Production Notes

For the four Queensland-based filmmakers behind How My Next Door Neighbour Discovered Life On Mars, the road from script to screen was a treacherous one fraught with equal parts pain and gain. The process began in October 2004 when director Austin Andrews asked oft-collaborator and freelance writer Matthew Clayfield to send over any unproduced scripts he had waiting in the wings. “It was an open invitation to Matt, really”, Austin says, “and to be honest, all I wanted at the time was a project to sink my teeth into, without really knowing exactly what I was looking for in it. Life On Mars was just one gem among many but it had this charming simplicity that I latched onto from the beginning.”

With script in hand, Austin brought on the producing team of Alex Fewster, Daniel Lake, and Trevor Smith to kick the production into high gear. “It’s not often that you see three producers on a short film”, Alex says. “We believed that each of us could bring something different to the film and to the production; our individual strengths lie in different areas of the producer’s role, and we felt that having all three of us on board meant that we could each focus on different aspects and thus, cover the entire spectrum. It didn’t always work that way, but looking back, we couldn’t have done it without all three of us… though it did cause some minor conflict over whose name should appear first in the credits!”

Originally envisaged as a five minute mini-short budgeted at $3000, the scale of the project grew by leaps and bounds through development, but financing the quickly-ballooning project proved harder than anticipated. The director’s Canadian pedigree rendered the project ineligible for the support of Australian arts organisations, while the Australian cast, crew, and story nixed any chance the director might have with Canadian funding bodies. Furthermore, although the four filmmakers were all film students at Bond University, the film was done on their own time independent of any classes and so the school was unable to help. Before it even began, the project fell into a dangerous no man’s land and a complex bureaucracy threatened its chances of ever getting made. But in true, and perhaps foolish, independent spirit, the filmmakers forged ahead anyway and used their own dwindling cash to counter expenses as they came, filling out the gaps with donations from family and friends.

“The question was never whether or not we were going to do the film, it was always just how,” says producer Daniel Lake, “I remember the meetings where we were talking about this modest production with a budget under three thousand and a running time of five minutes and the next thing I knew we were on set with a crew of thirty. The finished product really shows everyone’s contribution and dedication to the project.”

Corners were cut and shortcuts were taken at every step along the way - so long as they didn’t jeopardize what would end up on screen. The filmmakers were able to use their student status to nab discounts on film stock and at post-production facilities, while the script’s optimism and its candid appeal won them the support of some key vendors. With resources in place and their bank account precariously empty, the four-day production was initiated in early April 2005 in the Gold Coast suburbs of Arundel and Oxenford. Austin says “The script has this innate curiosity that runs through it and we employed a range of innovative story devices to flesh that out on screen. The hero boy (and, indeed, the film form itself) is always questioning, searching and, ultimately, finding. By telling his story through a veil of imagination we’re inviting the audience to do the same.”

The filmmakers enlisted the talents of rising British indie band Televise to compose the film’s suitably spacey soundtrack. Fronted by Simon Scott, once a member of the legendary 90’s britrock outfit Slowdive, the band were very receptive to the project but the gap in distance and communication raised the stakes for the filmmakers. “We took a tremendous leap of faith entrusting our film to four musicians we hadn’t even had a phone conversation with”, Austin says, adding that all that transpired between them were a few emails and a disc in the mail. “The day when the postman delivered the finished score and we huddled around the stereo in anticipation was one of the most nerve-wracking and rewarding experiences of the entire production. The score was the only element of the film that I didn’t micro-manage and it turned out to be one of best!”

Upstart visual effects house Adrenaline Studios, led by compositors Ben Mattress and Andrew Ashton, donated their facilities and expertise to bring the film’s extensive CG effects to life. In keeping with the film’s goal to distill and understand the essence of imagination, most of the effects were subtle alterations to an existing world, such as replacing its skies or mimicking the world as seen through 3D glasses: touches designed to skew the viewer’s perspective and keep them asking whose viewpoint the story is told from. “Austin sent us the script when they were in the very early stages of pre production, and we just fell in love with it,” says Ben. “We immediately started to imagine this surreal world that the boy sees, and really just wanted to bring that to life in the film. As a result this has probably been the most extensive VFX work we have ever done on a short film, and it’s great to see people start to embrace the use of visual effects for short films.”

“Supervising the VFX shots on-set was of great benefit and extremely enjoyable due to the strong crew surrounding the production,” Andrew adds. “After many weeks and some would say painstaking hours, the thirteen-odd VFX shots definitely went on a winding journey of their own. Some great challenges presented themselves along the way resulting in some beautiful shots and an overall invaluable experience.”

The film was literally edited overnight, but post-production languished for several months as the production team pursued alternative sources of funding to finance an HD online and a 35mm release print. The waiting game yielded no winners and the film was finished on Digital Betacam to accommodate the targeted late-August completion date.

With post-production finished and the shoot a hazy memory, it’s come time for the four to release their vision of space exploration into the slippery short film marketplace. Their dreams aren’t of fame or fortune, or even recouping its $15,000 AUD price tag; instead they just want their film to reach as many viewers as possible, a goal that Austin believes achievable: “This may come off rather pretentious, but I believe that the film already comes with a built-in audience. It's an inherently appealing story enriched with those moments and emotions that everyone can relate to. Although most of us won't have built a cardboard spaceship in our backyard or could lay claim to having a midnight encounter with a deep-voiced alien, we all remember how it feels to wish for something that we know deep down could never happen or how painful it was learning certain truths of the world for the first time. My goal is that anyone who has ever dared to follow their dream will see themselves projected up there on the screen.”

Director's Statement

A simple story that doubles as childhood incarnate, How My Next Door Neighbour Discovered Life on Mars is a celebration of the endless summers and halcyon days before adult logic kicks in, where absolute (some say naïve) trust and endless curiosity finds magic in the most improbable places. With its relentless optimism and fantasy-imbued imagery, the obvious audience for the film would be kids, but I truly believe it has something to offer everyone - from the young to the old, the skeptic to the dreamer. Furthermore, it's a project for youth by youth - I'm 19, and all the key creatives are under 25 - resulting in a story from our level and with our voice, one not just spoken with a personal investment, but enriched by it. While I’ve approached the material from an autobiographical standpoint and found my muse in memories of my own upbringing, I believe it to be a universally appealing story - one infused with the sensibilities inherent to the very best of Australian cinema.

The once-treasured notion of “love thy neighbour” has been pushed aside by contemporary suburbia in favour of garage door openers and busy working lives. Our vision isn’t so much a yearning for the “good ol’ days” as it is a tribute to the wonders of imagination and the binding powers of community. Ultimately, however, I hope what the audience takes with them is an emotional connection made with the story and characters; elements I believe are far more integral to narrative cinema than propagating the “big issue” or dressing up the narrative in the uncomfortable, weighty clothes of an overt social commentary that seeks to replace characters with allegorical caricatures.

In my constant pursuit of truth in cinema, I’ve found the best path to it through the imagined. How My Next Door Neighbour Discovered Life on Mars offers us a gateway into the mind of a dreamer, a fleeting invitation to revisit the hidden trenches of a world that, for some, lies a lifetime away. What first attracted me to film, though I may not have consciously realized it at the time, was not the medium’s storytelling possibilities or the influence of other films but the notion of frozen memory – of bottling a moment and, with context, moulding it to have meaning. A memory it may be, but How My Next Door Neighbour Discovered Life on Mars presents an immediate, accessible world that expresses less a recollection of what happened as it does a memory of how those events were experienced.

If the boy reminds us of what it is to dream, then the film’s visuals are what brings his magic to life; through cinematography and art design alike. I seek to tell the story from the way he experiences this enchanted world; subtly embellishing its nuances to mirror the heightened awareness associated with being a kid. From the startling effectiveness of his cardboard 3D glasses to the living, breathing night sky above; everyday objects take on superpowers and render this distinctly familiar world curiously larger than life. In the spirit of transposing the audience’s collective childhood – regardless of whether they are still in it or not - onto screen, the film’s time period remains suspended in ambiguity, with production design elements from different eras - but iconic of none - intertwined to create a rich mélange of anachronistic contrasts. The film’s causality, however, remains firmly grounded in our physical world; keeping the audience’s focus on the story where it belongs.

Austin Andrews
February 2005

Technical Details

Genre: Family/Adventure
Running Time: 10 minutes
Shooting Gauge: 16mm
Release Format: DVD/Digital Betacam
Completion date: 31 August 2005

For publicity enquiries please contact Daniel Lake at sequentialONE Filmworks on +61 (04) 1219 2105 or email: daniel@sequential-one.com