1986-1999

The concept behind The Thing Under the Bed (1986) was that there was a monster under the bed and he wanted to consume the living. I was four. I was also the writer, director and director of photography for this, my first short movie. My sister was the star, as the monster's victim. I also played the monster. This was the beginning of a tradition of my sister appearing in my movies, which would continue until she left the movie business in 2001. There was no script for my first short.

My attitude to filmmaking was simply a fascination and incorruptible, unswerving, immovable desire to tell stories. I picked up the camera - to which the depth of my knowledge was simply pick it up and point it at the thing and press the button. I told people what to do, which I liked. Later I would get cumulatively frustrated by people not doing what they're told. I eventually decided that if people were paid, they would be obligated to do what I say - therefore I planned the ways that were available to me, to raise the eleven thousand dollars to make my first professional grade short movie.

I would get a job, finish my novel and hope to sell it, and leverage my old web design paid gigs into a computer game programming job via learning Python from books. Somehow I would earn and save that money and I would make my movie.

In high school (my second attempt at sixth form/NCEA 2) when I was making my first student short movie - the epic horror parody entitled The Giant Satanic Potato and the Killer Apes from Hell (1999)- it has changed titles many times. These days I just refer to it as Demo Reel 1. There was a scene where a white trash stalker/rapist creeps outside the house of a young blonde teen. He is supposed to masturbate while watching her through the window. With a spark of inspiration, I filled a water bottle with milk, so that the actor could cum on the wall at the moment of climax. Unfortunately, it was a white wall, so the effect was not as it could have been.