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February 15, 2007

Short Cut

Meet the team behind the winners of the Audience Award...

You voted short film 12ᅢ pounds, directed by Nahuel Lerena and Pato Byrne, the winner of the Rudebox Shorts competition.

So what are Rudebox Shorts? If you didn’t know, these are a set of short films, rather than straight-up pop videos, made by edgy, independent filmmakers - as commissioned by Robbie.

Because Robbie liked them so much, he thought it provided a chance to uncover brand new filmmaking talent. So along with indie filmmaking site Shooting People, and Channel 4, he launched a competition for budding filmmakers to make a short film based on his track, The 80s, taken from the Rudebox album.

The Rudebox Shorts competition has been running since October, and filmmakers have been busy uploading their masterpieces. Since the competition launched we’ve had close to 200 entries, and you have been voting ever since.

So just what is the winning film like?

12ᅢ pounds is a straight-up video for the song The 80s. In under five minutes we see a straggly-haired 30-something revisit his more fun teenage years.

It’s a typical teenage rites of passage – the cocky kid smokes with his mates, blags into a club, even experiences first love, all through the rose-tinted spectacles of time.

Brilliantly shot through a continuous flow of doors and passages, the murky world the teenager inhabits is nothing compared to that of the sad old 30-something he is now...

You can watch some fantastic behind-the-scenes footage shot during the filming of 12ᅢ pounds below, plus, we caught up with the team behind the movie film... here's what they had to say:

Name: Paula Alvarez Vaccaro
Role: Producer/Writer
Age: 33
Lives: London

Where did you first hear about the competition?
Through Shooting People

What did you think of the idea?
That it was a great launching pad for people who needed a breakthrough in this competitive market. That is us, we thought.

Tell us about the film:
We started planning a film in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Trying to resemble London in the 80s but the whole idea started to feel too big and also dangerous for a big team. Then we thought filming inside of a space and using mirrors was going to be a good idea but then Matias Mesa, the Dop, came up with the 'oneshot' sequence and the art director gave us some ideas and it all started to take shape.

Translating the lyrics into images was the foundation for the first drafts of the scripted story. And it all grew fast and complex. The production design grew even faster and every new idea was a new element to add to the scenario and a new figure to add to our credit cards and loans! We panicked a few times. Nahuel Lerena was very stubborn (all directors are, huh?) and he kept pushing even when I thought we were losing the plot. We are really happy it went so well.

What made you decide to make the film?
This is what we do for a living and we want to grow as a production company and this opportunity was a really good one as we wanted to launch our production company in London! Robbie Williams is a big artist, and giving opportunities to independent productions is not something happening every day from such a mainstream star, so this was the perfect combination.

How did you come up with the idea?
Brainstorming, talking, trying, sms-ing, emailing, phoning, shouting, not sleeping, dreaming, arguing...

How long did it take to write/cast/make?
It took us a just over a month to write the idea, two weeks to cast and three days to make.

Tell us about making the film?
It was shot in November on a very hot day in Buenos Aires, Argentina, inside a basketball court rented to a friendly small football club called Atlanta.

What films have you worked on before?
Together, many music videos for the Latin American market and myself, on some documentaries with international directors such as Emir Kusturica and Oliver Stone.

What do you hope to do next?
We hope to get commissions from other musicians and labels, get funding for our short and long feature fiction films and for a feature length documentary. We have many ideas already developed and in pre-production, we just need the money to be able to finish our ideas!

What will you do with the prize money?
Pay part of the debt we have from making the video!!

Have you had much feedback from your film?
A lot! In the Argentine press it has been featured a bit and loads of people were talking about it on theradio. Also from friends and family but they are always very supportive!

Name: Nahuel Lerena
Role: Director
Age: 34
Lives: Buenos Aires

Where did you first hear about the competition?
Paula, our producer, told us about it. We thought it was a great opportunity to get to a global market and to show our work to a worldwide audience that Robbie Williams easily reaches. I am very excited with all that has been happening around the competition and I think these kinds ofexperiences are necessary to exchange cultural elements and with other people who might be doing a similar path to ourselves somewhere else in the world.

What made you decide to make the film?
We really like the music-video format and being able to add your work to a Robbie Williams song is amazing. Our gut feeling told us we could do some quality work and we did not want to miss the opportunity.

Tell us about making the film?
We started looking for locations with my five-year-old nephew. In the film, when we did not know how to go from the cemetery to the house, we used his image in the womb to make the transition... Working in one-shot is never easy and new ideas could come from anywhere. Something nobody outside our team knows so far... The one in the picture in the newspaper it is me... I am Robbie Wilson, the artist who signs an £80million record deal and those are the '80s that broke my heart. We used my cameo picture as an homage to director Alfred Hitchcock (who used to cameo in all his own movies) but actually in the first place as a way to avoid a rights-release problem with any picture.

What do you hope to do next?
Keep on working, filming and enjoying every second of each shot. Check www.pinballonline.com.ar for our next ventures.

Have you had much feedback from your film?
Every commentary has been positive. We are very proud of the team work achieved and with working with so much talent. Nahuel Perez Biscayart the leading actorhas been a leading star in every sense of the word!

Name: Patricia Byrne
Role: Director
Age: 27
Lives: Buenos Airea

What did you think of the idea?
A very interesting idea! For directors and producers who are not fully integrated in an international market this kind of competition might be the only wayto get noticed and generate new commissions afterpeople are able to see your work.

What made you decide to make the film?
We thought that making a video for Robbie Williams was a great experience. Whether we won or not, just to participate was a great deal.

What do you hope to do next?
We would like to continue working, filming, being able to travel so we can show what we are able to do internationally. Also I am about to film a short feature and I will write my first long feature soon.

What will you do with the prize money?
Pay everyone!

Have you had much feedback from your film?
We had great feedback. That was great entertainment, that the actor was amazing, and everyone and everything written or said about our work and the video was really nice.