Each of these MeOhMy shorts are 1/6 of a set of experimental pieces testing a different component of film making.

This film is No. 6 of 6, essentially my 'graduation' film.

The goal of this last piece was to experiment with sound design, dialogue + vfx.

THE STORY

My latest short is a beautifully wicked + incredibly visual slice of melodrama. Think Tarantino’s Kill Bill meets Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, with a hint of Phoebe Waller Bridge sass.

It opens with an almost surreal cinematic visual sequence of our antagonist- a Serge Gainsbourg type- two timing + leaving his Bardot for a Birkin. This is shown through him recreating the same intimate evening routine with both women. The camera cuts between him seducing both females, and end with him dumping one and embracing the other.

His parting words to our broken hearted dumpee; ‘Baby what could I do? She’s French.’
A beat, a goodbye + then our teary protagonist perks up to deliver the catch-cry of the rejected after they get left for someone new; 

‘I can be French.’

Badda bing.

Our girl and her friends then proceed to pop on their best French lace lingerie, do their hair up in a nod to 1700s France, and indulge in a series of French inspired activities while reigning hell down on our Ex-Lover’s loft on an old super 8 camera; the point being to show the ex that she, too, can be fabulous.

It’s a satirical, fun piss-take, exploring what what would happen if you took someone’s excuse for leaving, literally.

The point our tiny film is making, is how comical (and how very human) it is to focus in on one thing that someone else has, that you don’t.

The film ends with the girls setting fire to his dining room table (and promptly putting it out because, ‘perhaps that’s a bit too far?’) popping the tape of their misdoings out of their camcorder and leaving it for him to view later.
Our man arrives home to a scene of beautiful destruction and a tiny tape that says,

‘I Can Be French.’

He proceeds to press play + credits roll over some grainy super 8 footage of our gals.

This was the concept I pitched to my team 7 months ago. It's taken everything we've got to get it all the way to here.

I hope you enjoy her.

WARDROBE + COSTUME DESIGN

For this one, I really wanted something that felt like a full flex of MeOhMy's style. My stuff is always extra- French 80s YSL chic meets the theatrical colour + 'wow' factor of the Moulin Rouge. So we had to find a combo that still felt like it honoured that, but also balanced out the already 'extra' extra nature of the 1600s Versailles hairstyles.

The brief + style bible I pulled for our stylist queen Sarah Birchley was 'Helmut Newton does Marie Antoinette.'
’Think splashes of YSL tailoring amongst feminine layering + leather and lace props for a cool girl crack of femme masculinity. Think satin trech-coats over layered lace + pussy bows, thigh-highs, tux dresses, draping under waspie-corsets, suspenders, jacquard blazers, feathers, velvet + chic as shit trousers.
A meeting of movement + restriction; a clash of fabrics that provide swish + structure simultaneously.’

Sarah delivered (and then some). She sourced the most amazing threads for our girls, each gal had her own ‘flavour’ to suit their character. I might be biased, but I think her best work was with Josh. Our first MoM male had to be eccentric, Gucci, gorgeous. He had a few looks, but the tailcoat, doc martins + leather pants combo really took the cake.

Of course, our wonderful Alana from Desvalido handled the costume design. She sourced a beautiful French floral lace + whipped up the perfect femme fatale outfits for kicking ass in. Fun fact- Alana’s dream was to do costume design for films like the ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘Chicago.’ What are the chances we’d come across someone so perfect for bringing the characters of MeOhMy to life?

HAIR + MAKE-UP

I wanted a modern Marie Antoinette feel (‘1600s, for the now’). Hair not too high (so the girls could run around and blow things up/smash stuff) with a modern twist. The idea was to pair some fab colours with badass black outfits.

Sarah Laidlaw lead the charge on this one. She is one of Australia’s best hair and make-up artists. 
She’s a kindred spirit, a true artist + a very good friend. And holy shit she did some absolutely insane work for this film. 
Sarah’s work is not only world class, it’s also incredibly unique. Hair and make-up has such a big impact on how an actor carries themselves on set- it helps everyone to get into character. Sarah’s attention to detail really bought up the quirks of each queen. It’s a privilege working with Sarah on bringing our stories to life.

Each girl has a different coloured do- red for our fire-breathing burlesque babygirl Jacqueline, blonde for our ball-busting-Bardot Kirsty, pink for our bubblegum popping Marilyn, Beth. Make-up wise, we leaned into classically beautiful looks, with some fun blush or the odd beauty mark, to let the hair take centre-stage.

FLORALS

As usual, Bart Hassam + his team at Maison Fleur handled the florals for our latest flick. Barty is the current world champion #1 for floral design, and his client list includes everyone from Gucci to Chanel.

He’s usually floating around overseas making beautiful stuff on the other side of the world, but he’s been stuck here with us for lockdown, so we’ve been making the most of his magic while he’s home. He + Maddie Jayde + Yuki pulled out all the stops for this one. Scrolll down for 10 foot high foliage installations + florals banquets.

SET BUILD

How the hell do you create a euro bad-boy chic-as-shit loft in the middle of downtown Brisbane?

Enter Get Parked - a clever organisation that finds the city's secret car parking gems + pimps them out. Steve, a dear friend of ours, kindly agreed to let us turn one of his warehouses into a 'loft' for a weekend.

With the help of my local engineer/handy man/beloved cafe owner Ramzi at Union St. Cafe, a grand piano hire, a cherry picker, hectic florals, some heavy duty lighting and a stack of wonderful humans, we managed to transform the place.

ART DEPARTMENT

This is Gillian Dinh from The Marker. You might remember G from our t-shirt collabs. She’s an absolutely rad lettering artist from NSW, and I love working with her.

I had a cheeky idea for this film that I needed a little help with, so I asked G if she might head on up + lend a hand with some of our props.

Our leading lady's revenge involved chicly f*cking up her ex's entire apartment, in a French-inspired way (smashing french champagne, totalling french records, and graffiting impressionist artworks). I wanted G to be the queen that actually added 'french' curse words to our ex's very expensive paintings. As soon as I mentioned vandalism + swear words, G was in.

Her signature sexy rebellious style was so perfect for this as I wanted it to feel like a 'prettier' version of spray paint, instead of a hot mess done on the fly. G added some tasteful splatters to help sell that it was graffiti-ed on by the gals.

Because colour rules my life + I'm a weird little freak with detail, I wanted a painting to match each girl's hair colour (bonus points to you if you already caught this). That’s why Jac has red letters, Beth has pink, et al.

Fun fact- there were originally going to be 4 x girls, including a pastel blue haired babe (you’ll see her in the concept art below). She got cut for time, but her corresponding graffiti remains in the film; the last little hint that she ever existed.

Kind of love that a touch of her still made it in.

Her piece was, of course, the Parlez Vous Fuck You, which we closed the film with.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Had a few key references in mind when chatting to Jake Koning, our lovely DOP. I wanted the moodiness of this Hozier clip to permeate our entire set, with a lot of practicals (lights that double as functional parts of the set- lamps, candles, etc). I'm really obsessed with the power of a good one shot take. After experimenting with this technique in a previous short -The Show Must Go On- I wanted to up the ante and see if I could use it to further a narrative. Rather than just showing someone being cheated on, I thought it would be more powerful to create a poetic visual. I think the end result is a tasteful almost surreal sequence that slickly plays with that violating feeling of having someone else *literally* replace you.

This was initially a really hard concept to explain to my crew. I had a very clear choreography in mind for a lot of the initial movements, which I ended up having to physically walk through with the team in order to get the idea across. With the help of Elly’s storyboards, rehearsals, Jake + Caleb, I think we were able to pull it out of my head and onto the page properly. These lads are extremely gifted technical storytellers. It wouldn't have worked without them.

The opening long take is actually 4 x shorter scenes we shot + stitched together in post. See if you can spot the cuts.

PERFORMANCES + DIALOGUE

The main point of this short was to get a feel for working with sound and dialogue. I really wanted to push this piece away from the feeling of a music video, towards more of a narrative driven short. This meant an actual script, dialogue + working closely with my performers.

My writing has always been very tongue-in-cheek. A lot of people associate MeOhMy with romantic visuals, alongside a lot of 'bad bitch' self-deprecation that comes through in my online essays. MoM is a weird blend of wholesome and bullshit (probably best showcased in my short film 'Bloom Girl') that mostly plays for laughs, with the odd gut-punch at the end. This flick flips that, with a more romantic set-up, and a rather ridiculous comedic pay-off.

Seeing my words finally paired with with my visuals felt like coming home after a long day; immediately comfortable, and immediately right.

This was kind of a closed circle moment for me. For years, I've been adding dialogue to stills as a bridge between photographic stories + film. It felt good to be able to finish this chapter with my characters finally speaking my words out loud.

I worked with the lovely Kirsty, Josh, Ebony, Jac and Beth for this piece.
Kirsty, Josh and Eb are all drama school kids. Beth is a model + Jac is a burlesque performer.

You might remember Kirsty from The Show Must Go On. She is truly one of the most wonderful performers I've worked with, and I couldn't think of a cooler kid to play a woman that is both soft + badass, all at once. For her role, we talked about Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Ferris Bueller and Max Fischer- all characters who seem to somehow swagger through life as if the world were their own personal stage. I even referenced Phoebe's Fleabag directly in the script, flipping her Season 2 opening scene set up (a violent nose bleed shot coupled with a contradictory romantic line- 'this is a love story') with a deliberately romantic set up + un-romantic warning ('this is not a love story').

My favourite moment with Kirsty was when she nailed the 'I Can Be French' line. She must have tried this line a hundred times over the course of rehearsals, and read-throughs. It was a hard one. It had to be perfectly irreverent immediately after a heartache; our gal (ever in control) had to be flip to smug, and mischievous, despite just being hit with a low-blow from her shitty ex-lover.

There's always this beautiful energy on set when you know someone's about to get something. After a few soft takes, Kirsty and I had a brief (private) chat (I always try to whisper course-corrections to actors- I much prefer having gentler convo's on set so as not to disrupt their creative flow or call them out in front of the crew) and then I swapped out for Josh and tossed her the tee. As soon as we rolled camera, I knew she had it; the energy on set was electric. Her whole mood shifted to Beyonce level queen-dom, and she nailed it. It was a positively divine moment with a wonderful performer, and I love that we were able to get that very niche, very subtle on-point delivery of the most important line in the entire flick.

I should also mention that this was the first time I got to cast a male lead. Josh was only three months in at NIDA when we shot this- it required a huge leap of faith from him + a large set of balls, as he had to attempt an accent + f*ck two women on a piano, with essentially only a tvc or two under his belt.
He breezed through it, charmed everyone on set, and has become a firm-fav here now.

Ebony is our other new recruit. Fierce + fabulous, with great jaw structure + tremendous euro-chic drama-baby vibes, I fell for her after one call. She's gonna stick around for some more mayhem with us soon (more on that to come).

Beth's an old fav from ‘Peep Show’- like a 60s french actress crossed with 'Bubbles' from the Powerpuff
Girls. Jac, our other latest lover, rounded out the crew as a strong silent type; a cross between Dylan Moran, Kramer and every rockstar ever.

VFX

Caleb is, a post production specialist, colourist, producer + VFX wizard. His post prod work is a big part of why all my films always look so opulent + crispy. For this flick, we kicked things up a bit and added some VFX. Not bad, considering *again* these ain't Marvel budgets. 

I met Caleb after I made my first short film + he’s been a wonderful friend + creative collaborator ever since. If you scroll down, you can see him, me and our very beloved cinematographer Jake snuck up the back of our screening from last weekend (we snuck out of front row + legged it to the back of the bus to better suss/overthink our work). Both these boys are legends + I’m so grateful to be working with them.

STILLS

Miss Millie Tang came on board, as usual, to cover off our beautiful stills for the day. She headed up our BTS team + did an amazing job telling the story of the shoot.

I always feel like how a film is made is just as important as the film itself; the people who make these projects are the heart + soul of my stories.
So I'm always trying to share the stories behind the story, so folks understand the scope of these projects + the love the folks who work on them have for it.
Millie + Carla are at the centre of what makes a MeOhMy world come to life. Without them, you'd miss out on so much of this magic.
Thank you queens, for your wonderful work.

Finally, would like to thank my beautiful friend Madison Sturgess, who worked with me on producing this piece. Mad loves movies and problem solving as much as I do. She’s a wonderfully logical + considerate soul, who helps breathe life into these projects. If it weren’t for her, I’m sure someone would have fallen off a ceiling or set fire to a warehouse long ago.


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