In first year Screen Studies, we had to get into groups in order to make a 5-minute movie on 16mm film stock. Now, I was in a group with 3 others, and it was the smallest group, meaning, of course, that we had to double/triple up on some of the tasks of creating a film, AND rope in our non-uni friends.

We decided that there was little point in doing something serious or Meaningful, so instead we went for a mockumentary. We decided to make a short film about snowdroppers, those people who steal your underwear off your clothesline. We worked out three days shooting, six days editing, three days post prod. Surprisingly, this all went very much according to plan. As a group, we worked well together. I was given the lovely jobs of producer, cinematographer, actress, editor (groan) and recordist. I also got to play with the clapperboard too, which was fun.

I got two of my friends to be involved, one as the narrator/interviewer, and one as a snowdropper, talking about what he did with the underwear he collected. The story, such as it was, involved shots of people walking down the street, in the Laundromat (me,) interviews with the snowdropper about stealing underwear and what he did with them (some he made into patchwork quilts, others he pickled in jars so he had pickled panties,) and concluded with a scene of five people wearing grape wreaths in their hair and dressed in sheets dancing around a clothes line in a re-enactment of a Bacchic ritual involving snowdropping.

Making the short was fun. I'm pretty good at storyboarding, so we had it pretty much worked out in an hour and away we went. We got everything we needed filmed in one day and then arranged to meet on a Saturday afternoon to do the finish up shoot. Of course, being me, I went out the Friday night and got heavily plastered. So when it came time to go do the shoot, my friend and I were both hung over and bleary eyed and not wanting to be filming at 7am on a summer's day, when the temperature was already over 100oF.

So we got to the location, and set up, and I was drinking water like a sponge. This was to be the 'dance around the clothes line' scene, and I was still sort of mildly drunk, having only had about 3 hours sleep and having consumed an awful lot of beer the previous night. One of us filmed it while the rest of us gathered together and did our thing. We did three takes, which was more than enough, because after the first take of skipping around the clothesline, waving arms joyously in the air, I wanted to be sick. By the end of the second take, I was sick. By the end of the third take, I was sitting in the shade with an ice pack and a bottle of water, moaning about the headache and feeling like vomiting again. Of course, none of this showed up on film, as 16mm is like Super 8, in that it doesn't capture too much detail, so my decidedly green face and sounds of vomiting were not on film.

We did the editing up at uni and that is probably the most boring, time consuming, and thankless task in film making existence. It's from this point that my respect for film editors dates. Finally got the editing done, with much swearing and losing of tempers, as the three of us in the editing suite were not terribly patient and fiery tempered and often descended into arguments about which cut looked better. Transferred the footage to VHS for screening during class and handed it in with the paper I'd written up, summarising the methodology, the script, the players, and so on.

When the film was shown in class, I figured that ours was probably about middling. There were some truly amazing pieces of short film and I was really impressed at what some of my classmates had come up with. However, at the end of the lecture, our lecturer, a wonderful guy named Shane, called our group up to speak to him after class.

Turned out he wanted to show our little film about people and undies at the cinema.

So two weeks later, on another hot and horrid Saturday morning, once again with a hangover of doom, I found myself in the lobby of the Mercury Cinema with two hundred other people, including critics, journalists, directors and producers and fellow film students, watching the pick of that year's student films. Of which ours was the only first year film. It is this that leads me to fully understand why actors dislike watching their own movies. I cringed as the Laundromat scene was shown - me, loading in undies to a washer, one of the other chicks in my group peering lasciviously over my shoulder at the undies going into the washer. Then the rest of the film was fine, until the end - us all merrily skipping and dancing around the clothes line, jauntily tossing undies hither and yon, with a narration about snowdropping beginning in Greece as a Bacchic ritual as a celebration of not requiring underwear as it was much nicer to be free and easy under one's toga.

The audience loved it, and we were cornered after the showing by fellow students, lecturers, and people in the business. It was a very heady but mildly frightening experience. When you have people like Scott Hicks (director of 'Shine,' 'Snow Falling on Cedars,' and 'Hearts in Atlantis,') who also graduated Flinders Uni talking to you about your little 16mm film like you are a Great Artist, it does tend to go to your head. When you have people like Rolf DeHeer (director of 'Bad Boy Bubby,' 'The Quiet Room,' 'Alexandra's Song,' etc,) congratulating you and asking if you'll be taking his class in 2nd year (He taught film theory and analysis for a while at Flinders,) you tend to meekly say yes of course, even if you really have no intention of taking his subject at all.

However, one of the drawbacks of having your fifteen minutes of fame in a city like Adelaide is that inevitably, you will be recognised on the street. I remember being in a car with one of the guys who were in the film, and stopped at a red light. One of those guys who clean car windows at traffic crossings and then expect change as payment bounded up, starting washing the window and went, "HOLY FUCK, YOU WERE IN THAT MOVIE ABOUT PANTY SNATCHERS!" Trust me, this is not something you want to be recognised for. I remember another night, heading towards our favourite café in the city, dressed for a Goth night out, and being stopped on Rundle Street, one of the trendy main drags in the city, by strangers saying "HEY YOU WERE THE GUY WHO PICKLED KNICKERS!" or "YOU WERE THE CHICK WHO HAD HER PANTIES STOLEN!" or "YOU WERE IN THAT DANCE AROUND THE CLOTHES LINE, TOSSING PANTIES!" By the time we reached the café, we were thoroughly mortified and vowing never, ever to be in a short like that again.

The moral of this life lesson? When offered your chance at stardom, make sure it doesn't involve stealing panties, unless you're going into the porn industry.

Questions? Comments? Wanna stroke my ego? Then e-mail me.