Press Release from Facefive Productions
Alphamum01 is a short film set to get tongues wagging over its hilarious portrayal of competitive parents anticipating the birth of their first child.
The film has been selected to screen at the 2012 St Kilda Film Festival and stars The Secret Life of Us and Rush star Samuel Johnson.
Alphamum01 sees a competitive couple in an on-line bidding war for high-end baby furniture.
The comedy is the result of Writer and Director Marissa Cooke’s observations of how our culture of consumerism can seem all the more absurd in the
parenting realm, the idea motivating her to write the script.
“It is meant to have satirical undertones of course and … well I had observed these things and saw the humour in it.
“It is a part of our society in general, this obsession with winning, with having the biggest and the best, but it is highlighted somehow when put in the
context of children and parenting,” she says.
The cracker script was put into the hands of Johnson who committed himself to it right away and, says Cooke, together with the full production staff and the very talented director of photography Benjamin Hidalgo De la Barrera, the team was as good as she could have hoped for.
“I wrote the script with Sam (Samuel Johnson) in mind, I’d worked with Sam before and knew his talent for comedic performance so I was thrilled when he wanted to come on board. From there everything fell into place and our small but talented production team pulled off the seemingly impossible.”
Samuel Johnson, who co-produced Alphamum01 with Carla McConnell and Lee Matthews, was immensely excited to be part of the project.
“I was very lucky to have Cookie (writer/director Marissa Cooke) get me to [read it] and I said we have to do this by hook or by crook,” he says.
“Cookie is just so sharp and the script bounced off the page … everyone who read it had no problems attaching themselves to the project right off-the-bat.
“It was tight writing, a great read and really pithy and funny. That is what made it so special. That is no mean feat with a seven-minute script, let it be
said.
During production, the usual stresses associated with a shoot were all too present but there were unexpected surprises along the way that made for
great drama.
When co-star and Samuel Johnson’s on-screen partner Georgia Bolton fell pregnant, everyone saw it as a beautiful omen. But when, mid-scene, the fire
sprinkler system at Eureka tower went off and the set was flooded in seconds, Cooke says she had a moment of doubt, and wondered whether the shoot
would actually wrap.
But spurred on by the camaraderie of the team, they got through it and Cooke has a laugh whenever she recalls that day.
“Practically the flood was a nightmare but, as they say, the show must go on, and seeing the finished production no one would know the issues we had.
“Georgia’s pregnancy, on the other hand, is just a beautiful punctuation on what was a fantastic experience.”