cookies in Donald so thus endeth my director’s diet
in a flash!
Has it been challenging trying to make an endof-the-world movie on such a small budget?
Every day was a challenge because we simply
didn’t have enough money to do the things we
wanted to achieve, but we devised strategies to
make things work without money, and put a lot of
emphasis back on the landscape and into the
performances. When a director works with good
actors it makes a world of difference and my film
was no exception. The hardest thing for me was
trying to stay focused (and awake) while
multitasking – that usually involved directing,
running camera, driving long distances, helping to
serve up food, location managing, 1AD, and
applying touch-up makeup, sometimes all at once.
But in saying that we worked with people who
understood that the only way to make our movie
was to wo rk collectively. In fact, every day, the cast
rolled up their sleeves and helped out behind the
scenes, which made me all the more proud to have
them in my movie. Frank loves his coffee and was
kind enough to share his own when he realized how
crap my instant version was being served in plastic
cups. I did though develop a DIY approach to fixing
easy solutions with no budget, especially in one
instance when the screw to the mattebox frame
broke, and I devised a way to hold up the side flags
with Blu-tac and chewing gum. It worked
flawlessly!
How much of the film has been shot already?
We’ve filmed nearly half the script in November/
December 2014, and have 15 shoot days to go. But
in saying that, a lot of the really hard scenes have
already been filmed. I made sure during the
scheduling process that we tackled the hardest
things first and got them out of the way.
You’ve already staged a very successful
crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo this year
for another film. Was that the reason why you
selected the same platform to raise money for
The Last Man in Vegas?
We tried very hard with the first campaign and
raised over 230% of our target amount, which made
completing The Tailor of Autumn a straightforward
task. We also found that Indiegogo are a nononsense, easy to use platform with quite an elegant
backend for campaign authors. The one thing I liked
the most was how simple it was to engage with our
supporters, and I’m looking forward to meeting new
people along the way with our current campaign.
We also learnt that crowdfunding isn’t just an
online process, so we have several pop-up events
planned over the next 8 weeks to engage and build
an audience instead of waiting for them to come to
us.
You filmed most of The Last Man in Vegas
yourself. Can you tell us any thoughts about
your approach to cinematography?
I really like films that were shot between the late
1960s and early 1980s, and of these some standouts
are Catch 22, 2001, Battle of Britain, Apocalypse
Now, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws,
Gandhi, and Raiders of the Lost Ark (I could watch
them a million times over). One thing I love about
these films is that the DPs used lenses and camera
moves to advance the story rather than to mask it,
and that’s exactly the approach we’ve taken in Last
Man where the future is primarily shot on a 21mm