Something Fishy

Nick, a 15 year-old boy, risks everything after he sacrifices his friendship with his best mate Trev, to save himself.

Something Fishy is a film about friendship and betrayal exploring the notion that human beings are capable of anything to ensure their survival.

My main prerogative as a filmmaker is to create emotive, performance driven stories. Having worked in fast turn around kids TV for two years prior to making this film, I’d gained an understanding of how difficult it is to get consistent, believable performances from children. I wasn’t really happy with any of the stuff I’d made for TV so I wrote this film to challenge myself by entering into it with the objective of getting children to perform at an adult level.

I met with the cast everyday for a week prior to shooting and from there developed a shooting plan. While I was very keen to visually capture the environment, and use the anamorphic frame to create space, I never really wanted the camera to be obvious in the sense I tried to make the coverage, as much as possible, about the characters and their feelings. I tried to create a sense of the world closing in on Nick by cutting from really wide shots, to really tight ones on his face and I tried to capture the fun of youth by using very fluid fast moving shots early in the film. As the story closes in the style becomes much more static to try and represent the stillness of death.

What I gained from making it was a better understanding of working with children, using the environment as a character, creating and shifting tone, and that shooting on a boat really sucks balls. Professionally I hope it assists in promoting me as someone who understands performance and working with children. I also hope it showcases me as a filmmaker capable of telling adult drama effectively and assists me in making the move into adult television. The producer and I are also developing a kid’s feature idea set in Broome and I hope Something Fishy assists in proving we are a passionate team who are capable of delivering with minimal resources.