SHORTS!

Presented for your edification, intrepid director Luke McGrath proves that wet weather is no impediment to outdoor shooting when one has the proper equipment.

So I won the ScreenACT Short Seasons competition. It’s the first time I’ve won a competition with a creative work and I’m embarrassed to say that it was a very exciting feeling. I feel like it was probably a triumph of reading the brief- my script is simple (both narratively and logistically) and engages earnestly with the theme of ‘Autumn in Canberra’.

I think the film will be a good showcase for Luke’s developing methods as a film maker. Hopefully the characters will resonate and be recognisable to other Canberrans. As a producer, I had to step up some of my skills a little, particularly location scouting. Quite frankly, the fact that I wasn’t acting in this one made my on-set experience a relative breeze. I tried to provide a writers perspective when I thought it would be helpful, but on the whole I was happy to stay out of Luke’s way.

Much more difficult was the Cracked Actor music video shoot, that with one thing or another we were forced to cram into two days in the middle of our larger shooting schedule. The video is for our forthcoming single Lemon On Your Lover, and my ambition was to create a three-minute, micro-budget, science fiction love scene.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the imagination and skill set of our production designer Julia Johnson, and the stunning performances of Marc Robertson and Ali MacGregor as the lovers in question. I ended up filling various roles on set, including Plastimake-Baker, Food-Dyer and Disposer-Of-Tongues.

Luke will be hooking into the edit after he hands in Lights, but the view from the viewfinder is very promising. I’m quite excited that we’ll have two pieces coming out that are so different from each other.

Shooting over the month of May created an interesting parallel with the story of Lights, in which the encroaching Winter becomes the organising principle in the characters lives. Suffice to say that I’ll be writing the next couple of projects for an indoor location!