Australia has a patchy history of great films but in the post Peter Weir years we’ve seen a new class of auteurs fill the gaps in our national cinema narrative, enter: Joseph Sims-Dennett.
Having a frenetic past of studying film, balancing books for Subway and shooting TV commercials, Joseph owes a lot to his experiences as a 20-something Australian.
Joseph Sims-Dennett’s latest picture, Observance, is a psychological horror that carries the sentiments of an indie-terror with a very Eastern feel.
The film has reunited Sims-Dennett with Bad Behaviour actors Lindsay Farris and John Jarratt, as well as fresh face Stephanie King. The film is currently touring film festivals both at home and Internationally but the story that took place behind the scenes is as deserving of attention.
Observance was filmed in its entirety over eleven eighteen-hour days in a leased apartment, on a budget of $18,000 during one of the worst heatwaves to hit Sydney.
Returning to the Gold Coast where Sims-Dennett had once lived and now reserves as an escape for ‘forgetting about his life’, he took some time from his film tour to field a few questions for The Iris.
So Joseph, you’ve worked with Lindsay Farris and John Jarratt before on Bad Behaviour, are you three starting to form a dream team or what is it that makes you guys so harmonious?
Well, they both are very good friends of mine and it did start with Bad Behaviour. John’s just a wonderful person and he’s just really supportive of me for some weird reason, I don’t know why, and we get along really well.
He’s one of the greatest actors the country has ever produced so it’s just nice to have him in my films and similarly with Lindsay, he’s a really close friend as well. He’s over in LA now becoming a star, deservedly.
So how did you form the initial relationship with John and Lindsay?
It was just that they were both cast. I remember back with Bad Behaviour John came in with Kristijana Maric who was the producer on that film. Lindsay was just normal casting and we all just stayed in touch.
When films came out we would do these sorts of events and you kind-of bond with people and when I moved down to Sydney to do commercial work I started hanging out with Lindsay, and then John ended up coming down from Sunshine Coast and we would all catch up every now and again.
They were kind of separate friendships and we were always looking to work with each other again and I knew that with this film we made for nothing ($18,000), being able to call them and be like “so would you mind coming in for a few days” (was a great help).
With Lindsay this was a couple of weeks and with John only a few hours, he came in and did a sort of smaller role. It was just a nice excuse to hang out with John for a few hours on a film-set really.
Do you have any plans at the moment to work with these guys again?
Yes I do, but you can’t really talk about these types of projects until they are happening because people tend to get carried away – but definitely working on multiple projects with them both.
So I noticed you went to some lengths to make Observance as authentic as possible, from one scene I managed to track down a website for Cathgate Research, was this a website you had created yourself?
Is that website still there? Lindsay created that website actually, he’s one of those smart people who can do those types of things. We kind of made the website look like it was from the late 90’s with lots of viruses in it.
The website is vaguely relevant to the story of the film, it’s possibly more of a red herring but hints at a wider, darker world existing beyond the story.
That leads into my next question, which you could probably guess was coming, is there a discernible ending to the film?
Yes there is. I’m not going to announce it at all, but the ending is certainly there. When we made the film there was a definite plot ending, (regarding) what was happening to Parker. It was in the editing process that we felt that resolving the film in that way closed it, and we felt that the film should have this sort of lasting impression that you take with you.
The film was initially, and the reason why Josh Zammit, the co-producer and co-writer, and (myself) decided we wanted to make this film, was because it was an examination of our own fears, which we determined before we started making the film is about how we feel powerless against these invisible forces that control our lives – like why we wake up and brush our teeth and go to a job we hate everyday and the ending is true to that initial idea.
We set up to make this film as a way of expressing this idea and its about the feeling that you’re left with when the film’s over rather than a definitive plot ending.
Talking about the editing process, was there a lot cut off?
It was a year-long process cutting this film and we were cutting with this master editor called Charles Ivory. He’s more known in TV, he has some of the biggest television commercials in the nation. He’s a genius and we were really lucky to get him on board and I want to keep working with him forever because he’s amazing – but it was this year-long process of just honing in.
The shooting period itself was just this nightmare, it was eleven eighteen-hour days – an hour and a half sleep a night – and there was this mega heatwave in Sydney. It was about 55 degrees in the apartment and everyone was about to pass out. It was horrendous and there was this interesting feeling that grew from the conditions we were under while we were shooting, that really did exist there in the film.
So it was this sort of careful honing in over a year of that feeling we managed to capture on set. I didn’t pay for the film myself, it was my credit card, so it was like, we know it’ll be over when we reach this point where it’s there and we’ve done the most we can with it.
So we could take as much time as we needed, so we spent a year cutting the film and then six months after that, after doing the sound and the colour correcting (it was there).
Do you consider your film to be an indie-horror?
I’d say it’s a horror film. For me I’m just expressing something from inside of me. A horror film to me, and for Josh as well, was about us exploring what makes us scared, what we think our fears actually are, obviously with more commercial-based genre-horror stuff it tends to turn into that kind of gore-fest but I guess those films are exploring violence and those types of themes.
People find it exciting that the violence and gore is happening but it’s more so people are interested in their own mortality, the fact that they’re a living piece of flesh that walks around is a very odd thing.
I think with horror films we find it kind of exciting in seeing our bodies and our mortality in those sort of extreme conditions and it’s interesting that we have these sort of waves of films like that, but I think Observance is more psychological, as it touches on something we want to be much deeper than that.
So as a parting question, any advice for young filmmakers?
Just go and do it, because you can now, there’s no excuses anymore. If you have an idea that’s strong enough and that your friends and colleagues connect with, they’ll help you make it. It’s really hard work, but it’s a simple and straightforward process. So go and make it as long as you stick to that initial idea that you started out with and you don’t let people change that.
Filmmaking for me is about connecting with someone who’s telling a story, and if a film can do that for you, you know that’s a successful film and that’s a successful piece of art.
Thanks for taking the time Joseph.
Observance is currently touring Australia in limited release, the schedule can be found on their Facebook page.
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