1. What was one of the most challenging moments you faced while making Friendly Fire? Did this ‘setback’ change the direction of the final story?

It’s fun to have one very simple answer to this question: COVID. COVID was the most brutal challenge to making this film. We initially were meant to shoot in 2020 as part of my third year of University but two weeks before we started shooting Victoria went into Stage Four Lockdowns meaning no one could go beyond 5km from their house. Then, in 2021 we had an interstate team and we were ready to shoot before a snap lockdown stopped us from making it again. The joke became any time I wanted to make a film we’d go into lockdown so I should probably stop trying to make it.

It was incredibly disparaging and heartbreaking to have the film stopped multiple times just as it was about to begin. This really did change the direction of the final story because when we came to make it I had grown as a person, as a filmmaker and storyteller. I had made another short. I’d written more and found that the initial script was devoid of some depth. After so many delays I knew how to enrich our story with more beauty and grace and I was much more certain of what it had to be, adding scenes and fine tuning characterizations to make it a better film with more depth.

2. What was the biggest inspiration behind Friendly Fire?

In 2018 I moved to Melbourne to study my Bachelors in Film. That year I worked at the Melbourne International Film Festival as a volunteer and I saw a screening of the first season of Mr Inbetween (a terrific show mind you) and in it there was this sequence where two characters went to blow off steam, shooting watermelons with guns. I remember watching that scene and thinking “what if something went wrong?”. Thus the nugget for the idea that would eventually become Friendly Fire was born. The film was then developed all through COVID and became a story about connection. Born from a place of frivolity and the magical “What if?” Friendly Fire morphed and grew to be about something I really hold dear: the power of honesty and connection to help us feel found. That, and wanting to tell a story about male and female connection that wasn’t romantic.

3. What message do you want the audience to take away from Friendly Fire?

That there is always the chance to thank and acknowledge the people who made you, you. And that if you’re lost you can find pieces of yourself in the people that loved you along the way and those people, if they’re the right ones, are always going to hold that love there for you.

4. Your location is beautiful. Where is it and how did you discover this spot? Did you need permission to film there?

Thank you, I’m really happy with how the location elevates our film! It’s in Cobaw Victoria on a private property. We found it because we had to find a location that was private for us to shoot on during COVID lockdowns when the film was initially going to be made as my graduate film from Deakin University. We had planned to shoot in a State Forest but they wouldn’t grant us a permit that allowed actors to take masks off on camera. I put a call out to everyone I know asking if anyone knew anyone who had a farm of sorts for us to shoot on and a friend of a friend’s Dad came through. We went out and the property was perfect. Every location you see in the film is all on that property, it was just gorgeous. We were incredibly lucky that they welcomed us back to shoot on the property many years after we initially asked for permission.