With slick production, a talented cast and a poignant story, it was clear the audience, and everyone else who voted in the nationwide competition was captivated the pilot, which explores the gritty reality of the alarming increases in race-related crime and nationalistic fervor in Australia.
Fresh from their ‘People’s Choice’ win at the OPTUS ONE80PROJECT Festival, we catch up with Perth students Aaron Moss and David Vincent Smith to talk about what’s coming up.
MTV: First off congratulations on your win! Were you expecting it?
David: We tried to go in with no expectations but getting into the Top Ten was like a win in itself. I’ve never been to Sydney before so coming over here and meeting everyone was great and anything that happened after that was a bonus, so when we did win it was amazing.
MTV: Why did you think it resonated so strongly with the audience?
David: When we were filming, [race relations] was constantly in the news. So when we finished making the trailer, people came up to us and said that this was something we feel quite strongly about and this was something that we’d like to see to be made.
MTV: You’ve mentioned before that you didn’t want the trailer to be perceived as ‘anti’-Southern Cross, do you think you managed to communicate that?
Aaron: The show isn’t about people who get the tattoo because they’re proud of their country, it’s about what the symbol has been turned into. In the trailer we focused more on the main character and not the symbol.
MTV: When you saw it up on the big screen did you have a real sense of achievement?
Aaron: Yeah definitely. It was really cool seeing all the finalists’ work all together. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves and we were really happy with how it turned out.
David: It was extremely rewarding after putting in all the hard work we did, to sit back and see so many people enjoy the product we made because this is what we spent so much time trying to achieve. So to see your hard work reflected on the big screen was a really good feeling.
MTV: What are you going to do with the prize money?
David: We didn’t go in thinking that we were going to win an award, so the last couple of weeks we’ve spent time talking about what our next step will be as filmmakers. A lot of that is getting our own equipment so we’ll probably first pay ourselves back for the money we spent on the trailer, then the rest of it will go towards new gear.
Aaron: To pull off ‘Southern Cross’ it required a lot of investment on our behalf, and as students it was quite hard to quite hard to get that money together. So for our next project it will give us a bit of breathing space and won’t have to cram things into two days! It will give us the opportunity to enjoy the process more and not have our backs against the wall at every turn.
MTV: You guys are still at film school – do you hope this experience will be an inspiration to other people still at school that they can pull off a project like this?
David: When we decided to do the film, we said let’s not cut any corners. We put it all on the line and put everything we had into it, and I don’t think you have to already be a successful film maker to pull this off, just believe in the project and get everyone to rally behind it and what you're doing.
MTV: So what’s next for you guys?
Aaron: We have every intention of finishing and polishing off the script for ‘Southern Cross’, and we’d really like to push that as much as we can this year while it’s still fresh in our minds. There seems to be a lot of anger at the moment about this theme, and I think it will be an interesting thing to explore.
David: We’re very passionate and have a strong belief about the story of ‘Southern Cross’, and we believe it’s a story that needs to be told so as far as this year is concerned we’re going to push that pilot as hard as we can.
MTV: Anyone that you want to thank?
Aaron: Our whole cast and crew who had to deal with the hectic timetable and everyone who helped us out!
David: Specifically the people who flew over to Sydney all the way from Perth, Serah Kiel who helped us write it, Lewis Potts who was our cinematographer, Francis Byrne who was our soundie and Liam Graham who was our main actor.
It was really cool to be there as a team!
Congradulations once again to David and Aaron, who as part of their win will receive a prize package that includes a share in $20,000 cash and a BlackBerry® Smartphone. To watch the Southern Cross trailer, click HERE and to view this year’s winning entries - and for more information on the OPTUS ONE80PROJECT head to www.one80project.com.au.
Copyright : MTV Australia
