I’ve spent the first two weeks of 07 being productive by writing and directing a short film for Tropfest, the so-called largest short film competition in the world. After 8hours of props building, 2 days of shooting and five days of editing (damn “iMovie”, my kingdom for Final Cut Pro), finally I got the film in. And 45min before the deadline! Phew…

This year, the symbol filmmakers had to include in their submissions was a Sneeze. So I directed and made a little satirical comedy about a man who suffers from a very conservative case of the flu. Everytime he sneezes he transforms into a Muppet of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. It’s called HOWARD FLU.

It stars Craig Barfoot, Andrew McClelland and Kylene Cook. Puppetry and the voice of John Howard were performed by Shan Jayaweera.

It was very interesting to hit the streets with the puppet for our vox pop scenes with the general public. We discovered that people had no trouble giving a puppet a piece of their mind. People really have a lot to say to the Prime Minister on a range of different issues. It’s a shame that Tropfest only allows a max of 7min. There was so much gold, not enough time.

The film will be available on our Video page soon.