Hayden and Simeon are peas in a pod but, in many ways, they're chalk and cheese. Together, they made a feature film, selected for the 2016 New Zealand International Film Festival, Chronesthesia. And it's all set in Wellington.
Hayden is the director/actor of the duo and Simeon brings the technical expertise. Both, however, have a love of Wellington that has bloomed into their first ‘zero-budget’ feature film, the brilliant Chronesthesia (yo can read my full review of the movie here).
Hayden and Simeon are good guys. I approached the pair after catching their first feature film Chronesthesia premiere last Friday evening, and they kindly agreed to be subjected to an interview for ‘The Residents’. Simeon lives in Wellington and Hayden, formerly of Wellington, now in Auckland. However, when I meet Hayden the second time (yesterday lunchtime to be precise), something I can’t put my finger on makes me feel like I saw Hayden not very long ago. But I can’t quite remember where I know him from. It’s only half way through our interview I realise “You’re friendly Lighthouse Cinema Cuba attendant guy.” Indeed - Hayden may be new to some on screen but off he's been helping running our favourite art-house cinema house to perfection and became known for introducing spiels before a movie. Despite this revealation, I wanted to know more about the pair, where the respectively came from, and why they decided to make Chronesthesia. So, in the humble setting of my Mum and Dad's place, we had coffee's from Red Rabbit Coffee and yarns.
Check out the video of our quickfire Q&A session below.
Outback Kid
Simeon was born outside of Brisbane, in the country outback. His mother is a nurse and his father was a ‘man of the land’. “I’ll never be the man he is” says Simeon “because when he was in his twenties he was doing the Rodeo circuit riding bulls. I'm lucky I have a strong father figure in my life.”
As the only child of his parents (Simeon has half siblings who are much older), Simeon spent much time alone as child. Their farm was very remote - the nearest neighbours were a kilometer away.
His first memory of films is watching ET as a kid. “I remember I got a black marker and wrote ET all over the walls of the house,” he says. “I thought if I wrote it enough ET would see it and come. Mum wasn’t very happy about that. So from then I remember being interested in movies, whether that was being a stunt man. Then in my high school years my parents bought me an 8mm film camera, and I would run around with mates filming.”
When Simeon graduated high school, big budget blockbusters were starting to become more commonplace. “There was something about seeing those movies like ‘Independence Day’ or ‘Jurassic Park’ - it blew my mind and I became very interested in film special effects,” Simeon explains. “Amazingly, straight after school at 18, a family friend who was a producer arranged for me to get some work experience at Movie World, where the studios were. It was incredible. I ended up there for about 10 months unpaid because I didn’t want to leave.”
After about a year of work experience, he managed to get enough work experience from practicing after hours that he knew enough to be employed. He worked for 3 years before hearing through the grapevine that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was being filmed in Wellington New Zealand. Simeon speaks particularly fondly of being blown away by seeing the Cave Troll sequence from ‘The Fellowship of the Ring.’
He was also inspired by 1999’s ‘The Matrix’, shot in Sydney. When Weta Digital was looking for digital effects artists for post-production on ‘The Return of the King’ Simeon put his hand up and moved to Wellington. He has been here since 2003.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Te Awamutu…
Hayden J Weal was trouble at school. His parents split as a child, and through school, his teachers reserved little hope for him. He would play up in class and talk back to his teachers. His sole inspiration was his love of Michael J Fox in ‘Back to the Future’ which he watched at age five, pausing and fast forwarding to his favourite bits. “When we visited my Aunty we would walk to the cinema - a beautiful little cinema in Te Awamutu called the Regent Cinema”. At school, Hayden remembers he had told a teacher that he wanted to be a filmmaker who had dismissed his ambition, saying he needed to be more realistic. “After that, I started REALLY playing up - they put me in with the guidance counselor,” he laughs.
The guidance counselor asked Hayden what he wanted to do as a job. The counselor asked if he could be anything, what he would be? Hayden knew he didn’t want a normal job like his parents. Again, he said he wanted to be a filmmaker but qualified it by saying it wasn’t realistic. This time, the guidance counselor told him he should pursue his desire - and that Peter Jackson was making movies in Wellington. The dream could be realised.
Hayden had never been able to get his hands on camera gear growing up. As a single parent, his mum sometimes struggled to stretch a dollar bill for the family, so getting film equipment was almost impossible, particularly with all the add-ons that were necessary. Nevertheless, Hayden didn’t give up on his dream. Both Simeon and Hayden agree it used to be much harder to find cameras.
Moving to Wellington
After school ended, Hayden studied film and media theory for a year at Waikato University. However, he remained un-engaged. The year culminated in him getting arrested. At this stage, he decided to move to Wellington for a clean start to study at a practical film school. He made a short film with a friend, his father drove him down to Wellington and he got in. “I felt like by that stage, Peter Jackson had smashed it, so it was no longer taboo to say you want to be a filmmaker - in fact, it was so common it was almost embarrassing.”
During childhood, Hayden had always watched the 48-hour Film Festival at home on TV. Once he arrived at film school, he decided to give it go and slowly grew his contacts in the film and tv industry. Hayden has since been involved in countless 48-hour Film Festival films, entering nearly every year. “I would always jump in front of the camera during the filmmaking” he explains “because I’m a show-off, even though I wasn’t studying acting.”
Separately, Simeon had become involved in the 48-hour Film Festival as well. Their meeting was more of a slow burn than a firework display. Hayden and Simeon had mutual friends and through these friends, the two’s paths eventually crossed. However, the Yin and the Yan came together and the two creative collaborators found one another at last.
Not long after, Hayden’s team for the 48-hour Film Festival invited Simeon to join them to continue making 48-hour film Festival Films. Over the years, Hayden worked a variety of jobs related to film and video, from working for three years at Video Ezy to being a barrista at the Lighthouse Cinema. Hayden also gained the opportunity to work on The Hobbit as Bilbo’s double through getting noticed from a short film he produced ‘Hot Rob’. Some of their films in the 48-hour film festival, such as ‘Dick Off’ got picked to go through the finals of the festival (selected by Sir Peter Jackson). You can check out Hot Rob here .
The idea for making Chronesthesia came from a notion to do a web series where each episode was the night after a one night stand. After a time, their friend Andy Campion suggested making an entire film about relationships. “We were both very keen to do a project. A feature was very daunting. But having something to do was the goal. We spit-balled on the script a few times but then also realised we didn’t need anything,” Simeon explains. “Simeon had the equipment” Hayden explains “we just needed actors. We did everything ourselves from scene structure to finding people.”
“The film that we watch now is so different to the films we watched separately in our own heads before finished it” Hayden explains. “It’s better. We are really happy with how it turned out.”
From there, the pair decided to go full guns making Chronesthesia. Simeon's experience behind the camera provided the strong visual narrative for the film. For example, one of the most impressive elements of the film is the repetition of scenes, creating a rhythm of Wellington places, cadences of scenery through the movie.
All the actors that star in the movie came about being cast through referrals. Hayden plays the lead so there was certainty that he could be relied on to show up. Nevertheless, almost all of the main characters agreed instantly after reading the script. None of the actors were paid, something Hayden sees as almost an advantage; “It means you get the most excited people for the role.” Interestingly, for the smaller parts, Hayden and Simeon struggled to find actors to fill the roles, such as for the role of ‘The Gardener’ near the end of the movie. “I was calling everyone in my address book - a friend of our put us onto the Lyndee Jayne Rutherford who got the biggest laugh of the whole movie.” Mutual connections (and Hayden’s former work for Duffy books) also ended up with Julian Dennison being cast as the young boy love interest (before he had been cast for Hunt for the Wilderpeople, his breakout role). “It was like it was meant to be - because he plays this cool kid - and now he really is the coolest kid in New Zealand after ‘Wilderpeople’” Hayden laughs.
So one question: how do you budget a film that doesn’t have a dime? Wellington was the ideal location. It also helped that Simeon was in a privileged position to be able to get his hands on gear the pair needed, due to his day job working at Weta Digital. “We didn’t need to pay location fees, catering, for extras or anything like that” they explain. There were, however, unexpected costs such as a plastic flower that is vital to the progression of the storyline. “We really tried to get our money’s worth for that flower” Hayden says “we tried to use it in every bloody scene we could.”
“The film that we watch now is so different to the films we watched separately in our own heads before finished it” Hayden explains. “It’s better. We are really happy with how it turned out.”
Hayden and Simeon have two projects in the pipeline, one larger and one very small. “Hayden and I get itchy feet if we aren’t making stuff. We’ll see how it pans out because it feels like Chronesthesia might open doors to new and exciting opportunities” Simeon explains. Are they glad they did it this way, with no budget, and no funding? “Absolutely - we would still be writing it otherwise,” Hayden says “This way, we were aiming high but we knew how high we could go. We did it one day at a time. It’s less daunting that way.”
Chronesthesia is on at 3:30pm on 3 August and has an extra screening on Tuesday 9 August at 8:30pm. Book here.
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