Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 23, 2009, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The ongoing trend of visceral Australian horror delves into dark psychology as well with Fragment, the feature debut of writer/director Andrew Miles. The recently completed film was produced by Kelvin Crumplin and executive-produced by Graham Broughton and Michael Favelle.
“It began with a fantasy I had about breaking into someone’s apartment and finding a beautiful dead woman lying on the floor naked, and wondering who she was,” Miles explains. “This idea then floated around as a David Lynch-type short story, where a guy spends the afternoon with the woman’s body. This time, however, she is alive and then dead again, like a time loop. But it was basically about falling in love with a dead woman and finding out who she was when she was alive. I was in the middle of a marriage separation at the time, so much of my fear of relationships and of never falling in love again came out of that period too.”
Miles ultimately distilled these inspirations into a screenplay focusing on Lloyd, a young man who believes who can bring the deceased back to life, and decides to use this ability on a woman who was murdered in a snuff film he discovers. His meddling with matters of the dead comes with a price, however, in the form of an evil entity that begins to plague him. “There are multiple levels going on in this film,” Miles notes. “It was designed to be watched more than once. My benchmark for a great film is: ‘Wow, I need to own that film, so I can see it again and again.’ ”
Having previously helmed music videos and TV commercials, Miles shot a short 35mm film for about $3,000 in the year leading up to Fragment’s production. “I was really pleased with it and thought, ‘Well, if we spent $30,000, we’d have a 60-minute film!’ ” he says. “Nonsensical thinking, but hey, reality takes a back seat when you start any feature.” Starting off with $20,000 of his parents’ money, Miles was soon introduced to Crumplin, who owned a film lab and 35mm camera rental company. “I gave Kelvin a mockup Fragment DVD case which he slipped quickly into his bag to have a look at later. The only thing he found inside, where the disc was meant to be, was the words ‘HELP ME FILL THIS SPACE.’ ”
Crumplin did, arranging for backing by a consortium called The Film Production Group, and Miles began planning the shoot. “What I didn’t want,” he states, “was to race through a 25-day schedule and end up with a cheap-looking film. I read how Christopher Nolan had shot Following over a year of weekends, and Lynch’s Eraserhead just went on as long as it needed. I figured, if we were all deferring and nobody was getting paid, we should do this right. So I rounded up a great group of actors and crew who said yes to a year of weekend filming. Everyone was very patient, and the production went very smoothly.
“We had a studio space available for as long as we needed it, and that was invaluable,” Miles continues. “We built the apartment set there and were in it for about five months. It allowed us to take our time and get great shots on 35mm without scheduling pressures.” The remaining period was spent on locations ranging from a waterfront junkyard, assorted shops they were able to use for free and an area of Victoria where a huge greenscreen was set up for the opening battlefield sequence, complete with an Iraqi tank. “That day we had everything, thanks to a wonderful producer who believes in doing things right,” Miles says. “Cranes and a full art department—it was big!”
The production was not without hiccups, including a cinematographer who dropped out after the first weekend. “I think he realized it was going to be more work than he figured,” Miles says. “Alexis Korin Castagna was his 1st camera assistant, and after the original DP left, I asked Kelvin who could shoot the film. He said, ‘Why not give Alexis a go?’ I replied, ‘D’you think he can do it?’ Kelvin said, ‘Yeah, he’s ready to go.’ So Alexis, after a few sweat beads slowly appeared on his brow, stepped in and did a wonderful job.” Thanks to the Film Production Group, Miles, Crumplin and co. were also able to enlist the services of such companies as Multivision, Audioloc, Optical and Graphic, Movielab, Connelly FX Team (the makeup FX shop whose credits include Wolf Creek) and Armz FX.
Fragment’s cast is led by Wayne Bradley as Lloyd and Bree Robertson (who had also appeared in the short version) as the resurrected victim Victoria. Having previously auditioned Erin Chadwick during his ad days, Miles cast her in the role of Abbey, and enlisted Ian McPhee, who had collaborated with him on the short, as the snuff-movie killer. “Ian was helping me cast that role by standing in as Lloyd in screen tests,” Miles recalls. “It was soon obvious that he himself would be great as the chief villain, so I asked him if he’d play the part. He loved that! It was like George Lucas realizing Harrison Ford was under their noses the whole time to play Han Solo!
“Over the year, we all got along great,” the filmmaker continues. “We really became a weekend family. Wayne was completely, 100 percent into it. You can see it in those eyes—he’s a true actor. Incredibly patient, to hang in there for nearly every weekend throughout a whole year! There must have been five days in a row where he was responding to the TV, sitting on the couch, looking here, reacting there and so on. That was agony for him, playing to nothing for five days solid! Without him, there was no film.”
Miles further recalls that Robertson was “fearless” in tackling the demanding role of Victoria. “She’s a successful model, so she took her nude scenes in stride,” he says. “We supplied a towel for her between takes, but it kept sticking to the fake blood and was painful to peel off all the time, so she just hung out nearly au naturel for the day! I remember having to shoot her snuff video first so we could have playback on set, and loathing the idea of putting Bree through that. But on the day, she and Ian improvised this amazingly realistic 10-minute torture scene by themselves. I was blown away by their performances.”
With a narrative that deals with extremes of both physical and mental torment, Fragment aims to elicit complex responses from its viewers. “Victoria, for instance, is a walking Rorschach test,” Miles says. “She’s both attractive and repulsive at the same time—a naked woman wandering the apartment covered head to toe in cuts and blood. I want audiences to feel dirty watching the scene and then feel sorry for her, then feel uneasy and so on. It’ll be interesting to hear the audience reactions.”
