Darcy Yuille

One Punch is a gritty, teen drama about Matt Mercado, a young Italian Australian man on the cusp of adulthood, struggling in his final year at high school and trying to hold on to the friendships and innocence of his youth.

On the eve of Matt’s 18th Birthday his domineering father, Carlo, indoctrinates him into the reality of their world, sending him out, in the care of his older brother Ant, to serve his apprenticeship in the family business. Selling drugs. Under immense pressure, Matt’s world will erode beneath him as he struggles to stake his claim, forge new friendships and prove his worth to his family, resulting in an act of random violence that will define the rest of his life.

“This is a film about the steps that young men take from innocence to violence, steps that seem prepared long before he is even able to make decisions. These steps are well worn by elder role models, family members and a cycle of casual violence that is a rite of passage for many young men,” says the film’s writer, director and AFTRS graduate, Darcy Yuille, who based the film on his own personal experiences.

“Based on deep research into the experiences of victims of One Punch incidents and with forensic scientists who deal with brain injuries, One Punch was devised to show how this sad event can happen to any young man, under the wrong kind of pressure. The film was deliberately shot with smartphones to create the visceral feel of the medium and to allow access to crowds and locations, enabling the production to shoot in real locations. The story is framed as a tragedy, a situation where no one wins and the actions of a fleeting moment cast a shadow over the lives of all involved for the rest of their lives.”

Here, Yuille gives us an insight into the making of the film, as well as the challenges of shooting on an iPhone.

On the set of One Punch.

“The technical challenges are many! But they are balanced by the benefits.”

Interview by Matthew Eeles

Why did you decide to shoot One Punch using a smartphone?
I decided to shoot One Punch with a smartphone for a number of reasons. I had made films before with nice gear, and sometimes the focus drifted towards making everything perfect. Life’s not perfect and I loved the way Steven Soderbergh and Sean Baker used smartphones to show this, particularly in the film Tangerine. I also knew I wanted a certain amount of classical tracking shots, which adds even more to the budget if you have to hire grips and Dollies or steadicams. The smartphone on a gimbal can go anywhere, and the general public couldn’t care less, they just think you’re a tourist. Finally, I also felt that with the right peripheral gear, like the moondog lenses anamorphic lens, that the iPhone 8+ that we shot on could look kind of like 16mm film with the right treatment on set and in post production.

I applaud any filmmaker who uses their craft as a way to raise awareness of the mental and physical results of the coward’s punch. This story could have been set within any genre, and in your case you’ve set it in the world of drug dealing and crime. Why did you decide to base your story within that genre?
I set it in the crime world because I wanted Matt to be an innocent. On the tip side, his family are criminals. When it’s revealed, he has no time to think about it, he is propelled, and crime and drug dealing is one of those things that is a bit like violence. We may not want it to be around, but sometimes it solves problems. It created a grey moral world for Matt, who was very black and white. I also felt that drugs are poisonous, so for Carlo, his father, to hand them to Matt, he was passing down a family trait, much like the violence.

Can you tell us a bit about the technical challenges of shooting using a smartphone compared to a traditional camera?
The technical challenges are many! But they are balanced by the benefits. Some of the challenges were things like close ups. Most smartphones have one lens which is better quality than the rest, and it tends to be a wider lens, kind of like a 16mm on super 35. So to get a close up, you have to be right in the actors’ face, which is difficult for the actor, but also distorts the face a bit. The anamorphic lens resolved this to some extent, but I also used a telephoto adapter to get a closer angle if I needed a good close up.
Another issue is data wrangling. You are literally using a phone, so space comes at a price, and transferring files was not a tidy thing. If I can be a bit nerdy for a second, even though we shot the film in 4K, the data rate and colour space was 8 bit, 4:2:0, so there wasn’t much latitude for correcting colors or exposure issues. You had to be pretty spot on with your exposures and try and balance it as much on the day as possible.
One other issue I had was just various little software quirks. We used an app called Filmic Pro to shoot with, it allows you to set a consistent shutter speed and have a certain amount of control over the exposure. But I found when shooting, certain problems would arise. The camera would overheat if used for long takes, and noise would begin to appear in the shadows. The white balance would drift even though you had locked the setting, so the overall tone of the image could shift subtly in colour. If an actor crossed the frame, or if there was a lot of movement in the frame, the exposure would sometimes shift, even though you technically had it locked. I think those software settings have improved now, but they did cause some problems.

The cast of One Punch.

In your experience, do actors respond differently to having a smartphone pointed at them compared to a more traditional camera?
The actors did find it different. I think if we had used a more traditional scripted process, then it could have been stranger, but because we developed the film through improvs in pre production, they were used to being filmed on a phone and were quite good at blocking it out.
Some people on the crew thought it was wack for a day or so, but once we got in the swing of things, and got used to all the traditional film processes like slating and the call, it just became natural. It also meant the actors could do more takes because it was very simple to reset. I think I only used a tripod on a few shots. The rest was on a gimbal or hand held.

There still seems to be a lot of filmmakers within the industry who turn their noses up at smartphone filmmaking. Would you agree with this, and what has been your experience with telling cast and crew within the industry that you’re making a film using a smartphone?
Absolutely I think people turn their noses up at smartphones. But it’s just another tool. I’m such a fan of the Dogme movement. They just went and made films, so I would rather make films than worry what people think about me. Breaking the Waves and Festen won all kinds of awards and are amazing films. They were shot on handycams!

Can you tell us a bit about working with this terrific cast. Everyone is excellent here.
Most of the cast were graduates or had some kind of connection to an acting school in Melbourne called 16th St. Alex who plays the lead character Matt had done a bit of work, but the rest were mostly working on their first feature film. We were lucky to have Mirko Grillini, who has been on shows like Wanted and some of the Narnia films. He’s very experienced, and he plays the main antagonist in many ways, so he helped to set the tone.
I think the actors are all fantastic because they were allowed to work. We did (in most cases) six to eight months of improvisation to build the characters. When the time came to shoot, they knew their characters really well and they knew their relationships as deeply as a family would.

Now that you’ve had this experience of shooting a film on a smartphone, would you do it again, and would you encourage other filmmakers to give it a shot?
I already am in development on my next feature. I have a number of actors independently creating characters and am beginning to do some improvs in public. I just ordered the new iPhone 14. I’m very excited to explore the next story.
I would definitely encourage other filmmakers, especially young filmmakers, to just go out and shoot a film on their phone. It takes a lot of pressure off, and you can just go and do it. I learnt more from making a film on a smartphone than I ever would if I had just held out for someone to find my projects. And it gives you incredible control over the story. That’s how we will make great films, by not feeling we need to always fit to an audience profile, but make films about the things we see. I’m hoping for. Mobile New Wave!

What’s one immediate piece of advice you would give other filmmakers who are keen to shoot a film using a smartphone?
My main advice would be to test working with the phone camera as much as possible. If you want something to look nice, it takes a bit of experience with shooting in different circumstances, so test, test and test. Then grade the footage, look at it, and test some more. I did a lot of testing before shooting to know what I could and couldn’t get away with. If it was too dark, it looked awful, so it does need a certain amount of light.

One Punch is screening now via Demand Film.

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