8 Pier Street, home to Little Boy Pictures and lauded filmmaker Kenta McGrath. Situated amongst the hussle and bussle of Perth’s CBD, Brains stopped by for a catch up with McGrath.

What’s in production for Little Boy Pictures?

Production wise nothing yet…we are wrapping up post production on a feature documentary called House of Blue. It was shot back in December 2005, but it was a film that we needed to mull over, five years later we are finally ready to finish. We have a feature film still at script level and a feature film in pre-production.

You’ve shot on both film (Welcome to Pipe Mountain) and digital (Three Hams in a Can, House of Blue). Do you want to weigh in on the film versus digital debate?

I think it’s a very interesting debate, I’m really undecided about it. From my past experience I much prefer to shoot on film. First of all the general aesthetics, I like the look of film, when you shoot on something as expensive as film it really brings out the best in you. With video it’s so disposable, it’s so cheap, there’s a tendency to just keep doing it again and again. Whereas with film every second is dollars ticking over. It forces you to make tough decisions. This is mainly to do with low budget films, if you are working with a Hollywood budget, of course you can buy all the stock you want, but with low budget films it can really raise the professionalism of your crew, and improve the decision making of your crew.
Video is very interesting, what I don’t like at the moment is people who use video but try to make it look like film. Video has a lot of other possibilities, which many Australian filmmakers haven’t really tapped into, yes it’s cheap but for example if you shoot on a tiny camcorder, that camera can fit into any small space, which a 16mm camera cannot do. They are so unobtrusive and so ubiquitous. You can get really truthful performances, I think digital cameras can be used to make films that can only be shot on digital. There’s an Iranian film called “Ten,” the whole film is a scene in a car, you have two digital cameras on the dashboard. It’s a film that could not be shot on film, first of all, logistically you couldn’t fit a film camera on a dashboard it’s too big, and you couldn’t get that type of performance from the actors. It doesn’t matter if they are professional actors, digital cameras can be so unobtrusive you don’t even notice them. People haven’t quite exploited what digital can do yet.

What filmmakers are you influenced by?

There are filmmakers who I absolutely love and will for the rest of my life, but I wouldn’t necessarily reference them in my work. Influences can range from certain films, a song that I’ve heard or a story that someone has told me. Most of the time it doesn’t have much to do with other films at all. But having said that, I like how certain filmmakers approach film and I try to adapt what I learn from them.

You write and direct, as a writer, what are your processes from idea to script?

Generally scripts that I’ve written have been really really sparse. All the scripts that I’ve written have been with Hugh Thomson, who shoots most of my stuff. Hole in the Ground is the same, it’s a forty minute film but the script is only 10-12 pages. I only see scripts as a template.
The process, we come together first and write down 6-7 general ideas for films to be made. Then we choose two or three of them, we alternate working on them, sometimes ideas from one film will find it’s way to another. We just shout out ideas, we don’t really write films which are narrative driven, or plot driven should I say.

I notice recently that a lot of filmmakers in Perth work in pairs. Is that common in film?

Yeah, I never noticed that but that’s totally true, you’re right. Umm.. it’s certainly common.

Is it easier to work with a partner?

Yeah I definitely think so, I mean… Well you can’t make films by yourself. It’s definitely easier, especially in script writing, I find writing by yourself to be almost an impossible task. Other people love it, they just lock themselves up in their bedroom eating Maggi noodles all day and write a script. I can’t do that, I’ll constantly need bouncing back and forth. Yeah, I think with scriptwriting having a partner is extremely important.

If you aren’t already on the McGrath bandwagon…I suggest you jump on, I suspect seats will become a premium in the near future.