By Lana Nowakowski
Melbourne filmmaker David Elliot-Jones never considered a filmmaking career until he suddenly had one. In December 2009, he had just completed his media and communications degree and was about to apply for a job as a newspaper journalist. One night, he and his two housemates had dinner and a long discussion about current affairs. Within a few hours, they had decided to postpone finding "real jobs" and make a documentary instead.
At the time, violence against Indian students was featured heavily in the news, but Elliot-Jones, 30, and his mates were hearing that there were even bigger issues. "None of us had studied filmmaking, but we had a documentary idea we really believed in," Elliot-Jones recalls. "Mainstream media hadn't covered the story because they weren't on the ground and they didn't have the time we had to look into the intricacies."
Filmmaker David Elliot-Jones is about to release Big In Japan.
Within two months, the trio had bought a $950 video camera on eBay and moved to India, where they commenced a two-year investigation into the multi-billion dollar education-migration industry. Their documentary, Convenient Education, was screened by SBS in 2013. It revealed the devastation suffered by tens of thousands of Indian students, lured to Australia by false promises of permanent residency and prosperity in paradise.
Next, Elliot-Jones and his mates upgraded their equipment and started an independent film company, Walking Fish Productions. Their second documentary, Big in Japan, will be released in November this year. Elliot-Jones stars as the guinea pig in a hilarious two-year experiment where he pursues fame in Japan at any cost. He also tags along behind the scenes with three foreign performers seeking fame in Japan, and investigates the allure, realities and costs of the fame game.
Elliot-Jones doesn't count his extreme physical challenges, public humiliation stunts or nudity on the internet among the most difficult times in his career. It's the early days, weeks and months in the cutting room that he finds daunting. "Going through hundreds of hours of footage and putting a story together can be really trying," he says. "It was so reassuring when we finally put our first trailer on the internet and thousands of people watched it. That's when we knew there would be an audience."
If Elliot-Jones had known filmmaking was in his future, he would have studied marketing. He says it's not enough for modern filmmakers to be skilled at storytelling; they need to hunt for audiences using digital marketing strategies. "Traditional cinema and television routes are still important, but now there are grassroots screenings, subscription services and television on-demand to think about," he says. "These days, people want films in a lot of places."
While he would recommend film school as the most promising path to a career in filmmaking, Elliot-Jones says the experience of going into his first project blind was transformational. "We learned the ropes of filmmaking through being in the deep end, with extreme pressure from deadlines and expectations," he says. "We hadn't perfected our skills, but we needed to make a film and so we learned to be disciplined. I wouldn't change a thing."
Big in Japan opens in November.