinary. I am so glad I stuck with this the whole way through, I really am.
~