ArtView March 2015 | Page 36

recognition TVs can listen in on people’s conversations, and deliver these recordings to a third party without the user even knowing about it. So yeah, if we don’t start objecting to this kind of privacy invasion then there’s really nothing to stop our existing technology from turning biological once nanotechnologies and beyond evolve. The film has professional and non-actors in it – how has it been working with such a mix? I like to have a sense of realism in my films and often I find actors, even on larger budget films, are really playing themselves over and over again and not so much the character, which for me is the most important part of a movie. We selected the actors very carefully because in many cases, they weren’t acting at all, but rather the performances became fluid and real. You can see this when Frank (Collins) who is a seasoned actor and Zozie (Prudence) who’s never acted before in a narrative context emerge on screen together. When they both went into character, it was like watching someone else’s conversation instead of a process of merely reading the lines. Both of them instead delivered performances that became quite real and believable. Another example is Phil (King James) who plays a heretic, where after a few takes actually started to creep me out with his performance. I guess because I know Phil very well, when he turns into a ranting psycho killer it’s a little unsettling to watch because I know he’s the complete opposite in real life, and that just makes a good story even better. Many of the locations seem to be decayed and destroyed. Where did you film? I wanted the locations to be a kind of silent character in the movie, but at the same time didn’t have a budget to go travelling around the country or overseas. We set the boundaries to keep all filming in Victoria, where I live, and it had to be places where we could pack the crew and actors in the car and be in driving distance at all times. We started out in the Bellarine Peninsula and Geelong regions, then found other amazing locations in the Wimmera district in northwestern Victoria, especially around Donald and Birchip, and of course later on when we discovered Wonthaggi and Tooradin in the southeast. The nice thing about filming in these parts is that the locals always came out to help us, which for me was like adopting an entire town through the movie. We met a great guy up in Donald named James Goldsmith who introduced us to the folks and scenery I could never have gained access to otherwise, which really made the process of storytelling through landscape possible. I don’t think we could have made such a convincing film without James. Plus they make really good jam