by Dov Kornits
“With chicken salt of course!” claims Jacob Richardson when we ask him if he takes his chips with regular or chicken salt. “That’s hardly surprising – as my co-director Thomas [Van Kalken] says, I put it on everything. That being said, we definitely learnt some chicken salt secrets in the process of making the documentary. Peter made us a steak that he marinates in chicken salt, which he claims is the best steak you’ll ever eat. I’ve got to admit, it was pretty bloody good.”
Undoubtedly, the biggest chicken salt secret uncovered by Richardson and his team is Peter Brinkworth, a down to earth bloke from Glenelg in South Australia who invented the popular seasoning!
“Thomas had moved back to Brisbane during the pandemic and was giving me grief about how much chicken salt I used,” says Richardson about discovering Brinkworth. “At the same time, we were looking for a new project to shoot, and hit on the idea of tracking down the inventor. After we did a bit of online research, we found Peter’s wife Helen on Facebook and reached out to her. Our first interaction with Peter was via email, and we sent him a long email detailing our plan for the documentary, what we wanted it to look like, visual reference guides and the like. He came back with two sentences – ‘Hi Jacob, always happy to chat about chicken salt. Here’s my number’. And the rest is history.”
The resulting short documentary Salt of the Earth recently played at the Adelaide Film Festival, and a story about the screening by ABC TV went viral around the world.
“Early on in the process, budgetary constraints meant we opted strategically for a short,” says Richardson when we ask if they ever considered making the film feature length. “That being said, when we got back to the editing suite after filming for a week with Peter, we definitely questioned whether to switch to a feature – we had so much great content!
“Ultimately, we made the decision to stick to a short film and position the piece as part of a series of short documentaries on unsung heroes behind classic pieces of Aussie culture. So, we’re using Salt of the Earth both as a standalone short film, and as a MVP for the series as we seek funding and distribution for that.”
Unique in the film production space, Richardson’s company Film Focus is also interested in film culture. “We have Film Focus Magazine, which tackles all things screen culture – from movie reviews and interviews, to giveaways and film festival attendance. We also have our production arm, Film Focus Productions, which works on commercial and creative work. It’s an interesting blend, but our work through the magazine gave us a number of connections in the film industry which has helped us pursue our production aspirations; whether that’s being tapped on the shoulder for work with brands like IKEA, Telstra and Disney, being hired to shoot pieces with celebrities like Sooshi Mango, or just giving us the connections with other talented creatives to be able to pull together our own creative work in the music video and film production sphere.
“Our goal is to continue to evolve the business in the film production space, building off our existing creative work and the success of Salt of the Earth to dedicate more time and resources to short films and feature films, while still maintaining the magazine that gave us such fantastic opportunities. Not to mention that we love film, and it’s a pretty great way to see lots of movies!”
