By FilmInk Staff
Young Aussie producer Caitlin Ellen Moore (along with director Manuel Ashman) cooks up a cinematic treat with the short film 7 Minutes To Rice, a caustically funny tale of flatmates, an empty rice cooker…and murder!
How did you get involved in this particular short film?
“Manny (the director) and I have been talking about it on and off for almost 3 years. I’d been producing theatre and had met Manny through his sister, Justina. I remember Manny and I sitting at a café and him telling me this idea he had about housemates and a rice countdown. We kept coming back to the conversation and then one phone call in June of last year we decided to just go for it. Sam, our DOP, picked a weekend, and it turned out we were all free. We pulled the pieces together from there.”
What was the budget and how was it raised?
“The budget ended up sitting around $3,000…truly shoestring. Manny put in an amount, I was able to match it, and the rest was a combination of begging, borrowing, bribing, and the kindness of friends, siblings and industry mates. There were so many moments of last-minute callouts for odd props and set items. We had a two-day shoot and the first day was topped and tailed by me arriving early at an actor’s house to disassemble their kitchen table to bring to set…and then arriving home later that night to find a bag of prosthetic thumbs in my mailbox from an Instagram callout I had done a few hours earlier. Manny and I are extremely lucky to have a community of like-minded, supportive people in Adelaide who’ll come together to make something happen.”
How did you manage to cast the film so well?
“Oh, thank you! We’re proud of our actors and those who aren’t actors but trusted us to throw them in the deep end. One of the reasons Manny and I started talking about working together was because we were both interested in drawing on our different industries – Manny with film and myself with theatre. We knew we wanted a combination of film actors, theatre actors, and those who actually don’t act. Casting was a combination of who we knew and who was available that one weekend in July. It helps that Adelaide is so small. Manny and I sat down one day, and I threw a bunch of names at it with images from social media or whatever headshots I had on hand from working in the arts industry in SA. We knew Conor Mercury (Brian) was a must-have. Manny had cast Conor in a few of his works, and this was the next addition of them working together. From there it was building people around him, figuring out what would make a typical Australian share-house situation, and who was available.”
What was the response at Flickerfest, and are you excited to play on home turf?
“Flickerfest feels like a distant memory even though it was only nine months ago. A few of us got together and split accommodation to go over – we were so excited our little film had made it into a festival. We had two screenings. The response was warm and people were laughing, which is exactly what we wanted. We all had this fear that maybe people wouldn’t understand what we were trying to do with an opening that has a slow build. Having everyone see the result of what had been on pages with a rapid blur of two days come together is an experience you really can’t replace. I can’t wait for our cast and crew to see it on a big screen at The Adelaide Film Festival, especially in a room full of people who’ve gone through a similar experience. There’s something about the Made In SA lineup that feels like a homegrown celebration. I think those screenings will be a bit like a house party.”
The film was partly improvised…can you speak to that?
“Yes! There are two elements that stick out to me when thinking about improvisation in 7 Minutes To Rice. Our cast was a combination of creatives from all over – film, stage, comedy, radio, even behind the camera – and Manny really let them shine in an ensemble piece. They only got the script a couple days earlier and we’d spend time before each scene rehearsing it like a play. Manny would bring the actors outside and they’d do a readthrough, a couple of acting exercises, and then walk it through on set, letting the actors do what felt right to them and their character. After two days of this, we got to what was to be the last scene and it was obvious that something didn’t feel right to Manny and Sam. The pages weren’t sitting well for anyone, there were three or four different ways to end the film, we had some issues with the prop vs real food, and it just wasn’t clicking. I had stepped in as AD for the shoot so with that hat on, and as producer, I gently kicked Manny and Sam out back to talk through the last scene without the opinions, voices, or assumed pressure of anyone else. A reset if you will. That gave them the time and moments of silence to come up with an ending. After a few minutes of discussion, I stepped back into set with a simple direction: Manny and Sam are going to come back in and shoot the ending like a documentary. No one was to say a word, the actors were just to sit around the table and eat in silence, and Manny and Sam would shoot them, following their instincts and experience in docos. And it worked. Beautifully. Better than anything we could’ve come up on the page. I remember watching it on the monitor and losing my breath. It was magic. And it was our ending.”
What’s next for you?
“Another short! We are making another film later this year. We’re excited to take our learnings from 7 Minutes To Rice and do something similar with improvisation, casting, and responding to space. I think Manny and I have cracked onto something interesting and fun with combining our different arts experiences. We’re not afraid to throw out the script when we need to and to lean on the expertise and instincts of our team. We’ll also be seeing as much as we can at The Adelaide Film Festival.”
7 Minutes To Rice will screen at The Adelaide Film Festival on October 20 and October 24. Click here for more information.
