2014 - Part 2
The second half of this year has been pretty much non stop. It started in June (obviously) by shooting the video for “Storm” in Melbourne with the very talented Michael Shanks at the helm, then after doing our Oz release of “The Rover” Kate and I headed to LA and NY for the USA press and premiere. After a couple of weeks there Kate had to head home for work and I went on to Austin, Texas to start Andrew Bujalski’s film “Results” with the adorable Coby Smulders, the brilliant Kevin Corrigan and the hilarious Giovanni Ribisi. It was a really fun shoot in one of the best cities in the States. I was playing an Aussie fitness instructor so needed to get myself into shape. Spent a lot of time back at the gym, as well as running an hour a day which was fairly intense in that heat. I also stopped drinking, ate healthily and gave up dairy and sugar, which was great (apart from missing bloody chocolate everyday) We had a week filming in Marfa Texas as well which is this beautiful historic town that’s quite the arts community, with a fantasticly cool trailer park called El Cosmico.
I continued working on the record via Skype, of course. Mixing and mastering was getting close to finishing and the artwork was also having its final touches back in Oz. My wonderful friend Andrew Henderson who did all the artwork as a huge favour was just amazing at constructing the look of the record. While in Austin, I shot some footage for the “I Can Be Some Good” video with 2 of our crew members playing a happy couple - who are actually a happy couple - thankfully. We wrapped at the end of July and I went straight to LA to shoot a video for “Golden Heart” with Giovanni Ribisi and Natasha Braier – our DP from The Rover, then went on to London for the UK opening of “The Rover”. We’d been on quite a tour - Rob, David and I so finishing up was a little sad, I have to say. It was an amazing movie to promote, as it really stirred up some emotional reactions. I then headed to Japan to start work on Drake Doremus’ new film “Equals” with Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Holt. My first time there, and it truly was fascinating. Fantastic to work with Drake again after our last venture together “Breathe In” back in 2011. He makes me laugh every day, which is a special thing to say the least. After finishing filming, I stayed on for another week in Tokyo to make 2 more videos. Michael Shanks came over and we used some pretty cool 3D scanning technology to shoot part of the “Broken Bones” clip. We also shot a video for “Taste” with another fantastic 23-year old director, Mackenzie Sheppard. The clip’s great. All shot in one 19 hour day across 5 locations including alleyways in Shinjuku, The Robot restaurant, Club AI and that well known intersection in Shibuya, so we were pretty wrecked by midnight. Learning to sing the song backwards was a tad tricky but I think works as a pretty cool effect. I then flew home the next day, hoping that I could just lie down for a while but hit the ground running instead.
We released “Storm” and did a bunch of press, playing live for a few news outlets and radio stations with my old mate Tim Neal. I also started work on Neil Armfield’s film “Holding The Man” and have been trying to plan the record launch shows as well as shoot and plan some other music videos. Tim White had a fantastically nutty concept for the song “Fly All The Way”, all centred around infomercial world, so we shot that at the end of September, in between days on the film. I was going to try and shoot the rest of the “I Can Be Some Good” clip but finally realised I had too much going on and was running myself into the ground, so decided to hold off on that for a while. I feel exhausted just writing all this down. I’ve actually discovered I’ve had a low-grade virus which has affected my throat and therefore my voice somewhat – which is not great timing.
The other thing I’m doing is preparing to play F. Scott Fitzgerald in Michael Grandage’s film “Genius” in London with Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Laura Linney. Thankfully, mine is a pretty tiny role so I don’t have too much to do but I still need to find the essence of the man so have been working away on that. I had a few days on that at the end of October and have a few more mid December – just with a couple of record launch shows in between. It’s lucky I’m only 21 and have loads of energy - yeah right!