STUART MCBRATNEY | A Man Of Many Facets

Zana Kobayashi
Sep 7, 2015
5 min read

Photograph of Stuart McBratney by SJ Cahill

Stuart McBratney has written and directed two feature films, a tv series, a bunch of music videos, and around 500 tv commercials. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle, and a lecturer at the New York Film Academy, Sydney. He writes and performs music for his own projects and those of others, having played guitar for 26 years. To unwind he does boxing at Tuff'n Up Gym, frequently getting his arse kicked.

You are a very prolific creative! You write, direct,shoot, produce music. How has this come about? And how do you find the energy to keep the creative juices flowing?

I decided to become a filmmaker when I saw The Empire Strikes Back at age 7. I also love science and love reading about the latest nasa adventures, so I suspect I'd be on a different path had I been taken to the planetarium instead of the cinema that day. At that age I guess my brain must've been looking for something to lock onto, and by luck it happened to be film. Whether that's good luck or bad luck I'm yet to decide!

If you ask a traditional hunter how he finds the energy to hunt wild boar, he'd probably answer "hunger". I've been doing this filmmaking stuff all my life, so if I stop I'd have no other qualifications. So I wake up, and I do the only thing that has a remote chance of allowing me to eat.

I also happen to love film, and I'm always recharged by watching a brilliant and inspiring work of cinema, so that helps me put one foot in front of the other.

You have done a lot worked overseas. Can you tell us about how that came about & how you found the experience?

I love travel, so I'll look for any excuse to shoot something in a land far away. Some of the productions have been self-initiated, such as the tv series in Russia and Ukraine, Pop-Up's scenes in Romania, and a music video in Canada, while other work has been commissioned, such as a doco in New Zealand, and tv commercials in Romania and the UK. I prefer to see a country by filming a project there, rather than just turning and taking selfies in front of landmarks. The latter just seems like a 3D version of tv without the voiceover.

You film has been described as being unashamedly filmed in Newcastle. Why did you choose to make this decision as a filmmaker?

I love what Newcastle has to offer visually such as the beaches and the architecture, but I also love that everything's within a 10 minute drive. We were shooting 2 scenes/day, so to pack up the gear and drive for 2 hours through Sydney traffic every lunchtime would've been impossible. I feel that Newcastle is like a cultural phoenix - what was once known as a rough and tumble steel mill town now has a genuine creative community doing exciting things, but without the attitude you can find in some places. People are down to earth here - if they want to record an album or put on a play, they'll just get on with it, without having to remind everyone how awesome they are.

Tell us about your film!

Pop-Up "Pop-Up" is a triptych of stories about people affected by one event:

An unemployed father finds a camera containing a single photo of a woman's face. Smitten, he tracks her down. A Romanian immigrant attempts to overcome her heartbreak by giving away a thousand home-made pop-up cards. A sleep-deprived theatre director seeks deadly revenge on a scathing critic.

It involved 50 days of shooting stretched out over 2 years, shooting on location in Newcastle and in Transylvania, Romania.

You ran a Pozible Campaign to fund part of your feature film. Has the internet & crowd-funding sites like Pozible changed that way that projects are being created? Do you think crowd-funding is a viable way to see creative projects through?

Only about 20% of our budget was raised via crowdfunding. But it was useful to raise some cash right at the beginning to get the ball rolling. For individuals with an established fan base such as Zach Braff, it can be a way of raising millions of dollars. But for a regular Joe like me, it's really just your friends and family who'll cough up.

I suspect this wasn't my last ever crowdfunding campaign, but I see it as just a little extra rather than a primary source of income. But if you only need a couple of grand, then you should have no worries raising it.

You called heavily upon the Newcastle creative networks such as Renew Newcastle, Final Post, TheUniversity & TAFE. How has this helped your production & what have you observed about these organisations?

The cold hard cash outlayed for this production has been relatively small. But it's been augmented by working with Renew Newcastle, The University of Newcastle, Hunter TAFE, and Final Post. Renew gave me access to a studio for $20/week, which was invaluable when running a huge project like this. I'm doing a PhD at the Uni of Newie, so I'm given access to my own editing suite. I edited my previous long form project on my laptop, so this has been a massive help. TAFE have come on board to record and edit post production sound, using their facilities and their students, both of which have impressed the hell out of me. And Final Post was offering a deal for feature film colour grading, and we were the first to take them up on the offer, which saved us some serious dough.

So being in cahoots with these organisations has added tremendous production values to the project, and is helping to get it finished soon, rather than in 4 years. I also quite like the word "cahoots".

Advice to budding film makers?

Filmmaking is a lifestyle choice. There will be pain, heartbreak, exhaustion, frustration and disappointment. One day you might secure some money from a job and be able to reinvest it in a location shoot in Romania, then the next moment you can't afford to buy milk. Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, the filmmaking lifestyle will test your tolerance for discomfort.

I'm currently in London for 10 days, during which time I'll shoot a promo for a tv series, write music for a computer game, and present a paper at Imperial College on microbudget feature filmmaking. But I'm staying with friends on couches and spare beds, because I can't justify spending hundreds of bucks on a hotel room. So if you're the type of person who can't live without creature comforts, I'd suggest doing something else.

But if you have the drive, the passion, the ideas, and the tenacity to get the job done, then filmmaking can be a truly wonderful experience. When a group of people are all focused on getting the shot, then it's finally "in the can" after 4 or 5 takes (or 99 if you're David Fincher), it feels like winning the grand final. So I guess it's those moments of pure joy that inspire me enough to slog through the rest of it!

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