Molly: I am going to start this interview by asking if you could please, for our readers, introduce yourselves and what the Shot on Shit (SOS) Festival is all about?
Flynn: Well, my name is Flynn Boffo, alongside Parker Constantine with our film collective, The Collective of Underground Movie Lovers and the SOS film festival is a little short film program we’ve been doing for a while now, but this is the first time we are doing it under the name Shot on Shit. It’s where we want to feature the work of DIY filmmakers and challenge experienced filmmakers to pick up their old inferior cameras and make something. Make something lo-fi, make something special, make something magic. So, if I were to put it in short, SOS film festival is a bucket of cold water to wake us up out of our creative stagnation.
Parker: Flynn defined it quite well with the cold-water analogy, I think he is right in describing it as a wake-up call. But also, particularly because we are filmmakers and programmers, we are very conscious that we can begin to talk about movies or watch them more than we can to make them.
So, really the festival is designed also as rules for ourselves, and that we are trying to implement in our own work but also rules that we have engineered that we think will motivate other people that are like us who engage with film, maybe even on a daily basis or maybe as work, that they might not be involved much in production anymore. So really what our work is trying to do is to inspire new conversations and new methods to engage in film and that is part of the programming and creating the festival.
M: To continue on with our general conversation about the festival, for our readers, what are you looking for in a ’SOS’ film, and how can filmmakers enter?
F: We’ve got a form on our website they can enter through. What we are looking for in our SOS films are laid out in a set series of rules, which we could run through in detail but I think the spirit of the whole project is that all the films that we have coming through, we want coming from a genuine creative place, we want them to be lo-fi in their aesthetic and means of being made. We want them to deliver a story from an unexpected perspective. I am very interested in how the medium can form the message of a work, and I think with this project we really invite people to consider that when they are coming up with their film. Many films I think can even just be sprung out of the camera you’ve chosen to use. If you’re using a security camera for example, then that immediately has a very interesting world of things you can pull from for your story that you want to tell with this tool.
P: I think we are really looking for films that challenge the definition of what people think belongs on the cinema screen and in particular what camera they think should be used to create something that is ‘screen worthy’ or ‘screenable’ or ‘watchable.’ Really we’re not even looking for films that are visually watchable, the point is that we are really looking for something that makes me think: what is the image I am being presented with? How did they capture this? We define a camera as anything that can capture an image and that can manifest in whatever way that you like. We’ve had animators, we’ve had stop motion, we’ve had really crazy challenges to the definition of an image and so we are looking for something that can continue to make me gasp and be confused and befuddled.
M: I think that’s a great segway into my next question; What, so far, has been the most innovative use of a camera that you’ve seen?
F: I’ve answered this question a few times, so I’ll let Parker answer this one.
P: Oh golly, I’ve got to think about it. We had this really crazy animation two years ago that was made entirely of pixel art, and it was submitted by someone who did not use their real name on the form, so there was no way of contacting them. When I emailed them about their film I never heard anything back. So, it was this purely anonymous film, I don’t know who made it, I don’t know how. It was just this 3-minute pixel art film; they had done the music and art themselves. It was just this guy robbing a diner, and it was so incredible. I know that’s not really about the specific medium of a camera used but it was also just this mystery surrounding who this person was. They also won the audience choice award, but they weren’t there on the night. So, this person is out in the world and doesn’t know if they won the award, don’t know if we selected their film, don’t even know how they found us, but they did. We ended up with this great film because of it.
In terms of a physical, tangible camera that someone can hold instead of animating. We’ve had an entry this year that’s made on a Canon Ink Jet Printer, I think that kind of takes the cake for me. That’s pretty cool.
M: Flynn have you had an entry from the camera of a Honda Odyssey yet? I know you’ve discussed wanting that in previous interviews.
F: That’s on my wish list! No one has done it yet, but when that happens then I’ll be ready to say that. But right now, we have a film, and this is a Film In Revolt exclusive; we did get permission last week for a film that has been shot entirely on a dashcam. So, dashcam Australia are now involved in the event- joking but of course tapping into that I think there’s a really rich story telling world you can pull from dashcams, so we are very excited to have that represented in our selection.
P: Well, I’d hate to ‘well actually you’ but I believe that Zac Cutcliffe’s film Pink from the previous festival, was actually shot on a dash camera but it was taken out of the car and he just shot with it. It was so small that he could use it in public without being detected so he captured all of this kind of great accidental footage with it.
F: I think that’s one of my favourites as well, like I think it’s a great camera. The form factor is really cool, he [Zac Cutcliffe] pulled it out and showed it to me when I caught up with him like ages ago and it looks like a flashlight, which I think is so great cause you can just take that anywhere, theres no monitor on it, its legit like a tube and like a flashlight that you point at what you want to film. That’s the pure image which I love, it’s really genius. He got very excited, I think, because he thought he had this deal on an expensive dashcam but turns out it was a Chinese copy, but I think it still looked good, if anything it added to the lo-fi aesthetic. If you want you can judge for yourself there’s a link to it, a little showcase of some films that we really loved from the last year.
M: How much work does it take to create and run your own film festival? How do you fund the festival and what additional support are you receiving to get this festival off the ground?
P: We started programming together three years ago as our student film club, The Collective of Underground Movie Lovers and since we started it I have always told people that programming is our pillow talk and it’s true and it’s real. The beauty of being a working together couple means that we’re on a date and half way through the date we will be like; By the way, we should just check on the submissions. Like the labour, if we tallied up the hours and the labour and the work that goes into it, it would be ridiculous and half it would probably occur on our dates.
F: It comes with its strengths and its challenges, but I mean sometimes one of us will see a bad movie and then we will be in a bad mood and so sometimes you sort of do have to moderate your own expectations and your emotions when you’re doing this. But it’s interesting I think, this practice for us has become a very personal thing. We do it publicly, and it’s very fun but I think we do invest a lot of our own spirits into this endeavour to find the most interesting films to both inspire ourselves and inspire our friends and to recognise the creatives around us.
But yeah I think when you’re doing this for fun- we’re not doing this for money, let be honest there isn’t a lot of money in festivals, when there is there’s a lot of begging which I don’t like doing. And so, yeah when you’re not doing this for money, I think it’s sort of a matter of you get what you put into it. So, for us we’re very excited with this idea and we have a lot of energy for it right now, so we’re going to put as much time and effort into making this pop. But it isn’t always hard to program, like it depends, if you only need an audience of 20 people to come along that’s very easy to put together, normally you just need a good idea, a pitch, and a few friends. I’d say for programming it’s really about what you want to get out of it, is how much time you put into it.
P: I’ll also say like we also work multiple jobs so we’re often squeezing this in every single window that we have and any day off that we have we typically spend on this. We are very lucky that behind the scenes we also have our friend Rhys Marks doing our PR, and he’s just been like an absolute sweetheart. He’s been really amazing at it, and he really helped us kind of clarify and understand our messaging that we have about the festival and he’s been helping us arrange some more public guises of the work that we are doing, which is always helpful. It’s always a matter of haranguing our friends and them helping us on the night who are always there.
We fund it partially through just our work out in the world but also because we were lucky to receive a micro grant from the Blackbird foundation and we applied to be part of their Protostars program last year and developed the festival through them. They’ve been really helpful in mentoring us and sort of learning the ropes- they call it ‘learning in public’ which I think is a really beautiful thing. I had never heard about it before but it’s this idea that each progress mark you should be sharing with people and you should be able to build off of each other’s work and your communities should be talking to each other. I think that’s a very beautiful thing, that we are trying to take into our practice as well. So, a couple of different things are at play there.
M: Wow, I can’t believe how you guys can find the time!
P: I don’t know how I do it!
F: Well, to give an idea of what takes the most time I’ll tell you that the fastest part of the festival is getting the films. That’s the thing, you think to find interesting and unique films you would have to really look for it, but in our case we realised the best way to get these films was with a beacon. What takes the most time is social media and getting the messaging right, getting people motivated to send a film, but in terms of finding them, they do find their way to our website. We are very lucky, and a big part of that is thanks to people like Rhys Marks and thanks to the good word of mouth we get from the community from putting on these sorts of events. I think, behind any film festival or screening event, we do have a small army of friends who are always very generous with their time and support.
And in this case as well we need to thank the Botany View Hotel, the manager Sam there is an incredible woman and wonderful licensee, and she’s really been supportive from day one. I essentially walked into the pub off the street and told her I like their streamers and the stage that they’ve got, and that I wanted to put on a show and she said, “sounds great when we can book it in?” It was that easy, it was like booking a dentist appointment.
M: Your answers have a great sense of community. This year you have pulled together a great jury – how did you go about selecting them?
P: It was a very considered process, and it was something that took a lot of revision. I don’t say that in a rude way, I say that in the sense that every person that we thought of was someone that was already in our community, who we were already friends with, which was already a great plus. But then also they are a great symbol of something we are trying to communicate to our audience and to our community, and so every decision that we make within the festival is conscious of how we are shaping discussion and how we are shaping people’s understanding of new wave cinema and so our judges also represent that. We wanted to represent every aspect of film: filmmakers, film critics, film programmers, and exhibitioners. It’s a combination of people who can talk about films and have a really strong opinion on them (like Ing Dieckmann and Matthew Donlan) with people who know how to make them with no money and do that really well (like Kristen Settinelli and Nick Annas).
F: I would like to butt in and say, I think above all with the jury we have selected, we wanted to pick people that we would all be able to sit down and have a nice beer with and enjoy their company. I think that’s a really important thing especially in the film industry where a lot of people can have big egos. I think it was very important that we found people that we felt were very in touch with the means and the whole idea of making something with no money, that it wasn’t just a novelty, that this is very much a way of creating for these people. People that we felt were at the cutting edge of something really special, something to prove in the film industry. Each and every one of those people are going to have very fruitful careers in the coming years on top of what they have already done. It is something I am very excited about and something I am proud to have is that this is a jury, we can comfortably reflect on them in a few years time and go; “I can’t believe we got these people when we did.
P: Yeah, and it’s really this idea of accessibility. If our requirements to enter are purposefully as accessible as possible, and it’s free to attend and it’s free to submit and your camera is something you probably already own so it’s free to make. Then why not make our judges the most accessible people that we know? We are all on the same level. Like our wish list was so kind of far away that we were like: have they shot on shit? Can’t say if they have. We need people who have shot on shit.
F: We need people who theoretically could have entered a film into the festival.
M: I want to switch now to discussing the films. Do certain genres lend themselves best to the festival?
F: I think we get quite a few fluids in the movies. I think there’s like goo, blood, body fluid, molasses in some cases, but I think some of the films are very slimy- If I were to describe a texture that comes up in a lot of submissions.
P: I think I have a lot of time for analogue horror. I also think that analogue horror sent the horror genre back by like 20 years. I think it has done so much damage to VHS. Like I kind of think the power of lo-fi is that it intentionally obscures something from vision, and when something isn’t completely visible it becomes scary, and when you cannot fully make out an image it becomes more mysterious to you, but I don’t think that has to inherently mean horror or found footage. I think the VCR is so much more powerful than found footage, and I’ve said it before, but I do really want something that is sincere and tender and is a really sincere attempt at something that might not be horror but is still shot on shit. Obviously the word ‘shit’ carries a lot of connotations of something grungy and edgy- and I’m into that! I’ve said before that my favourite submissions have all been dirty, sexy, horny films, I’m all there for it. But I also really want to see someone challenge that and to take something that looks like shit and not make something that is scary.
F: I was just thinking about what Parker said, and I think it’s a great point. I mean for some people ‘shot on shit’ does sort of mean getting dirty with it and covering yourself in some sort of goo and creating a creature. Which is exciting- last time we did it, the winning film featured a creature that came out of the toilet covered in goo. But I think it’s a great point that ‘shot on shit’ is a way of getting to a point of sincerity in the filmmaking, it doesn’t have to be the subject matter. I think through a digital haze I hope that there is room for a heartfelt story or a tribute to something someone loves amongst them. I really do hope that we do have a place for sincerity in the selection. From the films we are getting now, I think they all do come from a personal and sincere place and so yeah I think that’s a great point. Even though our branding is very grungy, we are softies at heart.
M: Your last festival was in 2024, how has the rise of AI since then impacted your approach to this year’s festival?
F: We have taken a medieval approach this time round. I think the luddite is on a comeback, and I am a proud Luddite myself. In this case we have raised the drawbridge and dug the moat deeper. If we even get a whiff of modern artificial intelligence touching your film, you will be catapulted out of the kingdom of our little film festival.
P: With that said, in making that selection we’ve actually discovered a world of ambiguity amongst that, that I hadn’t considered before like tools that were considered AI by today’s standards that existed well before the big tech generative AI that we know today. I think AI has gone through a few different disguises now, language models, machine learning, computer sorting but when we say generative AI today we are very much planting that flag against slop.
P: I kind of said that it’s anything from pre all the way to post production, because I don’t even believe that you need to use AI for your storyboards. I think you were given hands to draw for a reason.
There was a period at the beginning of the year where we were sitting on our hands with SOS, we didn’t have a date or a venue, and we were really unsure about its future and then Tropfest happened. There was that one film that was made completely with AI: script, music, visuals, and this guy got a big write up in the newspaper. It was about how he was over 50 and he had been retired from the film industry, and creating this film with AI for Tropfest brought back his love for film. I couldn’t help but feel absolutely sorry for him, because that did not bring back his love for film, it made every filmmaker’s skin in the world crawl because the way you bring back your love for film is to touch things, it is not to type in prompts. To witness this garbage disposal, eat up water supply and turn out daydreams, that’s not what filmmaking is. Filmmaking is about touching things and communicating with crews and other people to create your own vision.
So, I thought about him and I thought you know what, this festival is partially in spite of you. If you want to make a film and if you want to reignite your love for filmmaking, enter SOS. But don’t use AI because the whole point about SOS is that it is partially a revolution against the idea that you need a machine to do something. You just need to hold something.
F: I think on a side note, between the lines with a lot of these filmmakers, one in particular I think of is Alex Proyas, a lot of these people have terrible reputations for their treatment of people and their crew. In AI they don’t see a creative possibility, what they see is a way to replace the people that they depend upon and abuse. So, that’s something I think is really interesting is that all of these people that love to talk about the creative possibilities of AI, what they are really saying is that I no longer need to invest in community, I no longer need to invest in other people. I can only talk to computers.
M: This is my final question, and one we often ask here at Film In Revolt- but with a Shot on Shit twist; What is a ‘shit’ film that influenced you in your youth?
P: So awesome, I love being on the receiving end of this as well. This is great, it’s like we know, we know.
Is it possible to say something I shot when I was a kid?
M: Go ahead!
P: When I was very young, at one family Christmas, my extended family did not know what to get me and they knew I was a photographer, so they got me a Chinese knockoff Go pro. I was like this is the greatest thing in the world. I was like 10 and I invited my friends over and we made a sketch called Hobo Santa which explored the concept that, when it is not Christmas Santa is out of the job and therefore he is homeless. So, we shot this and the footage is genuinely shit, I’ve looked at it and it is awful. The microphone peaks so much that you can’t hear the audio. I will say it is my favourite shit film from my youth because it is a beautiful testament to what happens when you get together with your friends with a really bad camera and a really funny idea. We just shot it in my front yard one morning.
F: I think for me like a huge influence was watching Lego stop motion on YouTube. I really loved the Batman one where Joker swore, which was very taboo at the time. But that was a big favourite of mine, watching those forest fire Lego Batman Lego animations. Then there was the Lego app, where you could take your iPad and animate your Lego people. So, I think for me that is the thing that ignited it all, that’s why I am here today- thanks to a LEGO App and also that app that lets you explode things, that was also very cool. Where you film things and like a boulder would drop on your mum. That was the beginning of it all, I think today that is probably JJ Abrams’s finest contribution to culture, I believe the app was made to promote a Mission Impossible movie so big thanks to JJ Abrams and Tom Cruise.
The more I look at things the more I realise that a lot of my filmmaking sensibilities and a lot of my interests in cinema all go back to one thing: the iPad. Getting an iPad for me was a tool that unlocked filmmaking.
So, to answer your question, Lego YouTube, having an iPad and ready-made apps by some beautiful corporations to promote their products, that I wasn’t aware of at the time, were great.
P: If I can also expand on that, I think Smosh food battles were huge, I would love to know what they shot the Smosh food battles on. It was really beautiful work. The stickman animations where they fought?
F: Oh yeah Pivot! That App!
P: That was really good. Minecraft lets plays. Ooooh what about a Shot on Shit film shot made in Minecraft? Can someone do that?
Shot on Shit Film Festival will take place on 16th of October at The Botany View Hotel, Newtown.
Submissions close on the 5th of October. For further information about submissions and showcases visit: https://sosfilmfest.my.canva.site/home