by Dov Kornits
“I wanted to bring back that less slick filmmaking aesthetic,” Tim Barretto tells us on a zoom call from the US, where he’s visiting for a family wedding, before heading back to Perth for the world premiere of Bassendream, his unique debut fiction feature film. “When you watch films from the nineties, they dip focus, they’re not perfect, whereas now we just have this element of perfection, and that becomes so unachievable and so high pressure in having to achieve, which takes away the charm of filmmaking.”
You can see shades of Linklater, Jarmusch and Altman in Bassendream, a multi-character study of suburban malaise.
Shot on 16mm and set in the nineties, in the outer Perth suburb of Bassendean where the filmmaker grew up, the film literally plays out like a found footage VHS tape, in the sense that it looks like it was made in that era, rather than the usual nostalgic take.
“I wanted it to have a purposeful style. I deliberately separated the adults from the kids as much as I could in scenes, and I shot the kids with a heightened sense of reality. I tried to make that feel more fantastical or how a kid would describe a scene rather than how it actually was. And then the adult scenes were just more grounded and back to reality.”
Shot over two summers with friends and family, whilst Barretto was living in Sydney, working on more traditional film and TV productions, usually in the art department, which came in handy when making Bassendream.
Firstly, the production design in the film and many of the props, some of which move the plot along, are straight out of the era. “I just went to op shops and swap meets and pretty much collected stuff, bought bikes, just went shopping on Sunday,” he explains.
“I learned a lot from working on film sets. I learned how to work trickery. One of the houses that we shot in for the second block, ended up being 10 characters’ locations, all utilising the one place. The backyard was the kids, the shed was another thing, the kitchen for another character… I love cheating. I think that’s the beauty movies.”
Something that couldn’t be cheated was licensing popular songs, which elevate Bassendream in a way rarely afforded for low budget productions.
“I didn’t plan to put those songs in, they weren’t scripted. As I was cutting it, I just started putting in songs that I liked and tried different things and songs. The music is probably why it’s only released now rather than two or three years ago. The edit was close two years ago. I finetuned it and chopped a lot of fat off and tried to get it as short as possible. I didn’t want to abuse my relationship with the audience because I know that it’s not a conventional film.
“I always had a relationship with the music companies and the prices we started with were really high. Once you land one, though, which we got with Paul Kelly’s ‘Dumb Things’, they all fall into place.”
If nothing else, Bassendream has been a massive learning experience for the filmmaker, and if this is what he does that is self-funded and made over a number of years in between other jobs, then we are excited to see what he comes up with in the future.
“I’d like to go slower with script development this time, as I do have an eye… or an ear for narrative structure. I am working on a relationship drama set on the Bibbulmun Track, but I’m not in a rush to be honest,” Barretto ends things, perfectly reflecting the playfully confident, warts and all tone of his feature debut, Bassendream.
Sounds wonderful. Hopefully it can be shown in Busselton.
Congratulations from another Bassendean girl.