5 minute read
Making Movies
AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND has always punched above its weight when it comes to creativity. But given the size of our population and the pool of resources out there, our musicians, writers and filmmakers have always had to excel at being creative both on and off the stage, page and screen.
The Kāpiti Coast’s Mason Cade Packer is the perfect case in point; the up and coming writer, director and producer has taken the DIY Kiwi can-do approach to funding his latest - and highly anticipated - short film to all new levels, roping in support from funders as varied as the local funeral parlour and dentist, to the garden centre and car dealer. It’s a journey that almost seems to be a movie in itself.
Looking back at his early life, it seems inevitable that this would happen. Packer’s older brother had also chosen film as a career, and would help to blaze his younger sibling’s trail into directing, as well as helping embed film in his early life.
“We watched a lot of movies together,” Packer says, “and went to United Video every weekend. Funnily enough the guy who was behind the counter - James Ashcroft (director of the recent Kiwi thriller Coming Home in the Dark) - ended up being my mentor 20 years later as he went on to be a successful actor and director himself, so between that and following my brother there’s a lot of full circles going on.”
There is also an uncanny prescience in that Packer’s upcoming film is, like Coming Home in the Dark, a spine-tingler. But that wasn’t where he started out.
“I actually started in documentaries because I had a crush on a girl in high school who was an environmentalist! So I made three or four environmental documentaries to get closer to her! I actually found a passion for the cause through that crush - and those docos went off and won a ton of awards, which of course when you are thirteen just struck a match to my ego!”
A stint at the New Zealand Broadcasting School followed and at 17 he made his first micro-budget film. “No one is allowed to watch that one though. . . But it really was the perfect way to throw myself in the deep end, and since then I’ve been kinda jumping from genre to genre but I think I’ve really found my place in horror. The problem with New Zealand films is that it can feel like everything always needs to be funny. It’s something that frustrates me to no end - and we have a real problem with film makers just replicating what they see around them - from Lotto ads to features, it’s all very similar humour and it seems we’re just making the same movie over and over again.”
When the time came to shoot his latest personal project there was only one place for it: the Kāpiti Coast.
A move to Chicago to pursue further studies followed, then a stint in Los Angeles which is still home and where he pays the bills. But when the time came to shoot his latest personal project there was only one place for it: the Kāpiti Coast.
“I’ve been making stuff here for years and keep coming back, and this community has always given me help, which is really so generous. I think it’s because we really do have such a great artistic community here, so even plumbers and car dealers understand what it’s about. To raise funds I basically spent hundreds of hours working the phones and emailing, so yeah, the sponsors are all over the place, but it has mostly been built around the Kāpiti community.”
“This is the biggest one so far for me, though it is still a short film as opposed to a featurelength piece. We’ve raised close to $100,000, but when you add in all the freebies and support we’ve been given it’s basically a quarter of a million dollar film. Which to me is kinda crazy as the biggest thing I’ve ever done previously is about $20,000. So to be 24 years old and given a quarter million dollar key to make a short horror movie with some of New Zealand’s best actors is mind blowing!”
Ryan O’Kane (Home and Away, Shortland Street), Beulah Koale (Hawaii Five-O), and Ben Fransham (What We Do in the Shadows) are just some of the world-class talent roped inlike the dentist and funeral director - to be a part of Packer’s film. “I really don’t know how we got such a great cast. I guess part of it is that they believe in me, or the script is good - or maybe they’re just bloody idiots!”
Without giving too much away, the film promises to be the stuff of nightmares. “It’s basically a boogieman style piece. But the twist is that our boogieman can make anything he touches go silent, so if you scream and he’s holding you, no one can hear you. I really feel that this film can change the game for me too. To be able to show people that this is what I can do with that level of support - something that looks great, feels great, has a great script - imagine what we can do with a full budget.”
We’ve got a feeling we won’t have to wait too long to find out. To check out his work visit www.masoncadepacker.com
