Florence rescues a stray cat from a gang of teenagers, but after taking the feline to an isolated building, her true intentions emerge. What quickly escalates is a high-octane all claws bared battle to the death.
We got the lowdown on exciting new Australian short Violent Florence from producer, Katia Nizic. The film is written and directed by Jaime Snyder and is crowfunding right now! Katia is a recent AFTRS graduate and a film reviewer at The 500 Club. She’s based in Brisbane.
LEFT: Lead actress, Charly Thorn. RIGHT: Puppet cat-in-progress, Karen Black.
Can you talk about ‘Karen Black’ and Rachel Echols’ work in puppetry and makeup FX?
Karen Black is our puppet cat, but actually - there’ll be three of her. The level of detail needs to be different for each type of action we’re doing, so we have Wrestle Karen, Soft Karen (to attach to our lead actress’ head), and Action Karen.
She’s being created in all her glorious forms by our maker and puppeteer, Nate Reardon, who has previously worked as a maker for the Creature Technology Company (Walking with Dinosaurs), who created the hippo for Jaime’s previous short film.
Rachel Echols is a fantastic makeup and effects artist, who has specific training in the area and studied/ worked on films in New York before returning to Australia. She was really excited to work on Florence, because there just isn’t a lot of character-based SFX makeup work in Australia-lately when there have been opportunities, it was more to do with zombies. They’re great and all, but creating Florence’s wounds weaves back into her character, not just the action happening around her. It’s about creating an entire look and persona, which both Rachel and Charly Thorn (our lead actress) are very excited about.
What’s your role in the project and how did you get involved?
My role on Violent Florence is producer and (as is often the case) production manager. I was introduced to writer/director Jaime Snyder through a mutual friend from film school, and I loved the script and his ideas-he’d also piqued my interest, having adapted There’s Hippopotamus on the Roof as his previous short, an ambitious, but beautifully made short. Nothing like Florence, which is far darker, but something communicating a specific vision, nonetheless.
How would you describe the specific genre of Violent Florence?
I’d describe Florence as deadpan horror - is that a weird thing to say? The film that came to mind when I read the script was Sightseers, directed by Ben Wheatley and written by Alice Lowe, Steve Oram, and Amy Jump. It’s apparent as we get into the guts of Florence that she is indeed a disturbed young woman-but any moments of humour will come from our actors playing everything entirely straight. There’s an underlying humour to the sort of dark emotions she goes through, her actions, and the frustration she feels.
Is this your first crowdfunding campaign and how’s it going?
Technically, it is my first. I helped out with some of the strategy on a friend’s for their Tropfest film, Bursting!, but can I just say: it’s way more nerve-wracking when it’s your own. I’m extremely pleased with how things are going and the whole team are incredibly grateful for the support we’ve received. The best feeling for me is seeing names pop up that none of us know-people we’ve never met, who want to see this film. What more could you ask for, than an audience? For horror and genre, especially, that’s important to me-women are often perceived as being an exception to the rule if they want to watch these sort of films, let alone make them. I’m here to turn that around in the long run, I hope.
Oh, and we’ve got less than 72 hours left to fund this baby! www.pozible.com/violentflorence
