For director Imogen McCluskey it isn’t the medium, but the message – that is to say, emotion, character and story – that is important in her work.
Since making her 2019 debut feature Suburban Wildlife, she’s directed viral series for TikTok and Instagram, shorts, music videos, and now, helmed all 10 episodes of a scripted TV drama: ABC ME’s Soundtrack to Our Teenage Zombie Apocalypse.
“I’m very much an actor’s director. Performance is so key to me and that’s so platform agnostic. I’ve seen incredible performances on TikTok, and I’ve seen shitty performances on TV,” she tells IF over the phone from LA, where is she is about to start her second year of a Masters of Directing at the American Film Institute.
“The story and how you’re approaching it as a director through character, the tone you’re creating, and the genre you’re working in is quite similar regardless of what platform you’re working on.”
Working with actors was indeed McCluskey’s biggest joy in directing Soundtrack to Our Teenage Zombie Apocalypse, which came to her after supervising producer Lyndal Mebberson saw her work across TikTok’s Love Songs and Tiktok/Instagram’s Love Bug.
“Making something on TikTok makes people think that I know how to talk to the youth – which hopefully I do,” McCluskey laughs.
Filmed almost entirely within the ABC Ultimo building, the series follows four music-obsessed teens played by Nick Annas and newcomers Mina-Siale, Ruby Archer and Isaiah Galloway. They’re all on a mission to win triple j Unearthed High – nevermind the zombie wave going on around them.
Developed and created in house at the ABC by executive producer Mary-Ellen Mullane and Mebberson, the scripts come via writers Adam Bigum and Hannah Samuel.
McCluskey believes the show is different not only to the rest of the ABC ME catalogue, but a lot of YA content in the market at the moment.
“It’s this epic, coming-of-age, action, zombie, comedy, music show that has all of these different tones. As a director, that was such a task to try and create a cohesive world and tone with all these different things going on, and bring it back to these really interesting characters,” McCluskey says.
“Ella [played by Mina-Siale], the lead character, is feisty in a way that a lot of female characters aren’t on TV. There’s “feisty”, which means they’re just like a bit of a bitch, but I think she has so much complexity to her.”
In terms of the cast, McCluskey notes despite most being first-time actors, they were on the ball and committed. As a director, she felt was her role to invite them into the process and make space for them.
“What I’m really proud of is they felt a lot of ownership of their roles and of the series as a whole. They got along really well and supported each other in really beautiful ways.
“We were aiming high with the series; we brought a filmic sensibility to it. We did a lot of things that I think even professional actors would find just difficult; we do a lot of one takes and hectic camera moves, but these kids were able to just like jump on and rise to the occasion.”
Music is the lifeblood of the series, with the show boasting a triple j Unearthed soundtrack including Ruby Fields, Caroline and Claude, The Rions, HYG, Teenage Joans, Beddy Rays, Smol Fish, Fritz, Maia and Vacation Club. McCluskey felt her challenge was finding ways to shoot the creation of music in a way that wasn’t cliché – that is, isn’t someone sitting in a studio, “getting hit by a bolt of lightning”.
“What’s cool about this series is that it unpacks the creation of a song and the creative process, and demystifies it and makes it accessible to kids who are watching, who might already be musicians or want to get involved with music.”
Soundtrack to Our Teenage Zombie Apocalypse is McCluskey’s largest scale work so far, and she relished the opportunity to author the entire show, particularly with long-term collaborator, cinematographer Lucca Barone-Peters, at her side.
“I was really glad I was able to bring him with me because he was game for trying out a lot of things I wanted to do – like those one-takers, and shooting it a bit low angle – to push it visually in a way that is really exciting. [It’s] something that I haven’t seen in kids TV on ABC ME for sure, and I think will help it bridge that audience of younger teens.”
Studying in America has helped McCluskey build her confidence as a director; she shot Soundtrack to Our Teenage Zombie Apocalypse in between her first and second year at AFI. She is currently working on her thesis project, Rain, about willful blindness when it comes to climate change – inspired by the 2019/2020 bushfires.
“AFI gave me the opportunity to experiment with lots of different genres that I hadn’t had the means to experiment with before. In my first year we made several short films. One of them was a political thriller and one of them was 1950s period drama. All very small budgets, but high production values.
“That was really exciting, being able to be challenged by this completely different environment and to have a bit more breadth than what I could have the liberty to do or be able to do in Australia.”
McCluskey also has several other projects on the boil, hoping to stay in long-form. She is keen to see a distinctly Australian rom-com, and so is working on a series in that vein with comedian Alexei Toliopoulos. Also on her slate is a comedy-of-age Dial Up, set in the late ’90s, and is adapting her short film Atomic Love into a television series.
The first five episodes of Soundtrack to Our Zombie Apocalypse are on ABC iview now, with the next five to drop Monday August 22.