Interview: ‘Jake’, the self-funded Kiwi movie that could (and did)

Veterans of the 48Hours filmmaking competition, Hybrid Motion Pictures have spent the last six years bleeding from the knuckles and putting their talents to use on their self-funded feature Jake. The film makes its premiere at Auckland’s Academy Cinema on Friday, June 27 (you can buy tickets to it by clicking here) and will make its way to Wellington’s Paramount from July 11. More info and showtimes can be found on the official website.

Jake is a comedy-drama about the overworked and underappreciated Jacob, a man who has given up on pursuing his dreams. Unable (or unwilling) to turn his life around, a mysterious agency inexplicably hires an actor to recast his role as “Jake” – opening Jacob up to a new life. However, this new charismatic lead is able to turn this once-nightmarish old life back around, charming everyone he knows including his lost love Violet. Jacob soon sees the value in the life he took for granted, but an electro-shock anklet prevents him from disturbing Jake’s performance, and the actor isn’t going to give up this role of a lifetime…

We’ve seen it, and what they’ve achieved on a next-to-no-budget is damn near Herculean effort of DIY filmmaking. Dominic Corry has also seen it, calling it “an entertaining and insightful slice of Twilight Zone-ish fun.”

We had a chat with writer-director Doug Dillaman and co-producer Alastair Tye Samson about the film, as well as how bloody difficult it is to make a self-funded feature in New Zealand.


We have to congratulate you on being in the top 10 Kiwi sci-fi films according to NZ OnScreen.

DOUG DILLAMAN: Wow! That’s great! It’s funny because I never originally thought of it as a science fiction film. It’s great because I’m a genre fan and I love an inclusive notion of bringing up things like Being John Malkovich’s science fiction, instead of “oh, it’s only science fiction if there’s a space ship.”

ALASTAIR TYE SAMSON: As we were in production, we were comparing it that Malkovich idea of science fiction and that’s what we thought we were making. However, we were referring to it as magical realism throughout the process and I think it was the film commission who first called it sci-fi – we were both like… “We made a sci-fi film?”

DD: There’s a term called speculative fiction which is not necessarily about a scientific twist, but it is about changing a thing that we take for granted in life by wrapping it up in science fiction, magical realism, fantasy and other genres. I think that’s a good umbrella term but not really a widely known one so we’ll go with science fiction.

This idea about being recast in your own life – it kind of sounds like you may have been inspired by a loser friend you know. Is that true?

DD: It was actually inspired by Jake Gyllenhaal. When I first came up with the idea – I think it was around the time when Jarhead came out – Jake Gyllenhaal was being displayed as this tough guy after we’ve known him as Donnie Darko. I didn’t really buy it but a lot of people did, so I wondered: if his name was Jacob, would people buy that?

I think about that a lot as a “Doug” who definitely doesn’t go by “Douglas”. I also have friends who are “Dave” and others who are “David”; their birth certificates look the same but are very particular about what you call them. So the way your name influences you, and then that idea of what someone could do with your life are the two elements that were the original DNA strings for Jake.

Hybrid Motion Pictures are 48Hours veterans, in fact you’ve gone to the Auckland City Finals three times including last year and had a film in the national finals too. Those are all around four to six minute films, but ‘Jake’ is 88 minutes long and according to my calculator, that should have taken you a month to do. However, it took you six years, which is pretty slack considering but I won’t judge you for it. Given it’s a self-funded film would you says it’s actually time that’s harder to acquire than funds?

ATS: We actually shot at a 48Hours pace and had our first cut at a 48Hours pace. I think our first cut was locked about a week after wrapping. That cut was about 120 minutes long and, using the 48Hours metaphor, that 120 minute movie would not have been an Auckland City Finalist. Given we had no hand-in deadline, it made no sense for us to call it a day and almost all of the remaining time has been spent working on the offline edit, finding the best version of the story and whittling away at our duration.

We’ve taken out whole characters in service of the story, which is a bummer because some of those performances are incredible and no one will ever see those. But the 88 minute version that’s going to be in cinemas is unquestionably the best version of the film and that’s taken us four to five years to get to.

We were also in the colour grading suite for Jake with our colourist Alana Cotton at Images and Sound and we were literally debating the size of the grain structure that we were putting back over the top of the sharpened picture. And that’s not something you would have the luxury to debate in a 48Hours time frame.

Casting Jake and Jacob must have been tricky; did you ever consider just having one person to play a duel role?

DD: I think everybody else considered it more than I did. I was really weary about the technical side of pulling that off on a low budget. Sometimes, it can work really well – Dead Ringers executes it brilliantly – and I certainly brainstormed on it a bit, because I was so afraid that people wouldn’t buy the central conceit. However, in the script I got around that by saying the actor who replaces Jacob is very similar looking.

And he also has “the power of acting” on his side.

ATS: I’m glad you picked that up!

DD: I think with almost any film, there’s an act of faith required to buy into the premise.

ATS: If I remember correctly, Leighton, who plays Jake, was the only person who came in under the assumption that he was auditioning for both roles and that the character would be played by the same person. He insisted on auditioning for both parts.

DD: Do you want to do a remake where he does both parts?

ATS: No.

You would have a massively different film if it was the same person because having those slight differences between Jake and Jacob, it gives the idea that people are willing to buy into the act of seeing their loser mate as a faultless person…

DD: That’s sort of the dark truth that I was wrestling with: in some people’s lives, they don’t care about the interiority of Jacob, they don’t care about what’s going on in his life or ripping him away from a blind date or anything else. As long as the functionality of this person – somebody who can get this “job” done – remains intact, that’s all that really matters.

ATS: The difference makes you instantly think about it. And that’s probably a big part of where the final casting decision came from.

What advice would you give to someone who is hmming and hrrring about making a self-funded film for the first time?

ATS: I think you’ve got to have an audience. There’s no point in making a movie if no one’s ever going to see it. So have a story that you’re convinced is worth telling, truly worth telling, and tell it well but know who it’s for. Before you start. Before you even put pen to paper.

DD: It is an emotional, psychological and a creative commitment. So it has to be something that comes from a place where you really want to give that much of yourself to and that the rewards in the end are going to be worth it for you.

There’s also a lot of different ways to tell stories now with moving pictures, so it’s important to ask yourself what you want out of your story and to be attentive – “Would this work better as a web series or maybe developed for television?” For me, I’ve really loved features for so long, and we’ve all had this burning desire to make one.

It would be so easy for someone who has made a self-funded NZ film just to say: “Screw it! I’ve tried to push it to cinemas and it is way too hard. I’m just going to slap it on demand and hope people like it.” Why do you think ‘Jake’ deserves to be seen in cinemas?

DD: There’s still a perception that a cinema release gives it legitimacy, so there’s that side of it. Plus, all of the work that everybody put in it in terms of performance and craft, like Peter Evans our editor who did an amazing job, deserve to have their work seen at the end – and I didn’t want that quality lost in a bunch of YouTube links.

ATS: All of us grew up passionate about movies and there’s a magic of seeing it with an audience in a shared environment. I don’t know a single person who’s passionate about movies but is like “I hate the cinema; I just like to watch stuff on Blu-ray”. That’s fine, I love watching stuff at home, but there’s definitely magic to the shared experience.