As the proverb goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” so when Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet from riotous musical duo Party Dozen were looking to create a music video for Coup de Gronk, the first release from their new album Crime in Australia, they immediately reached out to fellow Aussie duo VERSUS to rekindle the fruitful collaboration which brought us the delightfully cacophonous junkyard-set promo for Macca the Mutt. The creative output and common synergy between regularly featured on DN directorial team Tanya Babić and Jason Sukadana and the band is immediately recognisable in this third gritty, loud and absorbing video they’ve made together. Coup de Gronk delves into Australia’s seedier underbelly while paying homage to the low-budget, cult world of Ozploitation films. A saxophone is wielded as a vicious weapon, fear follows in their wake and when Party Dozen come to collect forget your pathetic excuses, they don’t give a fuck! Coup de Gronk is most certainly a video which needs to be watched with the volume cranked right up and once you’ve done that, check out our interview with VERSUS below where they speak to us about Sydney’s restrictive shooting regulations leading to a much more creative car-set solution, limiting themselves to the gear used by the original Ozploitation movies and channelling Kirsty’s unique on stage performance into a menacing tool of intimidation.
As this is the third film you have done after Play the Truth and Macca the Mutt with the amazing Party Dozen how would you say your creative collaboration has evolved and enabled you to produce such engaging work together?
On top of being absolute legends, Party Dozen are sonically unlike any other band on the planet. They also have a really strong aesthetic vision, so they are total dream collaborators. We instantly felt that there was a great alignment in taste and sensibilities between us all. It was during the ideation phase of Macca that we figured out the right tonal balance between portraying a specific Aussie griminess without being overly earnest or serious. They always come to us with a bunch of sick and varied references and put their trust in us to develop the idea from there. But they also look cool as shit in any frame you put them in so that makes everything look awesome.
They always come to us with a bunch of sick and varied references and put their trust in us to develop the idea from there.
How did you start the process after they provided you with that banging bunch of references?
We worked closely with them on the scenes and situations and then tried to elevate each with a mix of old and new camera techniques. Our DOP, Kieran Fowler leaned into a bunch of techniques from the era of Ozploitation classics. We then ran a 16mm filmout process to lo-fi it even further. We made a rule not to use any gear you wouldn’t have seen used back then, so no Steadicam or robot or anything like that. Locations make a film and for this we literally door knocked places around Sydney we thought might contain great interiors. It was a 2 day shoot. Highlights for us include Jono eating half a supermarket across the 2 day shoot and building the Pissy-Pants Rig.
Macca the Mutt drew from some great 70s cinema vibes and you’re paying homage to Ozploitation here, tell us what films you were referencing and how you came up with the extortion racket narrative.
The shakedown narrative was totally PD’s idea. They had printed half a million dollars worth of Party Dollars and wanted a clip where they stomp around town shaking down people for it but with no real violence. That was essentially the brief. We didn’t lean into any specific films too heavily but just took bits from the whole gamut. Stone is probably our favourite Ozploitation film. It’s hard not to think about the original Mad Max for car shots. And we were looking at all the super pulpy OTT stuff in things like Fair Game, Turkey Shoot, Patrick, The Man From Hong Kong, etc.
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I want to know all about those super cool car shots and how they were filmed.
Intriguing and action-packed car shots are one of the defining elements of Ozploitation cinema, so we knew we needed some cool ones. Thing is, that for better or for worse, Sydney is one of the most heavily regulated cities in the world when it comes to filming, so you basically need to shut down streets to use car rigs. We spent ages trying to figure workarounds for this until we started looking at Natural Born Killers for inspo and realised that doing a sim-trav type thing for the car shots would not only make production sense but also just look way cooler and more stylised.
Sydney is one of the most heavily regulated cities in the world when it comes to filming, so you basically need to shut down streets to use car rigs.
For anyone unfamiliar with it could explain the filmout process? How laborious is it and what result does it offer you as compared to a fully digital pipeline?
You basically get to shoot and cut your film as you would digitally but then simply send off the final edit to run through the film process. It’s essentially a more cost-effective alternative to shooting on film. The result isn’t the same, but it’s definitely more interesting than trying film emulation in the grade, you get all the great little inconsistencies of film that you can’t fake. It also makes a lot of sense using this process with PD as they do a lot of similar stuff in their recording process where they record stuff digitally but then run it through analogue to mess with it.
It was a fun opportunity to just go over the top on things like Dutch angles that you’d normally avoid.
What other techniques were employed by Kieran and gear vetoed to maintain the integrity of the Ozploitation aesthetic?
We immediately just said we wouldn’t use any Steadicam or other modern stabilisation or gripping stuff that they wouldn’t have used in the era. It was a fun opportunity to just go over the top on things like Dutch angles that you’d normally avoid, and Kieran had the idea of going really hard on the lens filters that offer the blooming effect which gave everything such a great look.
The saxophone as a weapon is an outstanding idea, especially if you’ve had the opportunity to see the way Kirsty plays it live (as I have!). Was that aspect of the video always present and how did you get those POV shots?
It just became immediately apparent that we could do so many cool shots if we really leaned into the sax as the main weapon. PD had always wanted Kirsty to be the one shaking people down while Jono stood by eating in every scene, so it just made sense to try and milk the sax for all it was worth visually. And yeah, the way Kirsty plays it on stage is unlike anyone else in the world so we really wanted to make a point of it.
For the POV shots we simply (camera team won’t agree with that word as it was very fiddly) used a bunch of clamps to attach the sax to the camera so Kieran could basically just walk around with it. Kirsty has a very beautiful Japanese sax that we didn’t want to damage though, so we used a banged up cheap dummy sax with the neck removed. I’m not sure if any sax nerds have clocked this and called it out yet.
The way Kirsty plays it on stage is unlike anyone else in the world so we really wanted to make a point of it.
Dare I ask what went into the construction of the Pissy-Pants Rig?
It’s a very high tech piece of kit which involves a syringe and a water filled tube held by Tanya and fed into the crotch of a man’s pants.
Was this a bigger editing job as there are many different scenes which you had to put together? It really does feel like a mini crime caper.
We always do a bit of a stealomatic/previs kind of edit as we’re shot-listing any project. It really helps you plug holes in narratives or just visual progressions of things. So we had a very clear idea of how each scene would fit into the edit and the story before we got to cutting. It means Editor Sean McDermott can focus on bringing craft and flair to the cut rather than solving story beats.
So…you two are notoriously busy and when we last spoke you were working with an author on a multi-director/multi-screen project, how is that going and what else has piqued your fancy?
That project is ongoing. It’s a bit of a slow burn. But we have been keeping really busy with a whole bunch of other stuff. We’re heading to Thailand for a commercial project this week. And as soon as we’re back we will be shooting our most exciting commission to date – a very epic project for Sydney Opera House.
