BITTER & TWISTED is a movie about identity – or essentially how our past shapes who we are today.
The first draft was finished when I was twenty years old. It manifested from a desire to depict the Australia I've always known, far from the "occa" stereotype of beer drinking, football loving louts and rather more grounded in the opressive isolation that can exist in some of the smaller suburbs of a large city such as Sydney. A guidebook to discovering your inner quirk if you will.
BITTER & TWISTED was storyboarded in the months before our shoot using 3D animation. Knowing the locations were mostly real working homes, we tried to recreate these sets in the computer to pre-light and, in some cases, lock down the blocking and camera moves long before we arrived. This process gave me more time with the actors on the day. Although unusual for a micro budget film to previsualise like this, it was essential in this case, especially as I was also going to be playing one of the roles.
People are the real texture on show here. Everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to be happy, but sometimes we get so beaten down by all the opportunities we missed, we forget what we were after to begin with. That's the journey the characters in BITTER & TWISTED are going on. Interpretation is half the fun, so the less said the better. Suffice to say, now years after starting as nothing but a dream at the back of my parents house as a young teenager, the film can finally come alive.