Fuelled

In Depth with the Director - KilledtheCat’s Michelle Hao

Tell us a little about yourselves and your background in filmmaking

We're a group of 12 Sheridan animation students so not too much professional background in filmmaking quite yet. We've had a lot of school projects to help prep us with actual film-making though, notably a short film class in second year where we had to make three 15 second short films and I think a lot of us got to actually see and go through the animation pipeline for the first time with that.

How did Fuelled first come together as a project?

Fuelled was a school project that spanned the entire 3rd year from September 2020 to April 2021. They sort of just randomly put you in teams of 9-12 people. Some of us knew others beforehand and some of us were complete strangers but everyone was super nice so we all got along pretty well.

There's a wonderful contrast in the film between the serious, adult themes and the vibrant colour palette and cute characters. How did you strike a balance between the two in the filmmaking process?

We moreso leaned into the contrast rather than tried to strike a balance between the two since putting cute characters through a darker timeline was one of the appeals we were aiming for. We felt the gap it created onscreen would make the film more endearing to a wider audience than if we were to stick to a purely serious or purely light-hearted tone.

You also made the decision to have no dialogue in the film and tell the story purely through visuals and soundtracking. What was the thinking behind this decision and how did it affect Fuelled as a film?

To be honest as a student group it's incredibly difficult to not only find good voice actors but also voice direct them well enough if we did. As an artistic choice it definitely made the film more accessible for people who didn't speak English. In terms of how it affected Fuelled, the lack of dialogue definitely made the other sound effects more prominent and gave the film a lot more atmosphere. Production went a lot smoother too since we didn't need to wait for voice acting clips to animate to. Besides, we wanted her actions to speak louder than her words.

You mentioned the film came together as the 12 of you were socially distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How did you keep the film aligned and cohesive with those real life barriers separating you?

We made sure to be as active as possible in our discord server, and created virtual studios for members to just hang out and work together. With keeping a film cohesive, communication is key and the main thing about being online was we couldn't have any of the casual critiques or interactions you'd normally get just being in a studio making every group meeting crucial. Things like troubleshooting and program tutorials also would've been a lot easier if we were able to simply walk to someone else's desk and directly take control of their computer. Despite all that though, I think it simply took each group member giving their all to end up with a film we're very proud of.

What projects are coming for you in the future?

All of our group members are currently in fourth year working on our thesis films. The group film was nice because there was a collective sense of shared responsibility but now that everyone's working on an individual thesis it gets pretty lonely (laughs). Also you can't make inside jokes with yourself. But please look forward to when our thesis films get finished, I'm sure at least a few will go for a festival run.

Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?

From the "nice americans" to the "lovable americans" it's fun to have the cross continental pollination film festivals like yours promote. We don't know much about Australia besides being the only country who's also a continent and having good comedians like Randy Feltface, but we hope you enjoy our film.