Exclusive Interview: Andrew Chambers – Best Director of FanFilm
Awards 2016
What was your inspiration for Detectives of Noir Town?
The
original idea came from me and a filmmaking friend and actor (Paul Layton)
wanting to make a little video for Youtube and start our own channel. We used
our smart phones to film and light it. I was fascinated with old Noir Movies at
the time, so I pitched the story idea of a Detective stuck in a film Noir, but
his voice over monologue kept on distracting him and getting in the way of
solving the case. Paul really liked the idea and minutes later we ran down on
the streets and were filming and improvising lines. The film turned out really
well for something so indie.
I
am a huge Jim Henson fan and 2 years later I found myself wanting to make a
film with puppets and I searched for puppets on eBay, there was a great
puppet-maker in the Philippines that made custom puppets of any design. He
designed and sent over 9 puppets that all had an old Hollywood Noir look. They
looked amazing. I asked Paul if I could rewrite the script to incorporate
puppets and if we could shoot later on the year. With a film festival deadline
hanging over us we started organising a film that would be a bit bigger than
the one we shot on our iPhones.
The quality was amazing for this film. How indie was this
production?
It
was as indie as you can get. Some people say they have a skeleton crew with
eight or so people, but with our little puppet film there were some days it was
just Paul and I on set and that’s pretty hard when you have a puppet to
operate. The most crew we had was 2-3 more members. A DOP on some days and 2
extra puppeteers. We didn’t record sound on location and we just set up lights
before shooting.
The
whole budget of the film was paid for on my bank cards. I knew I had to prove
my skills as a director before a producer would invest in me, so I was happy to
pay to have the film look how I wanted.
Who were the Puppeteers?
Throughout
filming we all had a go at operating the puppets and the arm rods, but our lead
puppeteer is my usual lighting guy Jason Thomas. With no previous experience he
did an amazing job. We did all get a masterclass in puppeteering by Sue
Wallace, the very talented puppeteer who runs the Sydney Puppet Theatre here in
Australia.
This was a hilarious piece. Was directing a comedy a challenge?
No,
not for us. If anything doing drama would be a challenge. Paul and I are
massive comedy fans, any time Paul and I are on set we make each other laugh by
quoting anything from Monty Python to Danny Kaye. Also we figure the world is
glum enough without us adding to it, we thought it best to try to put a smile
on people’s faces. There is something so gratifying in making someone laugh
uncontrollably and with comedies, an audience will tell you straight away if it
works or doesn’t. It’s harder with dramas – people can hide their boredom if it
doesn’t work.
Were there other challenges in producing Detectives of Noir
Town?
There
are always challenges with every film we make and what’s surprising is that the
challenges are always different. We thought we were going to have it much
easier this time around, as there was no sound recorded while filming. It was
just play-back and the puppeteers would do the dialogue. The big challenge was
doing the puppets and making them look convincing. We had never done anything
with puppets before and some people study it for years, so we really needed to
be on our A game.
We
had to learn to be better filmmakers as well. Normally I could say to an actor,
“say that line with an expression of authority on your face,” but with
emotionless faces, the camera movement and angles needed to add that
information e.g a low angle shot on a puppet to show power or a high angle to
make the character come across as inferior.
How long did the production take to complete?
12
days. Most directors like to say that they filmed a short in one day. It makes
the cast and crew think you’re efficient and quick. But this was very ambitious
and we didn’t have the luxury of a large crew to do lots of set-ups in a short
amount of time. Also puppets slow things down, everything from continuity,
eyeliner lip-sync. So we planned every shot out in advance and got
small crew of 1-3 people. We shot for 1-4 hours each day over 12 days. We
could only shoot at night as people had to work and we had to be done at 12am
as the sound would annoy neighbours. We shot the whole film in and around my
house, dressing the location up so it always looked different. The police
turned up on one night as my neighbour told them that we were making a blow up
doll fetish sex film on the road outside. The police laughed when they arrived
and it was just a hooker puppet on them road scene.
Is there more coming from Noir Town?
We
have had some interest from producers to turn Noir Town into a series, either
for the web or television, so we are having regular meetings and writing
scripts.
People
seem to love puppets and we’re happy to make more.
More about
Andrew Chambers – Director, Writer, Producer
Andrew (Sydney,
Australia) has been a long-time fan of the making of movies nearly as much as
watching them. At a young age he fell in love with filmmaking and discovered a
strong talent for writing and directing. Andrew attended filmmaking courses at
the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) and AFTRS Melbourne to round out
his skill set. This gave him the confidence to write, produce and direct a full
season of 25 Frames (a movie review and comedy sketch show) for TVS a community
station in Australia. Several short films later, Andrew wrote, produced and
directed his stand-out comedy short ‘My Thoughts Exactly’ which was screened at
the Sydney Underground Film Festival in 2014 and
Andrew is currently working on developing
the concept of ‘My Thoughts Exactly’ into a television series and he is also
touring his recently completed self-funded puppet short film ‘The Detectives of
Noir Town’ around the world. It has played at nearly 70 festivals around the
world and won has 13 awards so far.
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