baggage: unpacked analysing the short film and its place in the world

Michael Noonan BA (Film and Television Production), B.Bus (Acc)

Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology Master of Arts (Research) (Film and Television Production)

Submitted: August 29 2003 Revisions: July 26 2004 Completed: November 8 2004

paragraph for cataloguing

Baggage is a short film about memory, identity and camcorder voyeurism. This paper will explore the film’s approach to structure, cause-and-effect, character identification, suspense, style and substance. It will also evaluate the state of the short film in Australia, its importance in the development of emerging filmmakers and the realistic and most effective avenues for exhibition and distribution.

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abstract

In the seedy confines of his one-bedroom apartment, reclusive loner Harris Babel delights in watching the camcorder images of others: images he buys from a strange, smoke-filled store at the end of an alleyway.

They are pre-recorded trips to faraway places, memories he pretends are his own. Holidays to Madagascar, trips to Lord Howe Island, tours through Kakadu National Park -- there are no boundaries. But Harris’ claustrophobic world takes a disturbing turn when he receives a phone call from the airport, claiming he left luggage behind from a trip he doesn’t remember. A trip he never went on. Or did he?

From script to screen, Baggage was an exhausting 14-month journey, beginning with the first draft of the script in May 2001 and culminating in the exhibition of the film in July 2002, two days after the final sound and vision cut was completed.

At its heart, the film is an exploration of identity, memory and the childhood demons that haunt us. It is about loss and abandonment, camcorder voyeurism and the obsessions that make us human. On reflection, it is a film with many flaws. But the process of recognising these flaws and better understanding the filmmaking process is an essential part of development and growth.

This paper will explore the writing and directing process involved in the making of Baggage, analysing structure, cause-and-effect, character identification, suspense, style and substance. It will also evaluate the state of the short film in Australia, its importance in the development of filmmakers and the avenues for exhibition and distribution.

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table of contents

Paragraph for Cataloguing ...... iii Abstract ...... v List of Supplementary Material ...... viii Statement of Original Authorship...... ix Acknowledgements ...... xi

PART 1: THE SHORT FILM

Government Support ...... 1 A Stepping Stone ...... 2 Beating a Path ...... 3 The Research Project...... 6

PART 2: PRODUCTION

The Concept ...... 8 Plot and Structure...... 11 Cause-and-Effect...... 15 Flashbacks...... 17 Character Identification...... 19 Suspense and Surprise...... 20 The Twist Ending...... 22 Direction and Style...... 25 Substance and Meaning ...... 28

PART 3: EXHIBITION

Finding an Audience ...... 31 Short Films and the Internet...... 32 Broadcast Opportunities...... 33 The Festival Circuit...... 34 Shorts Overload on the Web ...... 35

PART 4: REFLECTION

Strengths...... 45 Weaknesses ...... 46

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 51

APPENDICES ...... 55

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list of supplementary material

DVD (PAL)

Baggage (2002). Written and Directed by Michael Noonan. Produced by Michael Noonan and Hugh M Jesse. Running Time: 23 minutes (approx.) © 2002 Boom-In-Shot Productions.

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statement of original authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

SIGNED ……………………………………………………………………………

DATE ………………………………………………………

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acknowledgements

Gary MacLennan, John Hookham, Angela Romano and Terry Flew for their assistance in the completion of this thesis.

The QUT Film and Television department, including Wayne Taylor, Jeanette McGown, Stephen Frost, Peter Laughton, John Hookham, Rob Matthews, Elise Weightman, David Glazier, Dave Harvey and Jill Standfield for their assistance in the production of the short film Baggage.

A dedicated cast and crew for their tireless work on the film Baggage, including but not limited to co-producer Hugh Jesse, director of photography Tony Luu, editor Brendan Cahill, production designer Mairi Cameron, sound designer Matt Smith- Stubbs, music composer Liz Elliott, lead actor Ron Kelly and first assistant director Anna Cadden. Special thanks also to caterers Elsa and Bo Westerberg, who endured the most underrated and unrewarding job of all.

Carine Chai, Tanya Schneider, Dana Carsley and Karlo Bran for their encourage- ment and support.

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part one: the short film

The short film is a fundamental starting point in a filmmaker’s career.

Before Steven Spielberg made Jaws (1975) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (1980), he honed his skills with a 23-minute short called Amblin’ (1968). Before Martin Scorsese directed Taxi Driver (1976) or Raging Bull (1980), he was experimenting with blood and gore in a grisly short piece called The Big Shave (1967).

Government bodies in Australia pump millions of dollars each year into short films and their reasons are generally about development. Their aim is to nurture up-and- coming filmmakers and give them a platform to show their worth.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

In the nine months to May 2002, the Pacific Film and Television Commission -- the Queensland Government’s agency for the film and television industry -- had allocated $640,000 to short film production (12 projects), the most ever allocated to such production by the PFTC in any one year (Pacific Film and Television Commission, 2002b: 1-2).

Short film production in Australia totalled $3.5m in 1999/2000, with 53 businesses involved in production. Sixteen shorts, totalling $624,731, were funded by the Australian Film Commission in the 2000/2001 financial year (Australian Film

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Commission, 2001a). The Australian Film Commission, the Australian Govern- ment’s agency for supporting the development of the film, television and interactive digital media industry, has a notional annual allocation of $900,000 for short films (Australian Film Commission, 2001b).

The Pacific Film and Television Commission administers an annual Short Film Fund, providing production and post production funding, in addition to random initiatives such as the 2002 Jumpstart Film Fund, which provided funding for 10 short film projects up to the value of $25,000 each.

Other government-funded bodies assist in the production of shorts. QPIX, a Queensland-based screen resource centre, helps develop quality independent production in the Queensland screen industry, linking the State independent sector at national and international levels (QPIX, 2002a: 11).

With funding from the AFC, the PFTC, Arts Queensland and the Australia Council, QPIX provides support to short filmmakers by offering low-cost equipment and facilities hire. In the year to February 2002, QPIX supported the production of 112 short dramas and oversaw the completion of three short films under two industrial partnerships. QPIX also directly and intensively facilitated three short dramas (QPIX, 2002b: 8-11).

Those that miss out on funding from the government sector often cobble together cash of their own, find investors like mum and dad or rack up credit card bills to make their celluloid calling cards a reality. And it’s not cheap.

So why do it? It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming and it’s hard work. What is the appeal?

A STEPPING STONE

Shorts provide an opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to learn the basics, improve their skills, experiment, question and fine-tune the art of visual storytelling.

PART ONE: THE SHORT FILM 3

They can be an important calling card for emerging filmmakers to demonstrate their talent and make the step-up to feature film work.

The AFC and the PFTC are crystal clear about why they pump hundreds of thousands into the medium and it’s not about making money or creating art for art’s sake. According to its guidelines, the AFC invests in short drama production for the purpose of professional development. They fund short films primarily to assist in the career development of directors and, to a lesser extent, producers (Australian Film Commission, 2001b).

The PFTC’s short film fund provides production and post production funding for producers and directors to create a body of work that will help establish a track record and advance their professional careers in the industry (Pacific Film and Television Commission, 2002a: 1-2).

If we go by these guidelines, it’s all about professional development; about beating a path for the future Phillip Noyces, Baz Luhrmanns, Bruce Beresfords and Jane Campions. But how effective is this path? Is it treacherous and impossible to navigate, rarely maintained and full of pot-holes? Are the twin aims of development and exposure working in unison?

BEATING A PATH

While there appears to be adequate support for the production of short films, the exhibition of those films -- and the ability for short filmmakers to get noticed -- appears a largely hit-and-miss affair.

Take a look at a selection of finalists at Australia’s most prominent short film festival -- Tropfest -- and what you’re most likely to find is a series of “gag” films; short, punchy pieces with a joke at the end and not much structure or substance or character development. Tropfest, now in its twelfth year and the self-proclaimed mecca for many aspiring filmmakers, choose to limit filmmakers not only by length (films must be shorter than seven minutes) but also by requiring that a specific item

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(they call it the TSI or Tropfest Signature Item) -- such as a bug or a butterfly or a rock -- appear in the film. Such limitations inevitably result in an abundance of gag films. There’s nothing wrong with these films and there’s nothing wrong with Tropfest. Indeed, it is largely responsible for a resurgence in the popularity of the short film in Australia.

But if the goal of the short film is to develop and nurture a filmmaker for the move to something bigger and meatier -- if government funding is primarily to prepare filmmakers for the grander picture -- festivals like Tropfest seem to be working against the grain. And if Tropfest and the myriad of festivals like it are the main avenues for short film exhibition in this country, what hope is there for filmmakers who have learnt the craft; filmmakers who have developed their skills with a short film that has substance and structure and development and applies the rules that will be needed to make that next step effectively? What are the avenues for filmmakers like this? How do they exhibit their calling cards?

This paper is not about denigrating the gag film or film festivals like Tropfest. The majority of my early work was gag-based and such films play an important part in a filmmaker’s growth and storytelling abilities.

Rather than condemn these short film festivals and the material they celebrate, this paper is about exploring the avenues for short films that are more than just gags: films that strive to show an understanding of the necessary elements of feature film production.

My contention in this paper is that the government’s twin aims of short filmmaking are not working as effectively as they should. The dominant avenues for exhibition in this country tend to favour films of the gag genre and those that are as short as possible. But government agencies supporting short film production and the film schools which train our future Campions encourage the nurturing of skills and creative talent, presumably in preparation for the progression to feature film material. I doubt whether a filmmaker who has just won Tropfest with a short about a man who can’t light his cigarette is prepared for the intricacies and details of

PART ONE: THE SHORT FILM 5

making a feature film. I question whether they have demonstrated their control of film structure, substance, meaning, motivation and character development.

Young, wide-eyed filmmakers are often quoted stories of success in their early years at film schools. A popular one -- one that I was told in my first weeks at Queensland University of Technology -- is the rise of Australian filmmaker Gregor Jordan and his breakthrough film Swinger (1995). At a length of 3 minutes and 25 seconds, Swinger won the Prix de Jury (Jury Prize) at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1995, the shortest film ever to win the award (Waller, 1995: 23).

It is undoubtedly a clever film within its self-imposed parameters and it was the perfect calling card: Jordan got noticed. He recently finished directing his third feature film, Ned Kelly (2003), after success with Two Hands (1999) and his first American feature, Buffalo Soldiers (2001).

But what is the lesson of Jordan and Swinger? What should film lecturers tell their students about how they can mimic such success? Do they tell them to forget everything they learn about structure and development and meaning? Is it just about making something short and snappy and superficial that will make a crowd cackle for half a second? Is it all about getting noticed and picking up the skills of filmmaking later on? Is that what we tell our filmmakers of the future?

The recent trend for music video and TV commercial directors to be given control of feature films raises similar concerns. Presumably they are hired for their visual storytelling abilities and the look of the clips or commercials they make. But these clips rarely show a director’s strength in character development or structure. Most often there is no dialogue.

The results of these trends speak for themselves. Commercial director Tarsem made his feature film debut with The Cell (2000), a visually-stunning piece that proved ultimately woeful in plot, structure and character development. McG did the same with Charlie’s Angels (2000). Of course, there are exceptions: David Fincher and

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Spike Jonze are evidence of this. But they are few and far between in a world where short and simple seems to be the only way of attracting attention.

THE RESEARCH PROJECT

The aim of my research project, a 23-minute drama called Baggage, was to make a short film with all the ingredients of a feature; a piece that would enable me to explore and develop skills in story structure, cause-and-effect, character develop- ment, style, substance and meaning.

The second part of this paper will detail the process, from conception to scripting to production. In part three, I will explore the avenues for exhibiting and distributing the film, a challenging task in a world where shorter is better and gag films rule supreme.

part two: production

Baggage was shot over a period of 10 days in February 2002, with a crew of approximately 15 people, a cast of more than 30 and a budget of $5535. There were some 20 locations and approximately 15 rolls of Super 16mm film stock were used.

The finished film runs for 23 minutes.

The process of writing, directing and producing the film was an exhausting but rewarding journey. Though the film has many flaws, my development as a storyteller has improved dramatically as a result.

From concept to completed film, I believe I have a much firmer grasp of the filmmaking craft and the lessons I have learnt – through failures and successes – will serve me well in an approach to feature film material.

In this section I will analyse the production of the film from conception to completion, discussing plot and structure, cause-and-effect, characterisation, suspense and surprise, twist endings, and direction and style.

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THE CONCEPT

Coming up with an intriguing concept, one that I wanted to spend six or seven months working on, was the obvious starting point. I had a couple of ideas banging around in my head but none of them “wanted to be told” (Segar, 1994: 5).

Most of the the textbooks on writing scripts say you should write what you know; Segar talks about drawing from experiences with your immediate family (Segar, 1994: 5) and McKee stresses the importance of reflecting on your own memories (McKee, 1999: 72). There just wasn’t much in my past or present that I found very interesting. My immediate family was pretty boring too. The only thing I was remotely passionate about were things that irritated me, like people who talk in cinemas or drivers who don’t indicate. Hardly a passion, I suppose, but nevertheless a starting point. Some writers are inspired by love or life-changing moments or grand places. Bitterness was my muse. And I had plenty of material.

Baggage thus began as a condemnation of something I had come to loathe: the modern camcorder obsession. Documented and encouraged by hideous television shows like Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, it was an obsession that infuriated me, with injuries to young children and distressed pets coming second to getting the shot, appearing on television and winning the prize. Instant fame and fortune.

The original rough draft of Baggage, written in May 2001, centred on a man’s obsession with his camcorder and his inability to live for the moment. His marriage proposal failed because he couldn’t bare to turn off his camcorder and, desperate and alone, he became reclusive, attending group therapy meetings for people with camcorder obsessions and seeing a therapist on a weekly basis.

The draft had the core plot elements of the finished film: the main character Liam Cronin (later to become Harris Babel) goes to a store, purchases a pre-recorded camcorder tape of a trip to the Andaman Islands, then gets a call from the airport saying he left a suitcase behind from the trip he never went on. A tourist woman

PART TWO: PRODUCTION 9

arrives at his door, saying they met on the island and our increasingly-paranoid hero contracts malaria, conveniently endemic in the Andaman Islands.

The premise of the film had potential but I had nowhere to go with it. There were a plethora of unanswered questions and a wafer-thin, overly-sentimental conclusion where Liam realises his tourist visitor shares his passion for pre-recorded memories (she’s into photographs) and they fall in love, sharing a kiss that they choose not to record. In addition, there was no explanation of Liam’s obsession with his camcorder.

It was clear that there had to be more to the concept than a mere disdain for the camcorder obsession, a bitter rant about consumerism, material wealth and capitalism. Themes at the very heart of camcorder usage -- in particular, themes of memory and identity -- were not being fully explored.

Images of Australian athletes filming the crowd with camcorders at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 added a new dimension to the concept. Surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people in the world’s most-watched sporting event, a large contingent of the Australian team chose to pull out personal camcorders and film the crowd and the events unfolding around them. These were not financially-motivated people. Most of them had notoriety. I don’t suspect any were planning to send their footage to a home video show. Yet these people seemed more intent on capturing the moment on tape rather than experiencing the moment at the time. Perhaps it was an instinct based on some innate, insecure human fear that our memories will eventually fail us -- that we might not remember the moment. Like the human desire to take photographs or keep diaries. Or maybe their motives were more altruistic: a desire to share the moment with others, to play it back in the company of loved ones.

Whatever the case, I began to question my lack of a camcorder and the lack of one in my childhood. Did I miss something? Was my life less rich, less memorable because it wasn’t captured on tape? Were my memories any less vivid? What part does memory play in the make-up of who we are as individuals?

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The question of memory and its impact on identity thus became a crucial element of Baggage. Harris Babel’s predicament lies in his inability to remember. He has constructed an identity for himself, real fears of airports and real feelings of loss, based on false childhood memories -- memories recorded by the store owner Mr Yaqub, who has a personal agenda of his own. His predicament is based on the theory that we act, behave and live our lives based largely on memories of who we think we are. Our very make-up as human beings relies heavily on our childhood memories. Mr Yaqub utters a telling line late in the film that sums up this concept: “We thought if we could make you forget who you were -- who you are -- we could make you forget why you came here”.

McCormick raises similar ideas in his study of the film Memento (2000). The film explores the world of Leonard Shelby, a man with a memory problem who must constantly keep track of what is going on around him by keeping notes and taking polaroids. McCormick suggests that director Christopher Nolan makes us question our own memories:

“How often have we edited and revised our past, inflating and exaggerating old hurts, minimising and deleting misdemeanours and crimes? How reliable are the things we’ve told ourselves about who we are and what we’ve done? What sort of people have we made ourselves by the things we’ve chosen to forget?” (McCormick, 2001: 46).

Baggage was no longer an analysis of the camcorder as a material, financially- motivated tool but as a digital recorder of memories, the stuff that makes us what we are as people. What if this digital recorder of memories overrode the human brain’s abilities as a recorder of memories? What if there was a conflict between the two? What if false camcorder memories replaced the true memories of the brain? Would a person be different? Would they lose the identity they had constructed, their self- esteem, their innocence, their emotional and psychological baggage?

The basic concept, the core artistic intentions of the film were clear. These were questions that fascinated and intrigued me. There was a story here with the potential

PART TWO: PRODUCTION 11

to answer these questions or, at least, attempt to answer them. A new draft would ultimately raise and explore these questions, using plot and structure to flesh out a deeper, more meaningful subtext.

PLOT

Aristotle defined plot as “the arrangement of incidents” (Chatman, 1978: 43). Its function is to “emphasise and de-emphasise certain story events, to interpret some and leave others to inference, to show or to tell, to comment or remain silent, to focus on this or that aspect of an event or character” (Chatman, 1978: 43).

Chatman discusses the author’s power to arrange a story, to treat certain moments in detail and omit others, to use chronological order, or to show flashbacks and flashforwards. Each arrangement, Chatman notes, “produces a different plot and a great many plots can be made from the same story” (Chatman, 1978: 43).

My choice of story events in the original rough draft was flawed and I was focusing on aspects of Liam’s life that did not relate to the overall meaning of the film. Many scenes -- including the camcorder group therapy session -- existed purely for comic effect. As a result, the meaning of the film was unclear and the conclusion was shallow. Coupled with incorrect choices in the plot design, the film lacked an identifiable structure.

STRUCTURE

Syd Field popularised the idea of the temporally-portioned three-act structure in his 1979 book Screenplay, which is commonly referred to as the “bible” of screenwriting (Thompson, 1999: 22).

But the idea of structured storytelling isn’t new. As Thompson notes, “from the earliest manuals of the silent era to the latest guides, most authors refer at least in passing to Aristotle’s observation that a play should have a beginning, middle and end” (Thompson, 1999: 21).

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Segar suggests that structure gives a story its form, focus, momentum and clarity. The basic three-act structure, she says, helps to move and focus the story (Segar, 1999: 19).

In their manual The Screenwriter’s Handbook, authors Constance Nash and Virginia Oakey follow Field’s lead and recommend three acts as the preferable breakdown of scripts: the first act described as “problems introduced” and running for approximately 30 pages; the second act involving “conflict between protagonist and antagonist leading to the seemingly unsolvable problem” and occupying some 60 pages; and the third and final act providing “action providing solution to the problem” and, like the first act, running for some 30 pages (Thompson, 1999: 22).

According to Field, Act One is the beginning or set-up and ends with a “plot point” or turning point, defined as “an incident or event that hooks into the story and spins it around into another direction”, implying a “crucial event or change”. Act Two is considered by Field as the confrontation, containing conflict and constituting the bulk of the narrative. Another turning point creates a transition to Act Three, the resolution (Thompson, 1999: 23).

For the purposes of a shorter film, the structure can be split into quarters: the first act takes up the first quarter, the second act consumes the second and third quarters with a midpoint to separate them and the final act takes up the final quarter. For a 10- minute film there would ideally be a turning point between two and three minutes and another at about seven or eight minutes.

With this in mind, the second draft of Baggage saw the addition of eight extra pages, and the inclusion of voice-over, flashbacks and childhood memories. There was enhanced subtext, meaning, an explanation of Harris’ camcorder obsession and a more structured story design. But the script was still laboured in parts, particularly in the information-heavy first act. Using Field’s three-act structure, it was apparent that my first turning point was occurring too late in the story. This turning point -- a phone call from the airport which turns Harris in a new and unexpected direction --

PART TWO: PRODUCTION 13

did not happen until page 13 of a 25-page script. Even Harris’ visit to Mr Yaqub’s seedy store, a crucial part of the film’s premise, did not happen until page 10.

The second act was around seven minutes long, culminating in the visit of a tourist woman, who claims she met Harris at Cape Reach (formerly the Andaman Islands). This left only five minutes for the resolution, including Harris’ crucial discovery of the Camp Tallawallah sign.

The third draft of the script saw a radical change in the order of story events and this dramatically affected the structure of the film. But turning points were still problematic. The visit to the store was earlier, at page five, but the phone call from the airport was still not occurring until page 10 of the 25-page script. The second turning point was weak and occurred at page 19.

Over the course of the next three to four drafts, I encountered the same problem: bringing forward the first turning point caused the second act to become more laboured and uninteresting. Bringing forward the second turning point did the same thing to the resolution. Perhaps a variation to the three-act structure was needed. Thompson says Field’s three-act structural template is problematic, specifically the lengthy second act, which manuals consistently refer to as “protracted and difficult to write” (Thompson, 1999: 24).

Linda Segar says the second act can seem interminable, with problems arising from “insufficient momentum and lack of focus” (Segar, 1994: 25). For Ron Shelton, writers tend to “spin their wheels” in the second act, often repeating themselves (Shirman, 1996: 25).

Thompson argues that the second act is often based on page numbers and timing, “not dramatic logic” (Thompson, 1999: 27). Instead, she insists that a plot can be divided into an indefinite number of parts, suggesting Ernest Lehman “found 10 acts” in his script North By Northwest (Thompson, 1999: 27). Thompson claims that a narrative most frequently changes direction when there is a shift in the

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protagonist’s goals and this need not be on a predetermined page number (Thomp- son, 1999: 27).

In her study of a number of Hollywood films, Thompson contends that a great many of them break into four large-scale parts, with major turning points providing the transitions. She refers to these four parts as the set-up, the complicating action, the development and the climax (Thompson, 1999: 27).

The initial situation is thoroughly established in the set-up; the complicating action is “a kind of counter-set-up”, taking the action in a new direction or often building a whole new situation within which the protagonist must cope; the development sees the protagonist struggle towards his goal; and the climax portion sees the action shift in a straightforward progression towards the final resolution, “typically building steadily toward a concentrated sequence of high action” (Thompson, 1999: 28).

Thompson’s structural claim is built around the existence of a centrally-located turning point, breaking Field’s problematic middle into two large scale portions (Thompson, 1999: 29).

She uses Hollywood classics like Casablanca (1942) to illustrate her point, noting that Rick’s crucial rejection of Ilsa ends 51 minutes into a 101 minute film. Similarly, in Deep Impact (1998), the mission to explode the comet fails at precisely halfway into the film, the repercussions of which take up the second half of the film (Thompson, 1999: 32). Nine out of her 10 analysed films broke into four roughly- balanced parts (Thompson, 1999: 36).

But Thompson’s theory does not restrict films to four balanced parts. Rather, she argues that films are made up of equally balanced parts of various numbers. Longer films like Heat (1995), with a running time of 168.5 minutes, yields an average of 33.5 minutes for each of its five parts. When films fall below 100 minutes, they tend to fall into equal thirds (Thompson, 1999: 37). Either way, the timings still correspond with “remarkable fidelity to the principle of balanced large-scale parts” (Thompson, 1999: 38).

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Thompson believes these balanced large-scale parts provide structure, with each part having a shape of its own to guarantee variety (Thompson, 1999: 43).

I applied Thompson’s logic to later drafts of Baggage. The important catalyst of the film -- the visit to the store -- occurred early on page three (of a 22-page script), the first turning point was at page seven, and there was a new centrally-located turning point -- the arrival of the delivery boy and Harris’ discovery that he is in Cape Reach -- at page 14. The final turning point, leading into the last act, began at page 19 with Harris returning home to search for the truth after his confrontation with Mr Yaqub.

This structure held firm for the final cut of the film.

The addition of Harris’ childhood memories and the subplot of his father going missing added a new depth and substance to the film. But these elements also added to the film’s length and, in early drafts, took the focus off Harris’ linear journey. I wanted to maintain momentum through a cause-and-effect relationship but the cutaways to flashbacks tended to disrupt this flow.

My application of these structural theories and concepts to Baggage made one crucial, yet flawed, assumption: that feature films and shorts are essentially the same. In hindsight, and in light of the film’s underlying problems in plot and structure, it is clear that this assumption was erroneous.

According to Cowgill, “not only do shorts differ in size and scope of the drama but in plot structure too” (Cowgill, 1997: x). Many of the problems in Baggage, issues of complexity and convolution, relate to this fundamental distinction: “the best story ideas for short films are relatively simple” (Cowgill, 1997: 5).

CAUSE-AND-EFFECT

Chatman says story events should be “linked to each other as cause to effect, effects in turn causing other effects, until the final effect” (Chatman, 1978: 46).

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For Bordwell, Staiger et al, a film progresses like a staircase: “each scene should make a definite impression, accomplish one thing and advance the narrative a step nearer the climax” (Bordwell, Staiger et al., 1985: 17). Freeman suggests that action triggers reaction: “Each step has a new effect which in turn becomes a new cause (Freeman, 1980: 28).

In early drafts of Baggage, the application of the cause-and-effect principle was inconsistent. Perhaps this was why momentum was lacking in the middle section of the film. There were repetitious visits by several strangers, each without a clear link to one another.

Cause-and-effect was in place for the general spine of the story: the faulty tape caused Harris to go to the store, where he received a new tape to Cape Reach which, in turn, prompted the phone call from the airport. Harris retrieved the bag from the airport but the visits from the tourist woman and the delivery boy tended to stray from this direct path of cause-and-effect. The visits were not directly linked to previous actions and were effects caused by the purchase of the tape, which had occurred some 10 minutes earlier in the film. The cause-and-effect principle picked up noticeably in the last half when Harris returned to the store and events unfolded with momentum until the final twist.

This inconsistency of cause-and-effect was not thoroughly addressed and remains in the finished film. It is one of the film’s failings, resulting in a lack of momentum in the middle of the film. Repeated viewings reveal this section as repetitious and criticisms that the film is too long might well be traced to these scenes.

There were also cause-and-effect problems with the flashbacks. The motivation to cut to the flashbacks was unclear in early drafts, often occurring without any direct link to Harris’ state of mind or his journey. In the second and third drafts, the flashbacks were lumped at the beginning in chronological order. Later, they were pushed to the laborious second act, diverting the audience’s attention away from Harris and his predicament and slowing the momentum of the film.

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According to Turim, film critics often take a negative view of flashbacks, seeing them as “too artificial” and causing the action to slow (Turim, 1989: 17). They are often regarded as a cop-out, an easy way to cover plot holes and add dimension to otherwise dull and two-dimensional characters.

The flashbacks in Baggage were an important expositional and subtextual element of the film and, despite their perceived shortcomings and potential for artificiality, I was determined to make them work. They provide a summary of Harris’ childhood and the reasons for his troubled seclusion, raising themes of memory, identity and innocence.

FLASHBACKS

Turim says flashbacks create a juncture between the past and the present, suggesting “two concepts are implied in this juncture: memory and history” (Turim, 1989: 1). A flashback gives us both images of a character’s memory, their personal archives of the past, and images of history, “the shared and recorded past” (Turim, 1989: 2).

Flashbacks have a dual purpose, working “simultaneously as both devices to be covered with referential and narrative justification and as a means of portraying thought processes or circuitous investigations of enigmas” (Turim, 1989: 6). By abruptly returning to the past, flashbacks have the ability to give new meanings to people, places or objects. They gain a “particularly rich dimension in the coding of psychology of character and, because their evidence is the past, they immediately imply a psychoanalytic dimension of personality” (Turim, 1989: 12).

The flashbacks in Baggage had to be triggered by events in the present and their purpose was two-fold: to serve as narrative exposition and explain elements of the backstory, and to provide a window into Harris’ psychological state of mind. This technique makes specific use of the theory of associative memory, “the way an event or sensation in the present brings forth a memory trace that was since forgotten” (Turim, 1989: 19).

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With this in mind, the flashbacks in Baggage were reordered and linked causally to happenings in Harris’ world. Harris’ first flashback covers his early childhood, his eighth birthday and trips to Camp Tallawallah, and are motivated by his own obsession with camcorder memories and his visit to the strange store with pre- recorded memories on tape. The second flashback is of Harris’ father leaving at the airport and is motivated causally by the phone call from the airport, prompting Harris to recall that he “never goes to airports”. The final flashback, the revelation that Harris’ mother moved on and found another man after his father’s disappearance, occurs when Harris notices a pair of boots at the foot of his bed similar to those he remembers from his childhood.

It was important that the flashbacks in Baggage be dated and raw and this was achieved with an attention to detail in the production process. It also served the narrative -- and Harris’ psychological state -- to have the flashbacks take the form of his camcorder movies, complete with heavy grain, wobbly camera movements and amateur framing.

Turim says there is a particular evidential quality to photography and, in turn, to home movies: “The viewer often interprets a photo as documenting fragments of the real world” (Turim, 1989: 14). Home movies, like documentary movies, have “much the same status as family photographs”, and are understood as records of the past in the same way as the photo album has become the archive of the family (Turim, 1989: 15).

While flashbacks can be seen to have “the potential for disturbing a participatory viewing of a film and encouraging a greater intellectual distance” between filmmaker and audience (Turim, 1989: 15), I like to think their use in Baggage does the opposite, with strong causal links reducing emotional distance and strengthening the audience’s identification with the protagonist.

Externalising Harris’ thoughts through a voice-over track further aided the transitions to flashbacks, and increased character identification by drawing the audience into Harris’ subjective world.

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CHARACTER IDENTIFICATION

Bordwell and Thompson say “plunging to the depths of mental subjectivity can increase our identification with a character and can cue stable expectations about what the character will later say or do” (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997: 105).

Voice-over in Baggage helped cue feelings of nostalgia and sentimentality, particularly when Harris reflects on his childhood. The voice overs from Ross McElwee’s Time Indefinite (1993) and Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986) have a rawness and sense of nostalgia that I wanted to recreate in Baggage. The voice over needed to bring Harris’ internal thoughts to the surface and make us understand and identify with his predicament and why he behaves the way he does: why he fears airports, why he refuses to travel, why he has become so reclusive and withdrawn. Only by identifying with Harris would the audience be drawn into his story and its resolution.

According to Anderson, if we identify with a character and see in his personality something of ourselves, the “emotional impact of the film is heightened even more” (Anderson, 1996: 142). He suggests that we perceive meaning in relation to a character in a movie who inhabits the fictional world of that movie: “it is his fate, his survival that we care about” (Anderson, 1996: 137).

In addition to enhancing audience identification, the choice of Harris as voice-over narrator was important in limiting the audience’s knowledge and creating a sense of mystery about the unfolding events, ultimately increasing the power of the twist climax.

Bordwell, Staiger et al suggest that “the most common way of limiting a narrator’s knowledge is by making a particular character the narrator: thus the issue of knowledge involves point-of-view” (Bordwell, Staiger et al, 1985: 25). The film with restricted narration is “important to mystery films since the films engage our interest by hiding certain important causes” (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997: 102). The viewer’s process of “picking up cues, erecting expectations and constructing an

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ongoing story out of the plot will be governed by what the narrator tells or does not tell” (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997: 107).

In the mystery film, the spectator is encouraged to “erect erroneous first impressions, confounding the viewer’s most probable hypotheses, and stressing curiosity as much as suspense” (Bordwell, Staiger et al., 1985: 40). Mystery depends on “highly retarded exposition, the true account coming to light only at the end” (Bordwell, Staiger et al, 1985: 40).

I wanted Baggage to be mysterious, to keep the audience guessing until the final moment. But I also wanted to create suspense, particularly in the moments leading up to the opening of the suitcase and towards the conclusion. This is where restricting narrative knowledge came into question.

SUSPENSE AND SURPRISE

Alfred Hitchcock believed the use of unrestricted narration was the best way to create suspense and his ticking bomb example is commonly referred to in film texts. Suspense is created if we, as the audience, know there is a ticking bomb in a room but the three people in the room don’t. If they don’t know about it and we don’t know about it, all we have when the bomb goes off is a little “surprise” (Osteen, 2000: 259). In Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), the two main characters know -- and the audience knows -- that there is a dead body under the table but the guests don’t. The unrestricted narration creates suspense.

Susan Smith says suspense was “the core strategy” of Hitchcock’s films. To achieve it, he believed that “whenever possible, the public must be informed”, the audience must have full access to narrative information (Smith, 2000: 16-17). She identifies three main types of suspense: vicarious suspense, which requires the audience to experience suspense on behalf of a character; shared suspense, where the audience fears along with rather than for a character, allowing a much closer insight into a character’s mental and emotional state; and direct, where we experience anxiety and

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uncertainty primarily on our own -- not dependent on identification for its effect (Smith, 2000: 20).

But Smith questions the degree of distinction between suspense and surprise, suggesting that suspense need not always be uniformly privileged over surprise (Smith, 2000: 18). Indeed, despite his preference for suspense, Hitchcock used plenty of surprises in his films. Psycho (1960) and Vertigo (1958) depend very heavily on the suppressive narrative, on restricting the narrative knowledge available to the audience. We do not know that Norman Bates is dressing up as his mother until the final moment of Psycho. We are misled into believing otherwise for the majority of the film and the resulting revelation is a surprise.

Chatman suggests that suspense and surprise are complementary, not contradictory. The two can work together: a chain of events may start out as a surprise, work into a pattern of suspense, and then end with a twist, “a frustration of the expected result: another surprise” (Chatman, 1978: 60).

Creating such a mix of suspense and surprise was important in Baggage. It is essentially a mystery and, for the twists to have their full impact, a restricted narration was required.

The restricted narrative confines the audience’s range of knowledge to what Harris knows. This technique is used to great effect in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946) and, more recently, in David Fincher’s The Game (1997), where viewers are drawn into Nicholas van Orton’s paranoia and desperation because, quite simply, we know nothing more than he does and we cannot explain what is happening to him. The resultant twist is powerful and completely unexpected.

I had always hoped to created suspense at two key moments in Baggage: the build- up to the opening of the suitcase and Harris’ final trip to the store, immediately before his confrontation with Mr Yaqub. Hindsight, and my own critical evaluation of the finished film, suggests that I failed at both attempts.

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I suspect this failure has much to do with the principle of narrative knowledge. The cues to build suspense in both situations were weak and insufficient. There was nothing to suggest that there was anything dangerous or disturbing in the suitcase, no cues of a previous murder at Cape Reach or signs of dried blood on the sides. Nothing to encourage the audience to shout: Don’t open it!

Harris’ final journey to the Yaqub’s store, though carrying the generic cues for suspense -- the music, canted camera angles and high contrast lighting with characters lurking on the edges of shadows -- did not evoke suspense as I had hoped. Again, there were no clear cues of any strange behaviour happening at Mr Yaqub’s, no previous shots of Yaqub indulging in spooky activities. Indeed, an opportunity to build suspense was lost by concentrating solely on Harris in the props room, failing to cut away to Mr Yaqub as he approached. Yaqub’s appearance comes as a surprise and I think powerful audience emotion is lessened as a result.

Where surprise works best in Baggage is in the final act, with three major twists leading to an unexpected conclusion.

THE TWIST ENDING

Twist endings are common in the work of David Fincher, from the head-in-the-box finale in Seven (1995) to the split personality shock in Fight Club (1999). The Game is no exception, with the protagonist’s ordeal revealed to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax, planned to the minute with SWAT-team precision. Berardinelli says the twists and turns in The Game’s plot don’t play fair with the audience: the film was written with the primary intention of surprising viewers without much consideration for the practicality or logic of the twists. It is full of red herrings and a few too many of them are “superfluous and transparent” (Berardinelli, 1997: URL: www.movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/g/game.html).

The Game’s controversial ending remains one of its most divisive talking points, with the majority of critics finding it unsatisfying and full of holes. The problem, as Haflidason puts it, is that “the intrigue is so fantastic and the turn of events so

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unpredictable that a viewer with even limited amounts of imagination will have built-up an expectation that this film cannot meet” (Haflidason, 1997: URL: www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/03/02/the_game_1997_reviews.html)

As Taylor points out, it is questionable that a man who has essentially leapt to his death, gone through “psychic hell” in the process and almost been killed a dozen times, would have the peace of mind to sit around and have a drink with the friends and family members who put him through it (Taylor, 1997: URL: www.salon.com /sept97/entertainment/game970912.html).

While Ebert calls the plotting “ingenious and intelligent” with an arc that doesn’t progress in a docile, predictable way (Ebert, 1997: URL: www.suntimes.com /ebert/ebert_reviews/1997/09/09102.html) others, like Blackwelder, describe it “an absurd thriller riddled with glaring loop holes” (Blackwelder, 1999: URL: www.splicedwire.com/99reviews/fightclub.html). Haflidason finds the ending “a little disappointing” (Haflidason, 1997: URL: www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/03/02/ the_game_1997_reviews.html), while Savlov is happy to ignore the “wild plot holes” and the “ almost-inhuman suspension of disbelief” to find it a fun ride -- but only “up to a point” (Savlov, 1997: URL: www.auschron.com/film/pages/movies /434.html).

Crucial here is learning to navigate the divide between logic and the surprise twist. It is debatable whether Fincher manages this: critics would argue he doesn’t, viewers who place believability above flights of fantasy would probably agree.

For Smith, the final revelation in Fight Club -- the revelation that our Narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person -- is a “twist out of the bottom of a cornflakes packet” (Smith, 1999: URL: www.empireonline.co.uk/reviews/review.asp?5168). For Ebert, the ending submits to his self-described “Keyser Soze” syndrome, referring to the delicious twist ending in The Usual Suspects (1995). He suggests that “a lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before” (Ebert, 1999: URL: www.suntimes.com /ebert/ebert_reviews/1999/10/101502.html).

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A more recent example is James Mangold’s Identity (2003), which explains the entire narrative of what has gone before as the twisted inner workings of a madman’s mind.

According to Bordwell, Staiger et al, the ending is “most simply, the last effect” (Bordwell, Staiger et al, 1985: 18). It need not be happy but it must be a definite conclusion to the chain of cause-and-effect and it must be justified causally.

Herman suggests that “care must be taken that every hole is plugged; that every loose string is tied together, that no baffling question marks are left over at the end of the picture to detract from the audience’s appreciation of it” (Herman, 1974: 88).

If these critics are to be believed, twist endings work best when they make us think differently about what has gone before, when they are logical, when they add meaning to the narrative and when an audience could have reasonably foreseen what was going to happen.

The twists in Baggage are three-fold: Harris discovers that his childhood memories are pre-recorded tapes prepared by Mr Yaqub; Harris realises he is a developer who has come to Cape Reach to build a theme park and destroy the local community; and Harris remembers he has a family and a home somewhere.

These twists add meaning to the narrative, they are logical and one could fairly presume that they make an audience think differently about what has gone on before. But their failings are that they are absolute surprises.

No reasonable audience member could’ve seen them coming. There are no concrete clues, no visual cues one could pick up on a second viewing.

The best twists, as in M Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), have a resonance on second viewing; an “of course” factor. Of course Bruce Willis is dead: his wife’s not talking to him at the table.

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DIRECTION

The discussion of Baggage to this point has centred largely on the film’s narrative components; components embraced in the writing and re-writing of the script.

The direction of the film, the translation of the script to the screen, was also a major component of my research and it too consumed many months of work. Again I turned to Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher for inspiration.

STYLE

From a directorial perspective, I wanted the film to have a distinctive style. The brooding, high-contrast work of Fincher was foremost in my mind.

What impresses me most about Fincher’s work is his attention to both style and narrative. Fincher’s films are more than show-off pieces from a visually-obsessed former music video director. There is maturity and wisdom in his choices and the aesthetics he applies consistently reflect the stories he tells. The layers and meanings in his films provoke thought and discussion, and his visuals -- particularly his highly-original opening title sequences -- break new ground in the medium.

The style of The Game is particularly vivid, beginning with the dated Super-8 footage of Nicholas Van Orton as a boy accompanied by a haunting, nostalgic piano score. The film uses these “traumatic tidbits from Van Orton’s past to unexpectedly bring about his spiritual salvation, paving the way for a knockout climax” (DeLapp, 1997: URL: www.newtimes.rway.com/films/game.html).

Nicholas’ world is polished and high-gloss, yet cold and unforgiving. Fincher even contributes to the creepy mood “by the way he photographs a hamburger” (Clark, 1997: URL: www.usatoday.com/life/enter/movies/lef909.html). According to Maslin, the film has “the steady momentum and flat trajectory of a video game: excitement is churned out, chases run through ever-changing settings and sinister elements emerge from surprising places” (Maslin, 1997).

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Fight Club is also a stylistic tour-de-force from the opening credits, with issues of identity, masculinity, violence and anti-modernity bubbling over like a hot bath of liposuction fat. Style is thick and ever-present in Fight Club and, like Fincher’s previous films, it is dark and fast-paced, leaving the audience “little time for introspection” (Berardinelli, 1999: URL: www.movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies /f/ fight_club.html).

Fincher’s Fight Club is “a molasses-black comedy shot through with his blistering, hyper-kinetic style” (Smith, 1999: URL: www.empireonline.co.uk/reviews/review .asp?5168). Berardinelli says Fincher's “gritty, restless style” turns Fight Club into a visual masterpiece, every bit as surreal as watching Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. He shows “just enough restraint that his flourishes seem like important parts of the storytelling method instead of gimmicks” (Berardinelli, 1999: URL: www.movie- reviews.colossus.net/movies/f/fight_club.html). According to Smith, Fincher’s style is “scorching”. The opening title sequence “out-Sevens Seven’s”, and there is “a maelstrom of celluloid sorcery: flash cuts, subliminal images, fake cue dots, jumping film” (Smith, 1999: URL: www.empireonline.co.uk/reviews/review.asp?5168).

But I did not want the style of Baggage to become overbearing and self-indulgent, something I have come to loathe from the recent works of Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese. A story needed to be told and I wanted it to tell it without distractions, without the need to show the audience how many wonderful things I could do with a camera.

This is the case in the most recent of Fincher’s films, Panic Room (2002), which evokes a style we have come to expect -- dark, fast-paced, omniscient framing filled with movement. Regrettably, Fincher’s normally-subtle sense of style is at times exaggerated and self-indulgent. Cameras passing through key holes, up three flights of stairs and through coffee-mug handles tend to distract from the narrative.

It is as distracting as a famous director making a cameo appearance, whether it’s Hitchcock or M Night Shyamalan, who appears to be increasing the duration of his roles in direct proportion to his film budgets. The result is that the audience notices

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and whispers, the drama of the narrative is disturbed and, for just a spilt second, we remember that this is a film and that the director is up there on the screen. Despite what Hitchcock may have thought and done, despite the awe inspired by cameras that can move through the eye of a needle, a credible, unfettered narrative without disruption, without conscious cues to tell us it isn’t real, is what creates genuine, gripping tension.

Where I think Fincher faltered in Panic Room was in his approach to the narrative and his choice of omniscience over subjectivity. Fincher admits he toyed with the balance between the two, opting towards an omniscience that distances us from the protagonists. Fincher says he wanted to really set up the omniscience of the camera, that “the camera can go anywhere that it needs to go in order to tell you what it is that's going on” (Topel, 2002: URL: www.actionadventure.about.com/library/ weekly/2002/aa032902a.htm?terms=Fincher).

Framing, camera movement, the photographic image and duration of the shot in Baggage were all designed with reference to the film’s narrative form, themes and meanings.

In collaboration with director of photography Tony Luu, I decided early on that the shot design would reflect Harris’ stagnant and reclusive lifestyle, thus avoiding the free, lyrical movement of pans, tilts, dolly shots or cranes.

Only one shot -- the return of Harris to his family home at the conclusion of the film -- utilises a track for narrative purposes; giving us a sense of transition and moving forward. Harris’ world is no longer static; it is alive and moving.

We utilised a great deal of double framing, with several of the shots in Harris’ lounge room framed through doors to create a claustrophic, enclosed feel; the feeling of imprisonment. This technique was used to great effect in the opening scene of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), with the young Charles Foster Kane framed through a window to express his isolation and confinement.

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Other techniques were employed to enhance dramatic tension and further the narrative. We used frequent extreme close-ups, particularly early on, to create a sense of mystery and isolation. A slightly canted frame was used when Harris reached the back of Mr Yaqub’s store in the final act. This canted or off-kilter frame signifies that things are not quite right in Mr Yaqub’s world -- things are strange and off balance. We used a high angle frame when Harris is frantically searching through his camcorder tapes towards the end of the film. This is a point when he is vulnerable, lost and confused -- looking down on him from a high angle emphasises this vulnerability.

SUBSTANCE AND MEANING

Structure, suspense, shots and style mean very little if a film has no substance; if it is not embedded with meaning and subtext that question or comment on the human condition. Baggage explores a number of themes, among them the essence of memory, identity, sexuality and the Oedipal Complex.

SEXUALITY AND THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

Themes of sexuality and the Oedipus Complex simmer beneath the surface of Baggage. It is largely a film about identity, loss of innocence and the effect of a father’s abandonment on his child. Freud’s master narrative of Oedipus, whatever its ontological status, provided me with a strong myth upon which to build creativity and meaning.

According to the Macquarie Dictionary, the Oedipus Complex is “the unresolved desire of a child for sexual gratification through the parent of the opposite sex”. Such a desire involves “identification with, and eventual hatred for the parent of the same sex, who is considered by the child as a rival” (Delbridge, Bernard, Blair, Peters, & Butler, 1992: 1233). The male child seeks to replace the father.

Harris’ early childhood flashbacks reveal a closeness with his mother and a distance from his father, who he says “was always hidden behind his camcorder”. When his

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father leaves for the final time, Harris is given the camcorder -- perhaps a symbol of the phallus -- and asked to fill his father’s shoes. Of course, this is what young Harris has always wanted. Harris’ mother rejects his camerawork, tells him to put the camera away, then invites a stranger into their home to assume the place of his father, sleeping in his mother’s bed.

Schwartz discusses the Oedipus Complex in some detail and his comments on identity bear some relevance to Harris’ situation. He suggests that if the mother does not value the father and engages her son in devaluing the father, the son will not “be able to project an image of himself that would enable him to see himself as equal to the powerful figure of the mother”. As a result, the son “will not be able to order his life with a prospect for independent, valued identity” (Schwartz, 1996: 1015). And so it is that Harris questions and struggles with his own identity.

part three: exhibition

The first screening of Baggage was in front of a private audience of cast and crew in Brisbane in June 2002. More than 130 people attended and it was generally well- received. Cast and crew members were given copies and there was a general sense of closure. Many, including myself, had begun to move on to other projects.

FINDING AN AUDIENCE

Capturing a bigger audience -- getting the film out there -- tends to be an afterthought for most filmmakers and I’m terribly guilty of that. Maybe it’s the cost and time constraints. Maybe it’s just too hard. Whatever the reason, failing to fully explore the appropriate avenues of exhibition and distribution is as neglectful as forgetting the titles or the music.

It would be easy to dismiss short films as a mere development initiative and consign them to the shelves of State libraries across the nation. Some might even win a few awards at festivals and those awards could gather dust on the mantle-pieces of out- of-work directors and producers who have struggled to take the next step. But when we consider the amount of government funding allocated to short film production, and the work that goes into making them, such ideas become concerning.

If the short film is all about development and giving up-and-coming filmmakers a platform to show their worth, the process doesn’t stop -- it shouldn’t stop -- when

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the film is finished. Part of it is motivating filmmakers to get their work out there. But when this is done, when our filmmakers are champing at the bit to find an audience, what chance do they really have?

When it’s all said and done, when the film is in the can and the funding body executives have put away their cheque books, what avenues are available for short filmmakers to get their films noticed on the national and international arena? What is to become of the work they toiled on, the celluloid trophies of taxpayers’ money?

Is this stage for short filmmakers to demonstrate their talents unstable, out-of-reach or failing to find an audience that matters?

Film festivals, awards ceremonies and limited broadcast opportunities have been the traditional source of distribution and exhibition for short films, both here and overseas. But many say the internet has changed all that. Some see it as a comeback for the medium, a godsend for short films. Others can see its limitations.

SHORT FILMS AND THE INTERNET

This chapter will examine the positives and negatives of short film distribution and exhibition on the internet, the strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives and the future of short films and the web in Australia. Is it a perfect match made in cyberspace, a romantic comedy with a happy ending? Or is it a blockbuster full of hype that fails to deliver?

Hart suggests that the “neglected genre” of the short film has begun getting its due in the last couple of years, thanks largely to an explosion of entertainment sites on the web and the Internet’s current technical constraints. Film critic Roger Ebert believes limited bandwidth on the net makes short films “the only practical kind of film on the Web” (Hart, 2001: 11).

Pollack echoes this sentiment: “Short films are more suitable for the Web than full- length features because it takes hours to download a long film using a conventional

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personal computer modem and many people won’t watch a full two-hour movie at a desktop PC” (Pollack, 2000: E1).

The internet has indeed opened up a whole new avenue of exhibition for short filmmakers, exposure not seen since the pre-multiplex days of the 1970s. Back then, as Heimans notes, shorts had a place in mainstream theatrical distribution as “a supporting film to the main feature” (Heimans, 1995: 269).

But the growth of cinema multiplexes, the ability to pack more feature film sessions into one day and the push for more trailers saw shorts cut from the movie theatre exhibition. What was once an opportunity for filmmakers to showcase their work became a “shrinking market” that all but disappeared (Heimans, 1995: 270). According to Roger Ebert, “shorts were marginalised by greedy theatre owners, who dropped them in favour of faster audience turnover and more trailers” (Hart, 2001: 11).

Suddenly, as William Azaroff puts it, America – and the rest of the world – didn’t know what to do with short films (Pollack, 2000: E1).

BROADCAST OPPORTUNITIES

Broadcast opportunities certainly weren’t the solution. The length of short films was, and still is, a major restriction in the commercial television arena. Limited opportunities are available in Australia through SBS weekly program Eat Carpet, which screens late on a Saturday night.

Product on Eat Carpet is restricted to experimental works and the content is often made up of foreign works.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation occasionally runs a series titled Short and Sweet, hosted by Phillip Adams. The most recent series screened in 2001 and featured mainly overseas product.

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THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT

Film festivals became the only outlet for short films and, particularly in the nineties, they began to find new audiences and newfound support. The growth of Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival, is indicative of this. Tropfest began in 1993 in a café in Sydney, attracting as many as 70,000 people to the Sydney Domain in 2000 (Howard & Smith, 2000: 32-36).

The festival celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2002 with more than 100,000 turning out and a special broadcast on the Nine Network. According to founder John Polson: “a few years ago it was unheard of that any short filmmakers would have had exposure on a commercial network -- over 200,000 people watched in 2000, more viewers than any short film could have expected until now” (Howard & Smith, 2000: 35) Tropfest has “increased interest in, and awareness of, short films and raised the profile of Australian filmmaking” (Howard & Smith, 2000: 33).

Festivals remain a major force in short film distribution and exhibition and, as mentioned earlier, they have the potential to turn budding filmmakers like Gregor Jordan and Robert Luketic into international directors. There are thousands of film festivals around the world and more are founded every year with growing numbers of entries. The website www.insidefilm.com lists some 109 pages of festivals in North America alone.

My first step with Baggage was to explore the festival circuit. I compiled a list of some 217 festivals from around the world -- seven from Asia, seven from Australia, 14 from Canada, 34 from Europe, two from Mexico and 157 from the United States. The costs, based on exchange rates from February 2003, equate to nearly $6800 in entry fees and $2400 in postage, making for a total of $9200. That’s another couple of short films I could make.

These figures do not include the added costs of reproducing stills and media kits, VHS preview tapes and master prints and tapes, which can cost many hundreds -- even thousands (for prints) -- if a festival offers to screen your short film.

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To date, Baggage has been entered in seven festivals and it has screened at two -- the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival in February 2003 and the Bradford Film Festival in the United Kingdom in March 2003.

But film festivals remain problematic as a complete distribution and exhibition solution. The cost of entry fees, dubs, international postage costs, publicity materials and duplicate prints make it expensive for a short filmmakers to distribute their work. There are high barriers to entry, with the prestige festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Telluride demanding quality product with substantial budgets. Selection at these and the majority of festivals is based on the subjective opinions of judges.

Festivals also carry restrictions on format, length and genres. Some, like Tropfest and the Brisbane International Film Festival Fast Film competition, require filmmakers to include a special signifier like butterfly or fish in the finished film to “prove” it was made specifically for the festival in question.

Which brings us back to the internet. Relatively unrestricted in format, length or genre -- you can put anything on the web. Accessible to almost everybody; low in cost, high in exposure. On the face of it, it is the perfect distribution and exhibition solution.

SHORTS OVERLOAD ON THE WEB

There is certainly no shortage of short films on the internet. It is a thriving marketplace. Type in “short films” to a search engine like google.com and it’ll comeback with more than a million hits. There is an overwhelming amount of information about short films and an abundance of them to download and watch off the web.

Yahoo Movies lists web shorts at 120 sites and estimates as many as 20,000 such films on the web (Nichols, 2000: B9). Some of the most popular sites include:

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atomfilms.com, ifilm.com, hypnotic.com, alwaysif.com. cinemanow.com and holly- woodshorts.com.

For a filmmaker who exhibits their work on the web, a world of seemingly endless exposure awaits. According to Hart, “filmmakers can get more exposure from one day on the web than in an entire year on the festival circuit” (Hart, 2001: 11).

Australian filmmaker Matt Wheldon, whose short Blind Date was picked up by AtomFilms, said he had “incredible exposure in the US”, having previously been unable to afford to enter international festivals due to the cost of entry fees (Jacka, 2001: 69-73).

The success stories of web exposure are endless.

The short film 405 (2000), created by novices Jeremy Hunt and Bruce Branit on no- frills home computers in just three months, was downloaded 100,000 times in its first month. Ifilm.com, which bought and hosted the film, estimates that it has been viewed more than 3.1 million times (Hart, 2001: 11). The creators have since been snapped up by Creative Artists Agency to develop a feature project and their film is now available in DVD and video cassette format (Hart, 2001: 11).

The nine-minute internet short George Lucas In Love (1999) debuted in 1999 on Mediatrip.com and has become something of internet short film folklore, earning producer Joseph Levy a top job at Bandeira Entertainment and director Joe Nussbaum a feature film gig with Imagine Entertainment. More than 45,000 DVD copies of the film have been sold (Hart, 2001: 11).

Then there is David Garrett and Jason Ward’s Sunday’s Game (1999), a dark comic short which was rejected by 15 film festivals before “taking off” on the web. The pair have since sold a feature script to Disney’s Touchstone Pictures (Hart, 2001: 11). Garrett admits the internet exposure increased their visibility and “got people talking” (Pollack, 2000: E1).

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Examples like 405, George Lucas In Love and Sunday’s Game show that exposure on the internet is independent of marketing dollars, festival judges and entry fees.

The barriers to entry on the net are extremely low, allowing for an abundance of product from all over the world. According to American Zoetrope president Ray Price, “as you lower the bar, more voices can be heard” (Pollack, 2000: E1).

The AFC points out that “the majority of online exhibitors will screen short films for free, some will charge a fee (towards the cost of compressing the film for the Internet), and in rare cases web hosts will pay the film’s rights holders a royalty or licence fee” (Jacka, 2001: 72).

The web is also a stepping stone to other avenues of distribution. AtomFilms has deals pending to provide some 600 shorts to television, airlines, broadband and wireless companies (Hart, 2001: 11) and is also in a deal to put shorts on elevator screens manufactured by Otis and on gigantic screens in shopping malls (Houston, 2000: G13).

Web movie companies also act as sales agents for filmmakers and for buyers like the Sundance Channel, which has rights to more than 100 shorts (Houston, 2000: G13).

It all seems too good to be true. Great exposure, easy access, endless opportunities. What could possibly be negative about the internet experience?

Film journalist Lawrie Zion admits that the “new medium contains real possibilities to bypass some of the more traditional distribution barriers” (Jacka, 2001: 72). But he also raises some important questions about artistic control, exposure opportunities and financial exploitation (Jacka, 2001: 72).

The most obvious drawback of short films on the web relates to quality. As Pollack puts it, “in addition to long download times, the picture is often blurry and appears in a little box on the computer screen” (Pollack, 2000: E1). Users with a 56k

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modem -- the standard for household consumers -- will often find the image pause or jump frames as the signal finds its way along their telephone line.

AtomFilm’s Acquisitions Manager Anne Rosselini said animation and short films of around five minutes “worked best at the moment”. She said future growth in broadband connection would improve quality, enabling longer films to be exhibited online (Jacka, 2001: 72).

Independent filmmaker Mark Bellamy claims the quality issue isn’t a major concern because all films on the net are the same. “They all look that way and I think people realise it’s the technology -- and I think as the technology progresses too, it’s going to catch up pretty quick” (Jacka, 2001: 72).

Technology will inevitably catch up and quality will improve so short filmmakers need only be patient. But while they’re waiting and the images are improving, their internet audience is increasing and the quantity of shorts on the web is sky- rocketing. That isn’t such a good thing for filmmakers wanting to stand out.

The web’s low barrier to entry, though attractive to budding filmmakers with no money, is also a disadvantage. So many short films are available on the net that it is difficult for one to “rise above the crowd” (Pollack, 2000: E1). As Mason and Torbey point out, “online film sites offer viewers hundreds or thousands of films, with little or no effort made to separate the wheat from the chaff” (Mason and Torbey, 2000: 35).

In addition, having a film on the web can discourage a profit-minded distributor from picking it up (Pollack, 2000: E1).

Exclusivity can also be a problem with some websites. Many exclusive contracts will not allow films to be shown on any other electronic media so a filmmaker who signs such a contract is locked into that exclusivity and will not be allowed to gain exposure elsewhere (Mason and Torbey, 2000: 35).

PART THREE: EXHIBITION 39

AtomFilms’ Anne Rosselini said her company distributes short films offline as well as online, mainly to the television and airline markets, and they usually seek exclusivity as a result. They don’t pay a licensing fee, just an advance based on future sales -- and the advances “are not huge at all, they’re very modest” (Jacka, 2001: 72).

That wasn’t the case for Bellamy and his film Oops (1999), which he sold to Media Trip despite concerns an internet sale would infringe on its saleability. Bellamy said Media Trip offered an advance payment that “basically took care of any problems of limiting television sales, because the money was substantial, and it was a lot more than you could make from television sales in Australia” ( Jacka, 2001: 72).

But not all online distribution offers are as attractive as Bellamy’s and he is quick to emphasise caution when scrutinising internet contracts: “There’s one I got today — well basically you sign the film to them. And basically if you signed that document, you would be signing away the rights for your film for five or seven years. But also, they had the right to re-edit the film, insert advertising at any given point, cut, use segments — they could do anything with it. It was ridiculous” ( Jacka, 2001: 72).

The internet’s unfiltered, worldwide exposure also means that the audience is not very specific. Filmmaker Meher Gourjian said it is mainly children who contact him after seeing previews of his short film on the web. He said the only enquiries he receives from movie industry executives -- the people he is trying to reach -- came from festival screenings and video cassette mailouts (Pollack, 2000: E1).

Film festivals indeed have the edge when it comes to targeting a concentrated audience. At most festivals, particularly the significant ones, the audience is made up of movie industry professionals and the likelihood of having a film noticed is much higher than on the internet.

Financial rewards are also much greater at festivals, as well as in kind prizes including production and post production facilities. Nash Edgerton, who won the 1997 Tropfest with his film Deadline, won $3000 in cash and $25,000 in prizes. His

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film was sold to The Comedy Channel and he made “substantial amounts of money” from people who saw the film on The Comedy Channel and wanted work done (Howard & Smith, 2000: 33).

In contrast, there is little or no money to be made by showing movies on the internet. Most websites do not pay filmmakers because many are “just happy to get the exposure” (Pollack, 2000: E1). According to Mason, money paid to filmmakers for the exclusive use of their work borders on exploitation. AtomFilms spends $28m a year in advertising and pays filmmakers $500 for an exclusive one year contract. They have 800 films on their site, making filmmakers’ fees around $400,000 or just two per cent of the advertising budget (Mason and Torbey, 2000: 35).

Still, if filmmakers are worried about financial rewards, making short films -- as discussed earlier -- probably isn’t the way to go. If it’s about getting noticed and building a career, winning prizes and earning small cash advances shouldn’t be an issue.

What it comes down to is a decision between widespread, blanket exposure on the net and a more refined, concentrated audience on the festival circuit. It is a decision between low cost, low barriers to entry on the web and expensive, high barriers to entry at festivals; between poor quality, time-consuming images on the web and a captivating, big screen exhibition at festivals.

Web companies are attractive because many offer spin-off distribution opportunities like the Sundance Channel and AtomFilms’ television and airport deals. But film festivals are equally active in this arena.

Tropfest has constantly developed its role as distributor and promoter of short films, selling shorts to free-to-air television (ABC and Channel Nine) and cable TV channels. In 1999, a number of winning Tropfest films were placed at the start of selected features as part of a deal with Video Ezy and, in 2000, the Tropfest finalists were released on a special compilation video at Video Ezy outlets (Howard & Smith, 2000: 33).

PART THREE: EXHIBITION 41

In 2002 the Flickerfest International Film Festival announced it would expand into distribution of Australian short films into the national and international market place. (Oberg, 2002: 12-13).

Filmmaker Matt Wheldon, whose short Blind Date screened at Flickerfest and was then picked up by AtomFilms, said it is better to work through local distributors of short films, such as Flickerfest and Tropfest in the domestic market, before embarking on internet sales (Jacka, 2001: 69-73).

So where does this leave the internet and what is the future of short films on the web? Improvements in image quality, compression methods, and an increase in broadband connections by consumers will undoubtedly help the cause for short film distribution and exhibition.

Already, websites like Mysteryclock.com -- created by filmmaker Alex Proyas’ production company -- understand the web’s shortfalls and are working around its limitations. General Manager Topher Dow says the site, which contains predominantly video material, was created primarily for broadband users with the view that “it was not worth doing if it was designed for narrowband users”. He said: “No one wants to watch jerky video on small windows so we resigned ourselves to a smaller audience until more people have broadband” (Jacka, 2001: 69-70).

Perhaps the way of the short film’s web future will be to do just that: narrow and refine its audience. Ifilm.com has already made inroads, creating Ifilmpro.com as a variation to its standard short film site. The alternative site can be seen only by movie industry professionals.

Actor Kevin Spacey’s new short film web initiative, TriggerStreet.com, promises much in the way of refined audience exposure. Launched in late 2002, TriggerStreet.com allows aspiring filmmakers to upload their short films to the site and have them reviewed by their peers. The top-rated works are ranked daily and the 10 top-ranked submissions to the online festival in March 2003 will get a second

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look from the likes of rock star Bono, writer/director Cameron Crowe, actor Mike Myers, actress Annette Bening and actor/producer Danny DeVito.

Spacey says the initiative is designed to provide exposure for young writers and directors, who are largely ignored in current-day Hollywood. He says “most of the smaller and middle-sized agencies that used to focus entirely on the development of young talent have folded” (Stroud, 2002: URL: http://www.wired.com/news /digiwood/0,1412,56480,00.html?tw=wn_ascii).

Support for Australian filmmakers also needs to come from government film funding bodies. Funds are already allocated to assist filmmakers with marketing their shorts in overseas festivals -- in the form of airfares and assistance with duplicating prints -- but maybe more needs to be directed towards internet distribution.

Two new government initiatives, announced in 2001, look promising. The first, a study of clusters in the creative digital industries, will “review Australia’s strengths and capabilities in producing digital content and applications, and will look at ways the creative industries can form strategic alliances and develop new business models” ( Jacka, 2001: 83). The second initiative is the establishment of a $2.1m grants program that will fund innovative broadband content and will be administered by the AFC (Jacka, 2001: 83).

Funding cuts to the Australian Film Institute -- to the tune of $500,000 in 2002 -- certainly don’t help. Prior to March 2002, the AFI was the official subsidised distributor for non-commercial Australian films, including shorts. Since 1986 they have been the exclusive distributor for shorts from the AFTRS and VCA in Australia and New Zealand (Clark, 2002: 56-57). As a result of the cuts, the AFI’s distribution arm closed its doors, having just set up a deal with Telstra Cable Services and Beyond Distribution to screen short films from the AFI collection on broadband channel Redkarpet TV (Clark, 2002: 56-67).

PART THREE: EXHIBITION 43

Only when our film funding bodies pay more attention to the successful distribution and exhibition of short films can the money spent on production be justified. If shorts are calling cards for our directors of the future, more funding needs to be dedicated to getting the films out there, whether it’s through festivals, broadcast media or via the internet.

The internet is indeed a boost for short film distribution and exhibition but it remains imperfect. In time, and with government support and guidance, perhaps it can live up to its promise.

part four: reflection

It takes time, often many months, to distance yourself from a film you’ve made. Countless viewings in the edit and sound suites tend to taint effective criticism. It is only with a first screening, the first unbiased audience reaction, that one can begin the process of a truly honest critique; an objective reflection.

Only with the benefit of time and space have I been able to identify and understand the flaws of Baggage. But I have also been able to recognise its strengths.

STRENGTHS

It was an ambitious project from the outset, with length, logistics and the complexity of the script posing many challenges. But I think I met these challenges bravely. As a film crew, we embraced a list of more than 20 locations, shot for more than 10 days and sifted through more than 15 rolls of film.

It is a film that confuses many but it does not lack substance. It has meaning and subtext and I like to think this builds on repeated viewings. There is no greater compliment to a filmmaker than an audience member who willingly watches their film a second time, eager to gain more from it.

Though I can personally take little credit, the cinematography by Tony Luu was rich, subtle and engaging, precisely capturing the mood and tone of the script. The

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performances of the actors were outstanding, particular lead actor Ron Kelly, who required little direction. Ron, a talented and experienced actor, brought a humanity to Harris Babel that was lacking on the page. Cameron Watt as Mr Yaqub delivered a classy, restrained performance, his sinister edge played with precision.

Though attempts at suspense were not ultimately successful, I believe Baggage did achieve a strong sense of mystery. The first act is genuinely intriguing, with a thought-provoking and well-paced set-up that builds tension and raises a plethora of questions.

WEAKNESSES

The film’s fatal flaw is that these questions are never answered clearly. A confused, frustrated audience is a filmmaker’s worst nightmare.

This confusion was caused by incorrect choices, an overly-restricted narration with a lack of cues, an incoherent explanation for Harris’ predicament and his subsequent motivations, and a convoluted, far-fetched conclusion. The twist ending, as surprising as it may have been, lacked impact because the audience could never have seen it coming.

The film was lacking in suspense, again the result of misguided narrative choices and a failure to mislead, tease and inform the audience at the appropriate moments.

An inconsistency of cause-and-effect dragged out the second act and slowed the momentum of the opening. But I like to think this was rectified somewhat in the final act, with the pace and momentum maintained to the end.

One of the fundamental weaknesses of Baggage relates to one of the very basic areas of storytelling: character goals. In hindsight, Harris’ goal is not clear. He does not actively pursue a goal, nor does he achieve one. Circumstances are forced upon him and he reacts. He is the central character of the film but he is not the driving force of the story and this is where the film is weak.

PART FOUR: REFLECTION 47

Structural problems in the film emanate from a tendency to apply feature film theory to a short film. Though shorts and features have many similarities, my inability to recognise their differences -- and to focus on what makes a short film successful -- was a major failing.

Ultimately the core concept of the film – the displacement of memory and the dissolution of identity – was not explored to its full potential. Perhaps, in my zest for an ending that would shock, in my eagerness to avoid predictability, I got awfully lost. Instead, my tendency to withhold information to create twists and turns, ultimately led to crucial information being denied.

The reason for Harris constructing his identity based on camcorder memories were never clear enough. There were subtle hints about him going to the store for a new suitcase or a souvenir, that the tapes intrigued him at first: “An erotic encounter in Bangkok: why not?”. But the only rational explanation for Harris’ confusion between real memories and the digitally-recorded memories were the prawn-cracker hallucinogens. It was a weak and convoluted explanation that said very little about memory and identity, serving only to fill a plot hole.

Hindsight is a powerful thing and there is much I would change if I had the opportunity to make Baggage again. Ultimately, the major failing of the film occurred at script stage and this is where I would make major changes. A director cannot do much with an incoherent, unworkable script.

I would return to the very heart of the concept, to the simplicity of a story about a man and his camcorder: his obsession with memories and his inability to live for the moment. The store he goes to buy pre-recorded tapes is part of his world and this is where the story has potential and mystery.

The failings of the script emanate from Harris’ motivations to go the store and I would make these clearer and stronger. What draws him there? What makes him go back? What does he want in his life that starts this journey? What does he seek? What is missing? These are crucial questions that needed answering.

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The narrative fails to deliver on the questions it raises and I would rework the first act accordingly, building a logical and believable reality. Perhaps Harris is a travel writer who has a need to go places, to travel afar. Perhaps something, some catalyst, makes him not want to travel anymore, to seek another way to write about faraway places without needing to go there. The store would be his saviour, its location provided by a jaded former travel writer or found on a note in his father’s old boxes. These are motivations that are believable and logical. They create conflict and potential for a powerful, meaningful resolution.

I take much from Cowgill’s assertion that the best short films are those that are focused and specific (Cowgill, 1997: 4). Laboured, confused explanations of corporate sabotage and hallucinogens would be replaced by a payoff that emphasises and comments on the film’s core concept: something that speaks clearly and intelligently about this idea of memory and identity.

The character of Harris Babel lacks clear goals, depth and shading, and a reworking of the plot would serve to change this. Constrained largely by the claustrophobic walls of his apartment, Harris Babel changes or grows little in the existing Baggage. He reacts to situations but he does not act to change, nor does he do anything but return home, possibly without any real psychological or emotional change. Has the experience made him a less greedy corporate animal, more caring for the plight of defenceless towns who resist development? Unlikely, since that same town drugged him and stole his luggage.

In a different Baggage, with the benefit of reflection and time, I would strive for more simplicity and cohesion in plot, but more complexity and depth in characterisation.

The experience of Baggage has enriched my capabilities as a writer and director. Since its completion, I have made three more short films: two privately-funded comedies and a PFTC-funded thriller.

PART FOUR: REFLECTION 49

It is only by recognising a film’s strengths and addressing its weaknesses that a filmmaker can move on with conviction and confidence to another project.

I continue to actively pursue avenues for the exhibition and distribution of Baggage, encouraged by its positive response at festivals in the US and the United Kingdom.

It is not a flawless piece of work but its strength lies in what I have gained from it.

I look back on the experience, not with feelings of lost opportunity or failure, but with a resolve to approach each new project with renewed and unwavering attention to the fundamentals of storytelling.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 51

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appendices

Appendix A Baggage: First Draft Script (August 17, 2001)

Appendix B Baggage: Eighth (Shooting) Draft Script (January 22, 2002)