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directed & produced by Chris Pahlow starring Nicholas Kato, Maya Aleksandra, Christine Lui, Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall, and Clayton Jacobson featuring music from Big Scary, Mantra, Nathan Liow, Lower Spectrum, Aaron Choulai, Speed Painters, Brothers Hand Mirror, Ron Rude, Polo Club, Aoi, DOS4GW, Yes/No/Maybe, Merc Swazey x Nettsmoney, Gus Rigby, Patinka Cha Cha, Dyl Thomas & Must, Spacecadet Lullabies, and Villains 85 minutes / HD black & white / english / not yet rated / 2015 stills availible at: http://www.playitsafemovie.com/press contact: [email protected] sales: publicity: chris pahlow annette smith, Ned & Co. [email protected] [email protected] +61 (0) 419 578 925 synopsis PLAY IT SAFE is the debut feature flm from writer/director Chris Pahlow. The flm stars Nicholas Kato as Jamie, a 26-year-old musician who is out of work and down on his luck. When Jamie’s band breaks up, he’s left with no money, no career and no girlfriend. Now he teaches piano at a soul-destroying music school. Will he take a risk and follow his dreams? Or will he surrender to his new-found unhappiness and play it safe? about the film Following in the footsteps of flmmakers like Andrew Bujalski, Lena Dunham, Noah Baumbach, and the Duplass Brothers, PLAY IT SAFE explores a generation caught between endless opportunity and the pressures of conformity. The flm features unobtrusive black and white camerawork, naturalistic dialog, and unafected performances. The result is an engaging, refreshing look at twenty-something life flled with authentic emotion, humour, and pathos. In many ways PLAY IT SAFE is a love letter to Melbourne’s music scene, and the soundtrack features music from over twenty incredible Melbourne-based acts, including: Big Scary, Mantra & Nathan Liow, Lower Spectrum, Speed Painters, Brothers Hand Mirror, Ron Rude, Aaron Choulai, Polo Club, Aoi, DOS4GW, Yes/No/Maybe, Patinka Cha Cha, Dyl Thomas & Must, Spacecadet Lullabies, Merc Swazey X Nettsmoney, Villains, Gus Rigby. “A sharp-witted and efortlessly quirky dramatic comedy that’s deftly judged and hugely likeable... With Play It Safe Pahlow marks himself out as a director to watch and an exciting new talent who’s not afraid to follow a curve ball.” - Stephen A Russell, The Lowdown Under “Play it Safe is what I want other Australian flms to aspire to. Pahlow has created a flm that is refreshingly real and startlingly engaging.” - Sharona Lin, Pop Culture-Y “There is a sense of immediacy and a fresh rawness to this style of flmmaking that reminds me of John Cassavetes’ flms... Chris is a terrifc director, and it was a pleasure to be part of the frst of what I think will be many great flms from a great talent.” - Clayton Jacobson, “Kenny” 2 director’s statement In 2006 I saw Andrew Bujalski’s second flm MUTUAL APPRECIATION at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I left the screening irrevocably changed. I’d never seen a flm like it before. Even though the story took place on a diferent continent and the characters spoke in diferent accents, I could relate intimately to what I was seeing on screen, more so than with any Australian flm I had seen before. Outside the theatre, I asked my friend Maia: “Why doesn’t someone make a flm like this in Melbourne? A flm made outside the system, where the characters talk and act just like the people we know in real life?” A few years later I decided to do just that. PLAY IT SAFE explores a generation caught between endless opportunity and the pressures of conformity. It comes from the experiences of myself and other young people trying to fgure out how they can pursue all the passions and dreams that Hollywood tells us we deserve, while balancing the responsibilities and realities that come with adulthood. This flm is my attempt at capturing an authentic look at twenty something life and all the awkwardness, humour, and anxiety that comes with it. Stylistically, PLAY IT SAFE is inspired by the flms of Ang Lee, Richard Linklater, Mike Leigh, the Mumblecore movement, and of course Andrew Bujalski. I wanted every aspect of the flm - from the performances to the production design - to be as authentic and believable as possible, and a restrained use of cinematic devices were key in bringing this to life. Both characters and dialogue were developed in collaboration with the cast (comprised of both trained and non professional actors). Using a scriptment as a starting point, each scene was workshopped and rehearsed extensively through improvisation to get to the truth of each character and their behaviour. This process continued on set, as I encouraged the actors to surprise me and each other with each take. PLAY IT SAFE’s entire production process (including flming with multiple cameras) was built around capturing these real moments. Coverage was deliberately restrained to a very limited number of setups per scene, both in an attempt to make the cinematography less obvious and intrusive, as well as to allow us as much time as possible to focus on the performances. Visually, the one notable exception to this emphasis on naturalism was the decision to present the flm in black and white. While practically benefcial (a la Kevin Smith’s CLERKS) this was primarily philosophically motivated (a la the work of Jean Baudrillard) as an acknowledgement of the artifciality nature of flm (even extremely naturalistic flm), as well as an afectionate nod to the history of this style of flmmaking (which goes all the way back to John Cassavetes’ SHADOWS). The Melbourne music scene is central to PLAY IT SAFE’s story, and the flm’s soundtrack is one of its most important elements. While PLAY IT SAFE does not include a score, it diegetically employs more than twenty tracks from local Melbourne musicians: ranging in genres from indie rock & pop, hip hop, house, electronica, and contemporary jazz. Coming from a background in music videos, developing PLAY IT SAFE’s soundtrack was uniquely challenging and stimulating. With music videos and traditional narrative cinema, the goal may ostensibly be to create the perfect combination of story, visuals, and sound, with all elements working in concert. For an extremely naturalistic flm like PLAY IT SAFE, this approach was not appropriate. My music supervisor and I would often fnd songs that were too perfect for a scene, where the movement of the music matched the emotional development of the scene so beautifully that it would completely shatter the illusion of realism. The challenge then was to fnd songs that would place the flm both in space and time, while subtly enhancing the viewer’s emotional experience of the scene, all without revealing the flm’s artifce. Creating PLAY IT SAFE has been a completely life changing experience. I started this project feeling like an outsider. As far as I knew, I was the only flmmaker in Melbourne interested in telling stories like this, in this way. However, since I frst commenced developing the screenplay, I have been lucky enough to meet a number of locals flmmakers on this same path, interested in telling diferent Australian stories, without the need for approval from the Australian flm establishment. I feel extremely excited and honoured to be part of this new wave of Australian cinema. 3 about the cast & crew Chris Pahlow : writer/director/producer Chris Pahlow is a failed musician and an award winning flmmaker. He has spent the last ten years bringing stories to life through music videos, documentaries, and short flms. Chris attended the Univervity of Melbourne’s School of Creative Arts, which focused on avant garde art, and covered everything from flm & photography to theatre & poetry. In these early years Chris experiemented with diferent forms of flmmaking, and his short documentary-animation “Fraught” won Best Australian Animation at the 2007 Melboure Animation Festival, before going on to screen at a number of international festivals and on Swedish TV. Chris has a passion for the local music scene (developed during his early years gigging around Melbourne) and has directed videos for a number of local artists . His videos for Mantra’s “The Fear” and Allday’s “Girl In The Sun” were both featured by Triple J. “Girl In The Sun” was featured in the 2014 St Kilda Film Festival’s Soundkilda Programme and, as of August 2015, it has been played more than 600,000 times on YouTube. Dom Alessio from Triple J described it as “fun and rough, like a lo-f Michel Gondry clip”, while one annonymous internet commenter described it as “sickeningly cute”. Chris has spent the last fve years bringing PLAY IT SAFE to life and he can’t wait to share it with you. Musical Trivia: Chris’ most successful live performance was an improvised spoken word accompaniment to Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints”. This rendition was appreciated by an audience of three elderly gentlemen. Nicholas Kato : jamie Nicholas Kato is a young actor based in Melbourne. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, where he received the Richard Pratt Bursary for excellence. He has performed in a wide number of theatre productions including Attempts On Her Life, The Ship of Fools, The Cherry Orchard and Electra. Play It Safe is Nicholas’ frst feature flm. Musical Trivia: Nicholas’ love of music began at a young age, when he and his mother realised that the only way to stop his younger sister screaming her head of, was to blast Whitney Houston from the car radio. Maya Aleksandra : sarah Maya is a young actor based in Melbourne. She has appeared in several tv commercials, including being the face of Bupa’s recent campaign.

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