Interview: 3 48Hours Grand Finalists You May Not Know

The Rialto Channel 48Hours 2014 Grand Final is now just over a week away, and you can feel the excitement on our standing chest hairs. This is going to be an awesome night of cinematic New Zealand entertainment, and you should definitely join us at The Mighty Civic on Friday night May 30. Grab your tickets here.

We were fortunate enough to ask three talented Grand Finalists some questions: Julian Vares from veteran Christchurch group The Eh Team, whose Mistaken Identity film Le restaurant d’erreurs has landed them another Grand Final placing; James Simpson from Simo and Simmo, whose Revenge film Dick Off snagged a place in the Wellington city finals as well as a Peter Jackson Wildcard; Anna Duckworth from Mexico, whose Against the Odds film A Lesson on Probability completely demolished my film in the same heat – which may or may not have caused me to weep a little.

FLICKS: Firstly, a big fat congratulations to you and your team for making it to the Grand Final! When you handed in your film, how much time did you have to spare and how did it feel crossing the finish line?

SIMPSON: I think we handed it in about an hour or 45 mins early. Which is a change from the usual rush to the line for us.

DUCKWORTH: I jumped out of the car with five minutes to spare and director Benjamin Brooking came in with about three minutes to spare and we both handed in together. We were right down to the line with finishing the grade and sound mix – in fact I think we barely managed to finish the sound mix and we had to jump in the car and race to hand it in.

VARES: We finished our film about 2pm on the Sunday. We probably could have kept refining it some more but we got distracted and spent all afternoon eating burritos. Pretty sure we all went home and had showers before handing in our film actually. We all took a nice stroll down to the finish line at about 6.30pm. The finish line isn’t as eventful as it used to be back in the days of DV Tape submission.

How many years have you been competing in the competition?

SIMPSON: About seven years for our team Moffilaide. Myself and Simeon Duncombe, Simo & Simmo, were the only two members from the crew available this year up until the final minute, then Hayden Weal freed up just in time, so we had three of us this year of the usual five or six.

DUCKWORTH: I started out just helping other teams in Wellington seven years ago. Benjamin and I met at university and this is the fourth year we’ve done it together. We got into the 2011 Grand Finals the first year we worked together with our film Circus Animals – so that was pretty exciting for us.

VARES: This is our fourth year competing as The Eh Team. Before that there were various incarnations of the team competing under a different name, but I won’t tell you what it was.

What was your first reaction to receiving the conditions and your genre?

SIMPSON: “And, ahh, boom goes the dynamite.*”

VARES: We were gutted not to have received ‘Rom-Com’, as much as people complain about it ‘Rom-Com’ is actually the best genre. We seem to continually get quite specific genres like ‘Obsessive Relationship’, ‘Body-Switch Movie’ and now ‘Mistaken Identity’, so I guess we’ve become accustomed to working with these type of requirements. We liked that ‘Mistaken Identity’ wasn’t so much a ‘genre’ as it was a narrative device, which gave us a lot of freedom.

DUCKWORTH: All the elements were nice and vague, so easy to work into lots of different stories. We found the traditional ‘Against the Odds’ underdog storyline was taking us towards really trite obvious ideas – so we decided to take it in a more literal direction and put a character in the actual worst odds we could think of.

*this is a good thing

Give us a plot synopsis of your film in EXACTLY ten words.

VARES: One man’s lie causes havoc at a celebrity chef demonstration.

SIMPSON: Wife seeks bloody revenge on murderous husband and his henchmen.

DUCKWORTH: Boy fights the worst odds in the history of time.

‘The Eh Team’ took away the City Winner prize in Christchurch last year for the excellent ‘Is Love Enough?’, which was part of the ‘Obsessive Relationship’ genre. This year, you’ve placed as a Grand Finalist with the ‘Mistaken Identity’ genre. Do you find it easier or more creatively challenging to work with these very specific genres as opposed to more open-ended themes like ‘Horror’ or ‘Drama’?

VARES: Personally, I think it’s actually easier to work within the confines of a really specific genre, especially within 48 hours. We had ‘Horror’ a few years ago and it was definitely our least interesting film to date. Specific genre requirements force you into being creative and give you a chance to experiment.

Peter Jackson called ‘Dick Off’ “compelling viewing” – that’s a reward in itself – and that “NZ cinema needs more comedy and gratuitous violence!” Just how many ‘dicks’ can we expect to be ‘off-ed’ in this film?

SIMPSON: Yeah, we were all buzzing when we heard the news we were selected and so stoked when we read his review, such a cool thing to hear from the big man himself. We actually got Timelanders selected in 2010 as well and we always joke about the ellusive Peej wildcard and how it would be epic to get it again, but it didn’t happen so we almost wrote it off this year. An awesome surprise.

Don’t want to give away too much about the offing of dicks, but I can say there’s a good amount of strong female lead kicking ass and taking names.

What was the reason for the foreign-language approach in ‘A Lesson on Probability’?

DUCKWORTH: Both Benj and I are huge fans of the directing duo Canada (which inspired our team name) and we were admiring their short film Beyond Mountains, More Mountains and I got it into my head that some foreign language films are just sexy as fuck. There was something about it that I really liked. So I had it in my head for weeks in advance that I’d love to do a foreign language film for 48Hours if there was any way we could make it work.

I have a polyglot friend who speaks fluent Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian and German. We decided French was too cliche for our pseudo-romance and German or Japanese might be come across too clinical so opted for Italian.

How valuable was that extra daylight savings hour to your film?

DUCKWORTH: Invaluable. We were totally down to the wire and that extra hour of sleep/editing time was pretty huge for us.

SIMPSON: It was awesome. Our whole film is set outside and during the day, so it was key for us, especially taking into account the hour each way to drive to the country location.

VARES: I thought it would seem REALLY significant but those early hours of the morning just flash by in a sleep deprived blur. I don’t think we even noticed to be honest.

Were there any arguments/friendships ruined/fist-fights during the chaotic weekend?

VARES: Nah, sometimes I wish there were, we need more drama. We all know each other pretty well and have learnt to love each other’s idiosyncrasies.

SIMPSON: Nah we’re all really great mates, we’ve been making stuff together for like eight-ish years now, so we’ve ironed over just about every possible personality/creative crinkle you can imagine multiple times. We did however almost get “escorted” from a farm we were grabbing a shot on by a pretty angry farmer on a tractor.

DUCKWORTH: Yes.

“After ‘Brown Peril’ won in 2006, there seemed to be a never ending surge of copy-cat films.”

Can you name one noticeable difference between 2010 48Hours entries and this year’s 48Hours entries?

SIMPSON: Umm, not really. Everyone has obviously got really nice cameras/lenses and a great ability to use them now.

DUCKWORTH: Everyone is really honing the art and getting really good systems in place to make the most out of the 48 hours. Teams that have been doing it for many years are able to make crazy good films in a short amount of time. It’s really impressive. It’s so exciting to see teams that have kept at it and improved so much.

VARES: I think people are finally moving away from making silly mockumentaries, at least in Christchurch anyway. After Brown Peril won in 2006, there seemed to be a never ending surge of copy-cat films. Also, with every team shooting on DSLRs these days, a lot less films seem to hold focus for more than 50% of their duration.

In your opinion, is telling a good story enough to qualify for the 48Hours Grand Final?

DUCKWORTH: I think it’s the only thing that qualifies any film for the Grand Final.

VARES: Yes and no. As much as telling a great story is obviously REALLY important, in a competition that pumps out hundreds of films each year there’s a lot to be said for originality and an interesting genre interpretation.

SIMPSON: I guess it all comes down to the judging which is such a subjective thing, what one person may like, another may hate. I think good story telling is key, and those that have a strong story and execution of that story are always amazing to watch. But for us, it’s all about having fun. Obviously we try to tell as good a story as possible, but we generally don’t let that get in the way of cool stuff that we would want to see on the big screen. Seeing other people’s films at the finals has got to be one of the coolest things to do as a person who makes films. It’s so great to see all the effort, techniques, performances etc. and then chat to the people behind them after. It’s a great platform to just try stuff I reckon.

Finally, give us one 48Hours short film, from any year, that you love.

VARES: The Wham Initiative by The Gentlemen’s Agreement.

DUCKWORTH: I was blown away by the musical Lease. At the time I was just a fledgling filmmaker and found it very intimating to see what could be made in 48 hours. Hugely inspiring.

SIMPSON: Ghost Mother from the Wellington finals. That just confused so many people, and was so bizarre. I loved it. Don’t know about the rest of the guys, but I couldn’t stop singing the theme – “Ghost Motherrrrrrr, she’s a Ghost and a Motherrrrrrrr!” At least I think that’s how it went…

All the best for the Grand Final! I can’t wait to see your shorts at the Civic.

VARES: Cheers!

SIMPSON: Can’t wait! Oh yeah, and check out this Facebook page for a Moffilaide Crewed web series coming soon!