Short films

Now this was a really fun project.

Fast forward ten years since my first short film. Ashton Bishop the director of Urban Xtreme II: Beyond Reason and his business partners are looking to make a viral video to recruit people for his advertising agency.

The trouble is - every applicant they've had has turned out to be a nightmare.

Their solution?

Create a short film to advertise the position and hopefully keep most of the wankers away.

Underdog: One in a Million was a finalist in the 2010 Sydney International Animation Festival's Protoninja competition.

The rules of the competition were:

• The film must be between 40 and 60 seconds in length.
• Each short had both the title and theme "Underdog" (with a subtitle if desired).
• It must use one of the three pieces of music provided.

I was lucky enough to be one of the finalists that were shown to a packed theatre on the opening night of the Sydney International Animation Festival.

If you haven't had a chance to see your work in front of a large audience, please do whatever you can to make that happen, because I can assure you - there is no feeling like it.

After the surprise success of Urban Xtreme II: Beyond Reason it was time to plan our next short film.

This time we had a script!

A few people brought their scripts and ideas to a kickoff meeting, but we ended up selecting Geoff Bartlett's (then untitled) script.

I only had a small onscreen part to play, as Mate #1, but I did come up with the film's title: Not Just for Christmas.

Using the Tropfest signature item of "match", we were lucky enough to make "the best of the rest of Tropfest", but a spot in the final sixteen films eluded us again.

We did manage to sell this film to SBS and to Qantas to use as part of their in-flight entertainment.

In 2000, some friends and I that did improv theatre together decided to make a short film for Tropfest.

We formed the group "Free Lunch".

No script. No budget. No permission.

No worries.

Starting with basic character briefs, the actors improvised their performances and the entire film was shot in one day, and edited within a week.

By incorporating the signature item "horn" we were able to submit our film to the Tropfest Film Festival where it surprised everyone involved by making the top 32 "best of the rest of Tropfest" list.

Sadly, Urban Xtreme II: Beyond Reason didn't make the list of 16 finalists, but we were pretty happy with the results.

Just to set the record straight - there was no Urban Xtreme I. We just thought the sequel sounded cooler.