…and then I woke up, and realised I’d made a really shit film

October 04, 2006 15:39

By Susan van der Heide

It’s as if nothing hilarious can happen in Dunedin without some random guy popping up from the neighbouring flat and screaming, “OMG! We should make a Mothra about it!” As if students need any more excuses to drink copiously, fling ourselves off cliffs, harass random South Dunedin-ites and burn stuff. But add a camera, and suddenly it’s not a Code of Conduct violation, it’s Art. Do it several times over, and you’ve got the Mothra Film Festival: a whole series of notoriously crappy but thankfully short films unleashed on the unwitting public in a week-long saga that will leave you dazed, sweating and slightly baffled. But as we mere viewers furrow our brows at yet another unexplained in-joke, there is one question that is left unanswered amongst all this cinematographic greatness: Why bother?

For the love of God, why?
So what inspires people to grab a camera and, say, start shooting their flatmates running around in tighty whiteys? Do visions of Mufasa appear in the clouds and let them know what the theme of their Mothra is going to be? After talking to some of the people who actually decided to make a Mothra this year, it turns out that neither Mufasa nor Jesus was behind most of their film concepts. Asher Fiatt, for example, did his first-time documentary Wild Dunedin on a bunch of “sort of fake animals” that “could be in Dunedin.” Apparently, his mate in a bird suit dropped out on him for reasons unexplained (possibly some serious chafing), and he was left to fend for himself. Understandably, he was pretty gutted until a new theme came to mind. “It just sort of came to me,” he claims. “I was going for a mix between Monty Python and David Attenborough.”
Malcom Monteith, another first-time film-maker, experienced a similar phenomenon of miscellaneous inspiration. His hand-drawn animation Kamikaze Bunny begins with a bunny rabbit suffering from a serious bout of depression during (ironically enough) the great depression. “Originally, it starts by him looking for a job as a superhero in the newspaper, and he can’t find one so he’s kinda down,” says Monteith. Instead of continuing with his plight, the bunny goes AWOL and turns semi-psychotic, reminiscent of a particularly hilarious Monty Python skit. Apparently, this was not the idea behind the film. “It was just a random idea, really,” he claims. So was Snakes on a Plane, no doubt. Emily Jennings, a slightly more experienced Mothra maker and creator of The Aetherius Society Presents…, found inspiration in a miscellaneous religious website discovered by her Philosophy lecturer. Remember how I said Jesus wasn’t an inspiration? I may have lied. “It’s this really weird religion,” explains Jennings. “I went and looked it up, and the website is just bizarre.” It may not have Tom Cruise like the Scientology guys do, but apparently it’s just as good. “It was really funny and ridiculous.”
So what’s the point in going to such lengths to make crappy films about obscure things? Popular opinion would have us believe that making a Mothra is nothing but a time-waster, but an extensive survey of approximately 5 people has proven that this is nothing but a vicious rumour: making Mothras could, in fact, be a strategic career move, like joining the Armed Forces or working at McDonald’s. After all, the world is clearly short of people making shit films, right? Fiatt is the first to admit he’s just here to rub noses with the powers that be in the Film Department. “I’m hoping to do that documentary film-making postgraduate course in natural history NZ.” Well, that explains the animal fetish. But the semi-psychotic bunny rabbit? “It was actually part of one of my design papers this year, and I decided to get it done early so it could be in the Mothras,” explains Monteith. “It’s also a really good portfolio piece for job prospects.” Unfortunately, the Philosophy department doesn’t seem to have embraced the Mothras in terms of academic achievement. “But that doesn’t matter,” insists Jennings. “It’s just a hobby. If I hadn’t have done it, then I don’t know what I would have spent my whole holiday doing. Probably writing my thesis, and that’s just boring.”

Former Mothra makers: Where are they now?
In order to determine whether this career success due to Mothra making is actually something that may be achievable in the long run, Critic decided to try and hunt down (i.e. stalk) some of the former great Mothra makers of our time to try and figure out what they’ve made of themselves. Tom Hazledine, who currently enjoys B-grade celeb status as Gary the Telecom $10 txt guy, sees his Mothra-making years as a positive experience, although not necessarily the reason for his success. “I think it really helped me to grow, as an artist. It’s a part of who I am, and it becomes such an integrated part of my psyche, that I couldn’t say [that] Mothras are responsible for this, when it’s just who I am, you know?”
In his 4 years here, Hazledine managed to produce around half a dozen Mothras, and sees his debut, Flying Car, as the most successful of his creations. Unfortunately, the skills he acquired making it are apparently not the most helpful out there in the real world. “I don’t think necessarily the way I learned to make films in Mothras [would be] … applicable if I was to try and get into the film industry.” This seems like a bit of a downer, but thankfully, success due to Mothras can come in a variety of different forms: “I scored, once, as a result of winning Best Mothra – that was probably the most tangible benefit that I achieved.”
Unfortunately, fame and fortune are not often associated with a successful Mothra. “They’re generally not a hot topic of conversation,” notes Hazledine. “I often bring it up, my Mothra success, but people don’t generally keep on talking about it.” Luckily, he’s combated this lack of attention by forcing people to watch his films on regular occasions, to try and enlighten others of his previous accomplishments. When choosing victims for these impromptu screenings, he doesn’t discriminate. “[Just] anyone I can get in front of a television, generally. I kinda go, ‘Whoa, I happen to have this DVD…. Ok, let’s sit down and watch it!’” In terms of feedback from his viewers, Hazledine takes it all with a pinch of salt. “People are generally pretty honest about them, and not necessarily in a positive way.” Luckily, his ability to recognize a truly terrible film has not been affected by the success of his films in the past. He readily points out that Plan 10 from Spaced In Vader is by far the worst film he’s ever had the joy of working on. “One time my flatmate Dave, a good friend of mine, said that Plan 10 from Spaced In Vader was the worst thing in the universe. Not just the worst thing he’d ever seen, or ever watched: the worst concept, the worst thing in existence. I pointed out, like, the holocaust and stuff, but he was pretty adamant...” You’ll be happy to know that it was this film that signalled the end of his days as Mothra maker.

Matt Heath, the guy from Deja Voodoo and the infamous Back of the Y series, is another of those great Mothra masters from days gone by. Unlike Hazledine, Heath managed to not just crank out endless Mothras that are still talked about today, but also managed to continue on this chosen career path. Completing around 4 or 5 Mothras, including Vaseline Warriors, Shafted and the original Back of the Y, Heath was never too education-oriented, and yet still managed to get a great career out of his experiences. “I didn’t really take much interest in university,” he admits. “I don’t think I even really passed anything.” Luckily, the rest of his time here was still memorable enough to see him through. “It was good fun, you know? We would just run around with cameras in Dunedin, and shoot stuff.” All this running and shooting stuff eventually ended with a few very successful films, one of which was made into a sequel and used as part of that notorious TV2 production, inventively also named Back of the Y. In fact, you could pretty much say that making Mothras was where it all began for these budding young filmmakers. “We were just finishing our last feature film recently, and I noticed that it’s still got lots of those elements in it. It’s got the blood, and gore, and all that!” exclaims Heath. “It’s like a really big budget Mothra, really.” A career making Mothra-like films. Gold. “It’s just what we do.”

So you think you can Mothra?
Reading all of this, it may appear that just anyone can wander into making a shit Mothra and jog out with a sweet career. But making a Mothra isn’t just fun and games: there is a serious side to all of this. “When we made Mothras, we would just go for all the different prizes you can win,” explains Heath. “Things like best actor, best special effects, and all those kind of things!” Basically, when making a successful Mothra, you’ve got to keep your eye on the prize. To put this hard work into perspective, we asked an expert in the field for their opinion on DIY film creation “Having a good script, people you can rely on, and a director of photography who actually knows what he’s doing really helps,” recommends Film major Brandon Burge. It should come as no surprise to note that Plan 10 from Spaced In Vader had none of these things going for it. “That was such a shit film. We managed to make it, concept to finish in like, 10 hours?” says Hazledine. “We just stayed up all night.” That explains the finished product, and is something that current Mothra makers might want to take note of and avoid at all costs. “Yeah seriously, get started before, like, 2 days out!” he recommends. “It is really shit, staying up for 2 days to make a film! And in the end, it won’t make any sense.”

Most importantly, be willing to make sacrifices for your film. “You just need lots of blood, and gore, and all that good stuff,” says Heath. “Make sure you break the law as many times possible before the authorities get to know who you are. Oh yeah, and do stunts. A shit-load of stunts!” The key to a good stunt is, of course, how realistic it appears. Heath fondly remembers a particular stunt that almost ended the short life of his filming buddy, all for the sake of 30 seconds of entertainment. “There was one scene in Back of the Y #2 where Chris was jumping off this cliff down at the quarry in Dunedin somewhere, down by Logan Park, and he just totally fucked it up. He fell down for miles and it went out of control,” he recalls. “He fell behind this big concrete shed, and I just figured he was dead.” Now that’s commitment for you.

Of course, even after all of this good stuff, it might turn out that you’ve made a Mothra and it just isn’t the career break you had hoped for. Or worse, you didn’t even get to pash that chick at the Night of the Stars awards ceremony. So is there anything that might enhance the viewing of a particularly bad Mothra? Luckily, Hazledine has all the answers. “Maybe something reminiscent of that scene from Clockwork Orange, there’s this guy with his eyes held wide open with clamps, and he’s being made to watch something,” he says. “I think possibly that could have an application in this situation. The thing is, you wouldn’t really need to induce nausea, as they had to in Clockwork Orange.”