The Production

Written in one sitting, can you believe that? Pretty unbelievable isn’t it? I knew you wouldn’t believe it.

This short video was created as part of my portfolio for submission into the Creative Arts program at Flinders University. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s actually the first video I made. The script I wrote myself but the story was co-written with Brad Cameron. I can’t speak for his inspirations, but for me it was pretty much all David Lynch and Mark Frost’s short-lived TV show “On the Air”. Track that show down, watch it, and then wonder why the hell you took the advice of some lunatic on a website.

Thanks to my brilliant archiving skills, I don’t know where the original files got to. The video was (probably) put together in Adobe Premiere, and the ‘visual effects’ were done in Adobe Photoshop. Originally my plan was to go through frame by frame, cutting out each of the people and treating them differently to the background, providing a much greater contrast between the two fields. About 2-300 frames out of around 6000 in, I realised the immense insanity of my plan, toned down the effects, and let Photoshop run a batch process. Then I recombined all the frames back in Premiere, and voila, the video was done. Somewhere in there I did something to do with deinterlacing, which is why the picture gets jumpy in places.

It was an artistic choice. Yeah, that’s it.

Sound was horrible on the day, with planes flying overhead, and wind whipping around us (we were in an old quarry). I didn’t care so much, since I didn’t have a mic, and I figured the camera was too far away to capture much mouth detail, we could just dub it over later. And you can tell. When it came time to record the dialogue later, I discovered that my recording setup was pure shit. Not surprising though. A Dick Smiths mic running into my semi-broken Gametheater XP box, recording on Adobe Audition (or it was probably still CoolEdit then). After around 15 seconds of recording, everything would turn to static. Every damn time.

I hate sound, and 3 years later my opinions haven’t changed. It is a pain. People who are good at it have my utmost respect.

So I goofed up in the break, and used a take recorded after some jackass (me) had bumped the camera. I don’t think anyone cares. Clearly someone liked the video, since I got into Creative Arts.

The Players

Brad Cameron and Jeff Malone star as the Sane Man and the Executive respectively. I went to high school with those two. Brad’s now in Japan, and Jeff is the manager of an EB outlet. I won’t say which one. Just keep walking into stores around SA and talk about “emphasising the synergy”.

Kat Sabadasz played the Femme, who is based on nobody at all. She’s now Kat Malone, and if I had a photos section on this site you’d probably be able to see the photos from her and Jeff’s wedding. I could make up some story here about how they met on set and the rest is history, but that would be fucking nonsense.

In the script there was a fourth character, the Mother. She would have been pushing the perambulator with the desk fan in it. I forget whether she had any lines or not. Anyway, we couldn’t find anyone to play it, so instead Jeff and Brad took the fan, a golf cart, and a whole lot of leftover fishing wire and created the Perambulator. I liked it.

Also stills on the day were taken by a fellow named Nathan, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Jesus Christ (aside from … you know … being white). I’ve never seen them though, which is probably for the best since I was in at least one of them.