Budget spaghetti

By Sarah Heeringa, October 23, 2006 @ 1 am

Andrew McKenzie’s animation is targeted at phones

A Bullet Waits For You, screening soon on a mobile phone near you

No cast, no crew, no set … no problem. Andrew McKenzie is director and star of his own animated spaghetti western mini series, A Bullet Waits For You, screening soon on a mobile phone near you.

McKenzie is making the series using rotoscoping. Live footage is shot and then traced, instead of the traditional, laborious animation process. “Not having to rely on massive budgets and a crew of specialists means you can be self-sufficient in creating your own content,” he says.

Targeting the made-for-mobile market is a canny move: five billion video-capable mobile phones should be in the palms of consumers by next year. “It might be niche, but if you can make a series about petunias and get 100,000 people worldwide to subscribe to a weekly download, it’s a viable one,” says McKenzie.

That’s good news for budding Kiwi filmmakers, provided they secure residual rights or other ways of making money. “There’s lots of talk about our booming local film industry,” says McKenzie, “but to make sure we get the financial benefits, New Zealand creatives need to know their digital media rights so they can capture their creativity as an exportable product.”