PIG CREEK

Swinburne Film and Television School (circa 1980) had a great reputation. It was a rite of passage for many, one that smelled like my grandfather’s camera case. Today, film schools are perfumed with essential oils, pure wool carpet and the tools of litigation.

My grandfather made Super 8 home movies that he screened in a theatrette under his home. It had rows of seats, aisle lighting and a mechanical curtain.

It was in the blood, but I didn’t even know there was a film school at Swinburne until I heard about some students who set fire to a lecturer’s office. The blaze was extinguished before anyone was hurt, and lecturer Nigel Buesst promptly dubbed the accused students “The Gang of Four”.

The original gang of four were Chinese Communist Party officials charged with treason in 1976. In our case, they were Paul Goldman, John Hillcoat and Christopher Kennedy. The final gang member was Evan English, editing on a Steenbeck, his cigarettes and coke at hand.

Someone told me these troublemakers were involved in kidnapping a frozen chicken from the kitchen of lecturer Peter Tammer. They held it to ransom for a few days before releasing it defrosted into his swimming pool.

Their antics attracted me like a fly to stink. I’m an only child and these film people were involved in real brotherhood, working in a collaboration unstained by the black spot of commercialism. They were intelligent but dumb, optimistic and nihilistic, stressed out and driven by a creative urge. 

I met like minds telling stories with images, as Orson Welles said, “for the mastery of cinema.”

I liked their pie, and I wanted a slice. I fell in love with Vanessa Kortlang and danced away the weekends, hanging out with Chris Kennedy and himself, Nique Needles, who lived inside a wardrobe jammed under the stairs of a share house up Glenferrie Hill.

After completing my graphic design diploma, film school head Brian Robinson accepted me into the film course. I was vain, arrogant, repressed and ignorant: perfect film school fodder. I suddenly realised I had no idea how to make a film, aside from the fact you need a script, a camera, actors and time.

The teaching process in the graduate course seemed very hands off to me. The lecturers’ “deep end” method required students to delegate roles, grab a roll of 16mm and a clockwork Bolex, read the manual and shoot. I was nervous about the actual step-by-step process of filming.

In fact, beyond “Lights, camera, action…” I had no idea what was supposed to happen and in what order.

Fortunately, Robert Howard asked me to play Walter Logus in “The Man With No Cold Drinks”. I was nervous and I laughed, although I’m sure he thought it was egotism. Our relationship was scarred by that first impression, but my complete lack of any plan at all was coming together perfectly.

ROB HOWARD'S POSTER: "THE MAN WITH NO COLD DRINKS"

Rob directed his film, shot with a few exterior locations, but mainly in and around a Hotel in South Melbourne, or Little Hollywood as it was known. It took the better part of two weeks, and I learned a lot about the systems and practices of hands-on filmmaking.

During this time, I had a dream that I was an actor. In my dream, I was standing under a line of arc lights, asking the darkness beyond, “When we start shooting, how many of us are meant to die?” Silhouettes beyond the lights, in a kind of purgatory, offered no answer.

To give me space to work, and to avoid becoming involved in our films in any way, my flatmate Matthew Gown moved out of our flat at 764.

It was an act both selfish and generous, and my friendship with Matthew drifted.

We shot our first roll of film for a project; mine was three minutes of colour, shot in Nessa’s parents swimming pool with an underwater housing I hired for the swim.

The first project was to be edited in camera. Night, watery lights, shimmering surfaces, pool filter hum, muted voices. A struggle, Frank’s head thrust below the surface, David’s hands holding him under. The body floats away, my flipper got into frame in the final shot. It was assessed well.

I shot a second test film with a 16mm Baillieu, but this time the filmed material was to be edited to a piece of music. I set up a few redheads inside 764 and shot several long passes down the hallway, carrying the camera handheld up the spiral staircase and into the lounge room, where my school friend Brett Ford stood with his back to camera, wearing a large overcoat and playing guitar.

I intercut these passes to prolong the sweeping camera movements and to create staccato jump cuts. I tried to cut it in time with “Baby’s on Fire” by Brian Eno, from his album “Here Come The Warm Jets”.

NEARLY EVERYTHING I ENJOY ABOUT MAKING MOVIES IS CAPTURED IN THIS IMAGE, WHICH I PHOTOCOPIED FROM AN UNKNOWN FILM TEXTBOOK IN 1981. IT IS STARK, SEXXY, BROODING AND TOTALLY INTRIGUING - IS IT A KOUKALARIS, OR A CUCOLURUS? 

After the assessment screening, lecturer John Bird told the class that he could play any other piece of music to my editing and it would work just as well. I was disappointed, and his claim remains untested. That film project is now lost.

The final film assessment process involved some kind of point system I never understood, where each student would crew on the films of other students they collaborated with. 

I worked on two other student films as an extra and actor. Extra work was a good time. You got to dress in costume and wait for the crew to get ready to shoot, the rest was a dance and a prank. 

Whatever I learned at school I learned from other students, but a little voice in my head was already whispering, “Keep shooting. Button on and keep it on.”

Let God sort it out. After Rob showed me what a clapperboard was really for, it was time for me to “express myself”. My shortcut to Hell began with the script.