BEHIND THE SCENES

Shane Abbess - Director
I have very mixed feelings about this film. Firstly, let me say that we came up with the concept for this film four weeks before Cronulla Shorts Film Festival. We had agreed that we would do a small, fun little film as we hadn't allocated much time before the festival and needed something short and sweet. But as you'd imagine, this was anything but. Matt Todd and myself were driving around with a Camera trying to see if we could stumble across an idea for the film. It wasn't until we went back to our old stomping grounds at Lucas Heights that an idea raised it's little wooden hand. There was a huge, old water tank (which features in the film) sitting on top of a mound of dirt where the council where clearing to build more Sporting fields. The landscape was extremely dry and arid and looked perfect for a post apocalyptic style wasteland. It was nearing dark so we shot a few test shots and took them back to the team. Everyone was excited by the visual dynamic of the landscape and Sound Dept. were excited about the potential soundscape of the film. So we took Sound designer Sean O'reilly and the three of us went off and shot the film, on the fly, the next day. No storyboards or script, just a basic plotline, my rashvest and a pair of old headphones. We shot the film in 6 hours and I was basically editing the film in my head as I went and when it came to the final climatic battle scene, had to imagine where the 'Elemental' would attack Matt from. By shooting the battle sequence handheld I made FX artist Scott Smith's job that much harder as he had to stabilize every frame of that sequence to make the 'Elemental' track across the screen smoothly. It's great that Scott received so much praise and recognition for his work on this film because he certainly deserved it. The biggest achievement for me with this film was the fact that we actually pulled it off on such a tight deadline which also brings about why I have mixed feelings about the film. Matt's one motivation in the whole film is water. To make this apparent in a film with almost no dialogue, I should have used a water canteen instead of a hip flask in the opening scene. (I think by using a hipflask, I set Matt up as an alcoholic instead of a man in search of water.) I also think that I spent too much time running, I should have cut some of that out and just gotten to the meat a little sooner. But on the post production deadline we had, there was no time to go back and look at the film from that objective angle. The music and sound design in this film was amazing. As far as the music went, I didn't really have a specific feel for the way the music would go and left that to Brian. He produced an amazing score which really sets the tone for the film and helps push the story along. The sound mix by Sean is worth a special mention too as it has impressed many festival goers with it's euphoric balance of atmospherics and emotive driven effects. And I must give a special mention to Matt Todd who endured a torturous day of sandstorms, endless miles of running and battling with a creature that existed, to that point, only in our imaginations. I must also add that Matt jumped off that cliff a total of 12 times all told - what a legend. To be eligible for Cronulla we had to include the line 'I'd volunteer for that' which explains our dialogue at the end of the film. I enjoy this film for it's visual and aural dynamic but felt that maybe the story suffered slightly due to our time restraints.


Matt Todd - Actor
How to break in a new pair of Italian designer shoes:
1) Firstly dress up as a man from the future and travel to the most desolate and dry location you can find.
2) Start to run and keep on running as if your name was Forrest.
3) Jump of the highest and steepest sand dune in Sydney and do it 12 times to make sure you cover every angle and don't forget to roll out of control all the way down the hill at the bottom.
4) Look for an old water tank and bang on it to see how long you can hear the echo.
5) Finally, start to hallucinate and make yourself believe that a flying sphere is chasing you from outer space. This may be due to the fact that the only bottled liquid you can find to quench your thirst is a hip flask of whiskey. Don't fear because after running to the point of exhaustion you will find a large stick, which will act as a club, and swing in the general direction of your illusion to bring you back to reality.

Now you will find that your brand new Italian shoes are not only broken in, they are quite literally broken. In fact the only thing they will be useful for is a memento of the adventure you have just undertaken.

I can't think of a Better way to spend a weekend. Dazed and confused in a new pair of shoes.

With the time frame and budget this is another little ditty that I am proud of and for something that was basically ad-libbed, it really shone. Just goes to show how far people will go to get into the movies :-)


Sean O'Reilly - Sound Design/Location/Dialog/FX/Final Mix
I only came on board halfway through the filming so I missed a lot of location work. Not to worry - foley time! But instead of rigging up surfaces to use I went to the actual location and had Matt, the main actor, walk the scenes I was missing. It turned out better than expected. This is a score driven film and what Brian has done with the score is nothing short of amazing. It is still one of my favorite films to listen to.


Brian Cachia - Score Composition
Better daze was an amazing film to create, at the time I had to move out of my house for one month whilst work went on inside, I set up my recording system on my Friends dinner table and took up their entire dinning room. Luckily Better Daze was sample driven in a lot of areas, which gave me the freedom to embellish the film with various instruments within my capabilities due to my living situation. Despite the challenge Better Daze was meant to be, it came together very easily. The biggest challenge was to understand and interpret Scott James Smith's 'elemental' as he described it, the Glass ball which comes out in full glory at the end sequence. Using a few sound modules and effects processors, I voiced the Elemental beast and followed its movement to its death. Its death was fun to record for I got my own back on director Shane Abbess when I asked him to crush an egg with his bare hands and squish it around a little in a bowl. When it came to the mix down Sean O'Reilly had the interesting task when mixing all this down, For not only was the sound design heavy but the film resulted in being score driven entirely, apart from that we inserted a receiver track on actor Matt Todd's ear phones which really gave for interesting mix.
The film was a good experience technically.


Scott James Smith - FX and titles
A particularly tricky job, with all footage being shot hand-held, resulting in a very labour intensive process of frame by frame stabilisation for all the effected scenes such as the goggles, and all of the end sequence involving the conflict between Matt and the Elemental. All work including titles was performed in After Effects with some 3D work (the rotating tanker tanker that Matt sees and the basic shape of the Elemental) done in Strata Studio Pro. In the opening titles, I wanted the sense of something epic, and shifted the arid landscape at the outset to appear luscious and green. The titles themselves had a distinct "mirage" aspect to them, and in some spots reacted to the characters' movements. The fight scene at the end involved mapping a few different fire sequences into the blast areas, adding camera shake, laser bolts, the internal workings of the elemental, smoke and haze, and some particle animation when the orb is smashed.