If you attended the Rev Fest this year then maybe you saw the unassuming little feature doc, THREE HAMS IN A CAN, by director Kenta McGrath. Cinephilia called it “highly congenial” and Brains? is wont to agree. Discussed in this long overdue interview: Kenta’s banner company LBP; new work for the Voltaire Twins. You can find more on the Little Boy Pictures site or on YouTube and on Twitter.

BRAINS?: Who is LBP?
KM: Little Boy Pictures is a small independent film production group in Perth. The key members are myself and cinematographer Hugh Thomson. The crew varies for each project but Jess Fogarty (editor), Ben Mulvey (sound recordist/designer) and Matt Osborne (editor/colourist) have worked on most of our projects. Our name and logo comes from the name of the first atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima, and has nothing to do with pedophilia as some PC-idiots have suggested.

What do you do?
Primarily, LBP acts as a banner under which we make the films that we want to make – at the moment mostly low-budget or DIY narrative and documentary productions. By organising ourselves and having a frontage it makes the logistical processes of filmmaking a lot easier. We’re not a full-time operation nor are we a company as such, in that we’re not ‘filmmakers for hire’ and we don’t do any sort of ads, videos or corporate stuff. Life’s too short! We do often pursue other film work individually, but LBP is all about making the films that we want to make, on our own terms. Additionally we run the microcinema Cinema in a Cave (currently on hiatus) and we plan to expand as a small DVD label next year, focusing on releasing some local underground music, as well as some of our own work and possibly some works by other filmmakers.

Why not work alone?
We don’t work alone because no filmmaker works alone, unless you’re a basement freak ala Bruce Bickford. Also we were all unloved as children and it helps to get together and make films about this sad truth.


How can one make a good flick the LBP way?
We like to have uncluttered productions – generally we work with a small budget and intimately with a tiny crew. We prepare hard, multitask a lot and shoot quickly. I dislike nothing more than cables, shitloads of lights and equipment, and a dozen crew members standing around for no good reason other than to serve a sandwich twice a day or mutter something into a walkie-talkie, so we usually try to strip back the shoots to the barest essentials. I suppose that generally reflects the kind of films we like, and want to make ourselves – simple films made in a very simple way. And as all low-budget filmmakers do, we rely a lot on favours so we try to look after people as much as we can. But all this, of course, doesn’t necessarily equal a good film – that’s something else entirely – but it certainly makes the process of filmmaking a lot more disciplined and efficient, but also fun and unpredictable.

Will Cinema in a Cave be making a return?
We hope Cinema in a Cave will be making a return, perhaps next year. We’ve had to put it on hold, initially because of issues with the venue and now we’re all too busy with other things. We have a catalogue of great films waiting to be screened, much of which haven’t screened in Australia before.

Voltaire Twins

What was the concept?
Voltaire Twins contacted us and asked us to make a music video for their upcoming single, and they gave us free rein to come up with whatever we wanted. We liked the song and thought that we could go somewhere with it. Interestingly they were initially adamant not to appear in the video themselves, although we eventually decided to pop them in. We pitched two concepts to them: the first was a party of human hands, doing little mundane things in front of the camera – clicking fingers, peeling off a bandaid, playing thumb war, twitching, cracking knuckles and so on. Something really simple, familiar and cheery, nothing too choreographed. We’d get a bunch of people in and march them through in front of the camera, shooting in macro – they could do anything they wanted to with their hands. Being a dance track, we’d then cut some of these actions to the rhythms of the song, and use some as mini-narratives throughout. We had a minor ‘dueling’ theme going on too – the band members would be doing things to each other with their hands during the choruses, and as the song progresses the other hands become more active and vibrant, and begin interacting with other. The second concept we pitched was so embarrassing that we shall never speak of it again.

Who were the key creatives?
The key creatives were myself, who directed and produced, and Hugh Thomson, who lensed it. We both edited.

What did you shoot/edit on?
We shot on a Panasonic HPX-502 and edited on Final Cut Pro.

Why is that song stuck in my head?
That song is stuck in our heads because we don’t have the willpower to say NO.