Blood, sweat, and tears attached to filmmaker's dream
“In any sort of creative industry especially, the rate of rejection is staggeringly high. That applies to everything, whether its funding or film festivals."
Matt Inns isn’t sure how to answer when he gets asked what his first film was.
Afterall his passion for film stretches back to six or seven years old when they would play around with the family camcorder.
That interest filtered through his days at St Theresa's Primary School, on to high school at James Hargest College, before he went on to complete a Bachelor of Digital Media at the Southern Institiute of Technology in Invercargill.
“It’s a weird one, I don’t know at what point it I knew, this is me, this is what I want to do.
“I guess all that stuff as a kid is the seed of where you start, and I guess at some point it became what I want to try to do. I’m still getting there on that front.”
Inns confesses he probably wasn’t the best student at SIT. His motive for signing up to study was a unique one.
“Towards the end of high school, I’d pretty much decided I just wanted to be making films, that’s what I want to do.
“But I just needed the gear, I needed the equipment. They’ve got gear [at SIT], that was my reasoning.
“I probably wasn’t the ideal student…I just needed to make stuff and I didn’t care about the rest of it. I wanted access to the cameras.
“I met some likeminded people, and we are still doing stuff together now.”
Fast forward the clock and by day the now 33-year-old works for SIT Productions, an in-house TV production for the Southern Institute of Technology.
At nights - or most of them at least - he goes about carving out his film-making career.
Inns emerged as a talented film maker in what seems to be a tight-knit and ever-growing Southland film scene.
At this point, he acknowledges it is pretty much still a labour of love. But like many filmmakers the goal is to one day make a living from it. Each moment of success is another step closer.
There is a lot of graft and a bucket load of rejection to work your way through.
It all leads to a pretty high “fatality rate”, in terms of those wanting to make films and those who give up, Inns says.
“We have probably made a lot of progress in getting to a point now, where doing a feature or something like that is probably a little bit more realistic. But there’s still a few steps to go yet.”
In terms of steps forward, Inns took a large leap last year.
His short-film The Ballard of Maddog Quinn was accepted for the prestigious Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, held in Sitges, Spain.
The short film has been described as a “steampunk western” and was largely shot in Tekapo with plenty of Southland involvement.
A short synopsis of the 15-minute film says: “An unlikely outlaw wreaks hell across the dusty dystopia of The State on a wild quest to save what is held most dear.”
Inns says The Ballard of Maddog Quinn provides a snapshot of the rejection that’s attached to filmmaking mixed in with the high points that provides enough encouragement to keep going.
“In any sort of creative industry especially, the rate of rejection is staggeringly high. That applies to everything, whether its funding or film festivals.
“For example, with Maddog, we had applied to quite a few festivals, lower ones that we didn’t get into.
“I’m thinking, ‘we’re not going to get in anywhere’, and then you get into the one you really want to [Sitges]. You never quite know.
“It’s a mental game because your rate of rejection is probably 90 percent.”
The story behind the making of The Ballard of Maddog Quinn probably involves more twists and turns than the actual film itself.
Inns first started to piece together the concept in his head while he was still a SIT student. Then come the high that was being awarded funding from the New Zealand Film Commision for the project - $90,000 to be precise.
That backing provided him with the confidence that he was getting somewhere with his passion.
But it was far from simply champagne and pats on the back.
Inns was 24 when he the film was shot. But he was in his early 30s when he got it finished.
He is wary of delving too deep publicly as to what played out, but it involved some legal battles and significant financial hurdles.
“It was tough because it took a lot longer than it ever should have. But there’s lessons in that as well. I know for myself now, going forward I’m very cautious of who I work with.”
“A lot of film makers probably don’t experience that until later on. You’ve got the creative side but then you’ve got the business and the politics. Most people were very supportive.”
That experience had the potential to strip Inns’ creative side from him. At one point he thought it probably did just that for the first time in his life.
But once The Ballard of Maddog Quinn was actually completed, it was a moment where he felt he could move forward.
“I’ve put it behind me now, but it was a weight on my shoulders getting that one done.”
“I was just happy to get the film finished but to get into a decent festival, it was a real bonus."
Inns received a talent development grant from the Film Commision to go to Spain for the festival which he says was an awesome experience.
It’s also screened at a festival in Finland.
The short-film was first publicly screened in New Zealand at a Southern Short Film Screening event at SIT Centre Stage in Invercargill on Friday night, in front of a packed audience.
Inns was pleased with the reception.
He says film making is being backed by the Southland community, including the likes of the Invercargill Licensing Trust, and it was nice to get to showcase the work to them.
While he and others currently get little financial reward for their work, filmmaking still is a costly exercise.
“It’s very grassroots, you are not talking about enough to be paying people. The difficulty with film making is it involves so many people just to make a short film.
“Even if you can’t pay people, you’ve still got to feed them and do all that, and that can add up quickly. So, there’s a lot of blood sweat and tears required at this kind of grassroots level to get things made.”
Another of Inns’ short films, Riven, also screened on Friday night.
He enjoys seeing the reaction from an audience, but he admits watching the finished project isn’t the biggest buzz he gets from filmmaking.
“I can look at the flim and go, ‘oh yeah, that’s cool’. But what I really miss is actually making stuff.
“It’s the experience of being on set with everyone, because there is a real buzz to that.
“I’m not particularly social either, so for me that is how I kind of build friendships and relationships with people, is by making films.
“There’s something special about getting all those people on the same page and having this creative energy going, it’s a bit of an adventure.”
Inns says there is a couple of ways he could go about progressing his career. One is to move to a bigger centre - Auckland, Wellington - where there are probably more opportunities.
But there’s a part of him that wants to keep playing a role in helping grow the Southland filmmaking scene.
“We’d love to grow a bit more of a scene down here where that actually is a bit more self-sustainable.
“Some people look at that as a bit of a pipe dream, but when you compare the scene here now - yes, we’re not at a point where we are making a fulltime living out of it - if you compare it to where it was 10 years ago, I’m not sure there was anyone down here doing anything.
“Now we’re getting Film Commision funding. We are moving in the right direction; the tricky thing is you don’t know how long the road is.”
What is certain is Inns is on the right road at least. Southland should be proud of what he and others in the province’s film scene are creating.