Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the board outside the new Sydney premises of film production company Tomahawk Pictures. The camera follows producer Jason Gooden on a tour of the office, during which he comments on the importance of a 'prestigious’ office and its symbolic function for his amateur team. Tomahawk Pictures is in the process of completing a feature film, and Glenn Fraser, the original director and screenwriter of the film, speaks to the camera about his legal entitlement to attend a post-production screening. Brief comments follow from co-producer Julian Saggers ('Jules’). Fraser views the film, describing it as 'all over the shop’, and confirms that he cannot put his name to it.

Educational value points

• The subjects of this documentary share what they have learnt about the workings of the Australian film industry. Jason Gooden sees feature filmmaking as a confidence game, in which a facade of industrious workers in nicely partitioned offices is required to impress investors. (In an accompanying clip it is established that the subjects deceived a bank into giving them a 'housing’ loan of $250,000.) The struggle for finance and credibility is represented by producer Jason miming knocking on the door and requesting to be allowed into the industry. According to Gooden, outsiders require considerable bravura to achieve their goals.

• The post-production stage of filmmaking, which includes editing and marketing, emphasises the skills required by film producers. The producer has final responsibility for every area of a film’s production, sometimes from conceiving the idea, to the finished film and the financial outcome. The producer needs to carry a crew along on a production journey, uniting them with a creative and commercial vision. The producer must find and liaise with a director, writers, cast, musicians, editors and post-production engineers. Consultation on the final print of any film, as shown here, is a major challenge for the producer.

• The suspense in this clip captures the serendipitous nature of documentary making. Although the documentary makers originally intended to film a straightforward record of the process of making a low-budget film, their documentary benefited from the tensions and dramas that developed between the main players when inexperience led to a budget blow-out and an unreleasable film. The film took five years to make and resulted in Gooden and Saggers owing their investors more than $1 million. In 2003 the film was finally released, to generally poor reviews, in its third incarnation as Moneyshot.

• The scenes show how Making Venus uses some of the conventions of the observational documentary, a form of filmmaking that avoids narration and is largely unscripted. The advent of small, portable cameras and sound equipment enabled the development of observational documentary making, as cameras could be taken into intimate settings such as the film screening scene shown here. However, even in so-called observational filmmaking it is impossible to know to the extent to which the unmediated action in front of the camera is influenced by the camera’s presence.

This clip starts approximately 42 minutes into the documentary.

Jason Gooden is giving us a tour of the new production office.
Jason Gooden This is our new office mate. Come and have a look. It’s just been painted so excuse the smell. Walk this way. This is the main work area. Jules’ big illustrious office. This is the corporate centre.
A sign on the wall reads 'Full Mongrel Films.’
Jason I couldn’t resist putting that sign back up. But the idea is we’re right at the end of our tether financially but we’ve gotta — it’s all image. We’ve gotta look like we’re happening more than we are and this basically looks like we’re an established company and we’ve got in other film production offices and this is probably as good or better than most of them, and ah, we’re still at the door saying ‘let us in.’

Glenn Fraser, the original director/co-writer, is being interviewed outside the office.
Glenn Fraser Well, I’ve been invited along to a screening of the film. I think legally that’s what I’m entitled to which is to see a cut of the film and to see what it’s actually looking like now so I can decide whether to keep my name on it or not so this will be an experience. It’s been I think just on a year since our last conversation with the guys so we’ve probably got a little bit more grey hairs, put on a little more weight or a little less weight depending on the worry stakes are, but it’s been a year I guess so it will be really interesting to see what transition the film has made in that time.

Inside the office, Julian Saggers is speaking to camera.
Julian Saggers Chris Willer has already decided to take his name off, which is cool and um, basically yeah, it’s now down to Glenn and after that the opticals and titles get done.
We see Glenn viewing the film in a projection room.
Interviewer So second reel, how is it? How are you feeling at the moment?
Glenn (Sighs) It’s just a very odd experience. If I could cringe back any further I probably would but there’s no way I could put my name to it. It’s just so all over the shop. It seems like everything is there in spite of itself. The music is not matching with the pictures. I’m just assuming that’s not the final music.