A trip, a missed handshake, going in for an uncomfortable hug, accidentally treading on someone’s toes, forgetting someone’s name, or having no idea how to pronounce it.

We’ve all been there when meeting or being introduced to someone we’ve never met before.

For filmmaker Branden Wittchen, his most uncomfortable experience came when he was first introduced to his future in-laws, who he felt were judging his career choices.

That particular moment led Wittchen to write his debut feature film, Meat Daddy, a creepy, tense and often hilarious black-and-white horror comedy.

The film follows young couple Rick (Nicolas Angelosanto) and Kristy (Madeline Armit), who are off to meet Kristy’s dad, Daddy (Chris Slater). When they arrive at Daddy’s small cattle property, things immediately go awry, and quickly turn into a surreal nightmare for Rick. When the weekend reaches its untimely end halfway through the film, Meat Daddy’s narrative is flipped on its head as the audience begins to experience the weekend from Daddy’s point of view.

While the film has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, Meat Daddy is also full of beautifully composed, uncomfortable moments that become even more disturbing as the film develops. The film features some of the most squeamish moments you’re likely to see in a cinema this year.

Branden Wittchen is an award-winning writer and director who admits he doesn’t shy away from confronting material. His films often fit into one of three categories: absurdist comedies, disturbing psychological thrillers, or dramatic slice-of-life stories.

“My films often draw heavily on my own experiences of growing up in the outback, where I have returned to shoot several films, including Roy, starring renowned Australian character actor Roy Billing, and At the End, starring Gyton Grantley,” says Wittchen.

Since graduating from film school in 2017, Wittchen’s career has also included directing music videos for clients including Tia Gostelow, winner of Triple J Unearthed High and a Queensland Music Award, and Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson (Australian Idol).

In this interview, Wittchen talks us through that awkward moment with his in-laws, casting his film with some of his closest friends, how he and his cast and crew created some of the film’s most bizarre moments, why he decided to shoot in black and white, and how he worked his way through the film’s more technically challenging moments.

Meat Daddy will screen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival on Saturday, 12 September. Details here. 

“Madeline Armit went to another level on this, and it really creeped people out.”

Interview by Matthew Eeles

You’ve said that Meat Daddy was inspired by your own encounter with your in-laws. Can you take us back to that time, and how it inspired this film?

Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a really good relationship with them now. [Laughs]. It was just a bit awkward when I met them, and that’s probably what came through. Meat Daddy originally started off as some art therapy. It was a couple of years after I finished film school, and I had this weekend where I was at this family event on this property with extended family and friends. And honestly, looking back on it, it was probably all in my head. I was dealing with a lot of insecurity about my career prospects. So I just felt like I was being criticised and ridiculed. Again, now realising it was probably all in my head, I just had all these terrible feelings in me. The best way to get it out was just to write a script. 

I wrote a short film version of Meat Daddy. It was essentially a shorter version of the first half of the feature. And that was good. That got these feelings out of me in what I hope was a healthy way. And eventually, over time, it turned into a feature film after some friends showed some interest in it, which I never thought would happen. I thought it was just this art therapy thing that I wrote. I met with this producer friend and I pitched him every idea that I’d ever written, and he showed little or no interest. Then I told him that I had this other weird thing. I told him about Meat Daddy and said, “That sounds freaking awesome. You need to turn that into a feature.” He really pushed it so I wrote the feature version of it.

So how long, all up, did it take to get this final version out there?

We filmed in April of ’24, and I think I wrote the short sometime in 2022, and then I wrote the feature over the school holidays between ’22 and ’23. So I had a first draft finished and we went from there. So it goes back to 2022.

Meat Daddy is your feature film debut following a series of short films and music videos. How prepared did you feel going into making your feature film?

Oh, it was a whole other kettle of fish. [Laughs]. Luckily, I have an awesome crew and had some people involved really early on, like my cinematographer, Guy Crofts, Damien Grealy, my producer, and Chris Slater, who plays Daddy. I’ve known Chris for more than 10 years now. So he was on really, really early, and they helped me. We all went through it together, and there was a lot of learning on this one. But making a lot of shorts, it does actually prepare you. You look back and you’re kind of like, “Oh yeah, I knew how to do this.” It’s just that you’re doing it for a longer amount of time and there’s way more prep. But certainly, we learnt a lot of things, I’ll say that.

Can you describe your passion for David Lynch and his films for me? Because I believe you have a David Lynch tattoo, is that right?

Yeah, I’ve got David Lynch’s face on my arm. It’s portrait accurate. The tattooist did an incredible job. He is such a huge inspiration to me. Him as an artist, him as a filmmaker, and also as a person. I love that he is the kindest human being that’s ever existed, and he makes the most bizarre and uncomfortable art. Some of his art looks like something a serial killer would do. And it seems like if he didn’t have art, and maybe if he didn’t have the meditation that he did as well, the transcendental meditation, I don’t know where his life would’ve gone, but it’s a good thing he has that art. When I watched Eraserhead for the first time, it blew my mind, and I think it changed who I was, which maybe sounds a little pretentious, but I really think it did.

Meat Daddy has a double narrative in that there is a midpoint pivot. I’m wondering if that’s what you had always intended for the film, and if not, when did you make that decision and why?

Was it what I always intended? I don’t know if it was, because the short film was just the first half, which is really going for that more disturbing, awkward feeling, and it is a little bit funny, but I think sometimes you’re watching it and you’re kind of like, “Am I meant to be laughing at that? Is that funny?” I think the whole thing’s funny, but I’m strange. So I think at first I really wanted it to be that the whole way. And then I started thinking about what does this look like from a different character’s point of view? So the first half is really from Rick’s point of view. And I thought, “Well, what does this look like from Daddy’s point of view?” And then that’s what became the second half. I thought that would be really interesting. And I didn’t really go into it with a lot of plans. I kind of let it go where it went. And in terms of inspirations, I love Yorgos Lanthimos’ films, especially the comedies. The Lobster, particularly. And that kind of a comedy was a big inspiration. And I don’t know if I was thinking about it at the time, but it definitely felt like that was the kind of thing that inspired it, whether subconsciously or consciously.

It happened naturally. And then I wasn’t even sure if it was funny or even what I would call a comedy. It’s still kind of this weird and awkward. I’m not really good with genres. I don’t really aim for genres very often, and if I did, I’d probably get it wrong most of the time. And then we did rehearsals with Nick and Chris, with Nick playing Rick/Mick, and I was just laughing a lot. We were all laughing and we’re like, “Oh right, this is really a comedy.” At least the second half is saying, “This is a comedy. That’s the genre of it.”

That brings me to my next question about your cast. The film is a three-hander, but with the narrative pivot, all three cast members essentially play different versions of the same people. They’re all very impressive. Can you talk to us about working with Madeline Armit, Nicolas Angelosanto and Chris Slater?

Like I said, I’ve known Chris for more than 10 years now. We went to film school together, and he’s not just an actor, but most people on the internet will know him as the dad from Cracker Milk. It’s like a YouTube channel that’s pretty viral.

I love Cracker Milk!

You know it?

I’m a big fan. Chris is so good in it.

He’s hilarious in that, but I’ve known Chris even longer than that. I’ve known him since before he ever acted. We went to film school together and he’s an incredible writer, way more talented than I am, and he’s an incredible documentarian too, and also an incredible actor. Just a triple-threat kind of guy.

I wrote the part thinking, “I hope to God Chris says yes and will play this part,” because it’s quite different to what he’s done prior. I mean, Cracker Milk goes surreal and it’s funny, but it is still a very different character for him. We spoke about those challenges and I wanted to push him a little bit too, and I’m so glad he was up for literally everything in there. And I think you know what I’m talking about. [Laughs].

Absolutely I do, yes.

Nick, I’ve known for quite a few years now. I made a short with him years ago. It was during COVID. Everything I’ve made, every short, every scripted thing that I’ve made since, I’ve cast Nick in it, and I wrote this part for him. I literally just called the character Rick/Mick. I changed a single letter. I’m like, “You’re playing this character for me, mate.” And he’s just awesome. He pushes things further, and he has so much fun on set, and he’s really a natural talent. It doesn’t even really look like he’s acting. And he did things like, there was a scene where he’s talking about the soil needing more salt in it, and he picked up a clump of dirt and shoved it in his mouth and ate it, and that was completely unscripted.

I did wonder about that.

Yeah. So he had to do the take multiple times, but the very first time he did it, I don’t know which take is actually in the edit. I can’t remember, maybe it’s the third. But yeah, he just picked up this huge chunk of dirt and we started laughing. I think that’s why we couldn’t use the original take, because me and Guy Crofts, the cinematographer, just started laughing. It was a huge chunk of dirt. So he’s great. And then Maddie came on a little bit late, actually. We had another person cast and she had to pull out for very valid reasons, and Maddie came on near the end. I’d never worked with her before, but she was incredible and she brought a lot to that character and really made the role creepy and funny and fun, and it was awesome. 

Meat Daddy is full to the brim of awkward and uncomfortable moments, but those moments are taken to another level when it becomes quite intimate between Chris and the younger cast. As the film’s director, how did you handle those moments between yourself and the cast?

So we didn’t dwell on them too much. We discussed what it would be and how it would be done, and I made sure that everyone was up for it. Some things, the cast themselves pushed further, like the bit where, I don’t think this is a huge spoiler, but there’s a scene, as you would know, where Mick and Dad kiss, so Nick and Slater kiss. And Nick kind of spun it on its head.

I think in the script, Dad was meant to be the, I guess you would say, the aggressor or the leader of the kiss, and Nick took it to this whole other level where he just punched his tongue all the way to the back of Chris’s throat, or tried to. I don’t know if he told Chris that. I hope so. But either way, they’re best mates and they have a lot of fun, and they had fun doing that. [Laughs].

There’s a scene in the film which has Madeline’s character interacting with the tree. Was this a language that you had made up? What was she saying?

No, I stole it. [Laughs]. So it’s called the Bagabi Incantation. There’s a fair bit of debate about what it means and what it’s used for, and even what language it is. A lot of researchers believe that it was used as a chant to communicate with Wiccan deities. It was also used in a 13th-century miracle play called Le Miracle de Théophile, where a character used it to invoke Satan. But it’s most likely a Basque language chant that’s been butchered over the years in terms of pronunciation and meaning, but was most likely used to rally the witches for slaughter or harvest work.

Madeline spent a lot of time rehearsing it. I was so impressed that she pulled it off so well. She might even still be able to do it now. She did it in one take. She’d found a recording of someone doing that specific Wiccan chant, because that chant has actually appeared in an old play, so she learned it like a song and she had it down perfectly. It was really creepy when we filmed it. A lot of the crew members and cast members were like, “This is creepy.”

That’s really interesting.

She went to another level on it and it just creeped people out.

Tell us about the property Meat Daddy was filmed on.

Yeah, so I originally wrote the script to be filmed on my in-laws’ property. They have a couple of cows and they have this big dead tree on the property. They have this big empty property. They have their house, and it’s really beautiful. And then there’s a whole backyard. It’s near the Toowoomba area. I told them, “You cannot chop that tree down. I’m going to put it in a film eventually.” I’d written everything around their property, but then the logistics of it didn’t really work. Having 17 people living on set, we would’ve had to camp in the shed. And with the weather in Southeast Queensland it became a bad idea.

So we went asking around, and then one of the crew members, Clay, who’s the location manager in the credits, did some camera assisting, told us his parents have this property. Luckily, his parents were cool to have us there. So their property isn’t a cattle property like it is in the script. They grow soy plants that are those dead-looking plants you can see in the film. So you kill them before you harvest them. So they were all dead at the time, which was just perfect. The cows in the film were filmed at Jake Doak’s parent’s place. Jake was our costume and production designer. His parents own a couple of cows on a little property that they have just outside Brisbane. We went there for a day, like three weeks before the main shoot, and just filmed the cow shots. And that was actually incredibly difficult. What they say about working with animals is 100 per cent true. [Laughs].

In what way?

Well, we messed up in that we overfed the cows at the start. So because they’re cows on this tiny property, they’re super friendly. They’re very much like pets, so you can get them to come over and eat. You get that really green grass that guinea pigs love. Lots of animals love it because it’s full of hydration. So they came over and we fed them way too much when we were getting all those point-of-view shots and after that they didn’t move much. We were meant to get a wide shot with them in the shot and a few other things but we couldn’t. So we had to do some really clever editing to make that scene actually work and seem like the cows were there the entire time.

Well, this is fascinating to learn about all this film magic that’s gone into this film. The young boy in the film with the mask, Luca Steele McLean, he’s incredible. He’s so impressive here, even though it is a brief and short role. He’s so good. You mentioned the challenges of working with animals. The other part of that is they say never work with children, but how was your experience working with him?

Oh, I no problem working with children. He was awesome. This was his first time acting on screen in any way. He’d done a couple of small stage plays and local community plays. We just put an open call out and the recording that he’d sent in was incredible. It was super creepy. He was in the script more, but we had a few problems where it rained and the whole tree area flooded, and we had to do some really clever rescheduling. We knew we had to get him into the film more and that’s when we came up with the family photo idea. I wish I’d have been able to include him more.

You mentioned the weather. This might seem like a bit of an odd question, but much of this film is shot outside. I’m wondering if the weather behaved for you, because the wind seemed to blow at just the right time during some of the more atmospheric moments in the film. Or did most of that just come down to good sound design?

Yeah, a lot of that came down to our sound department, Michael Monaco and Clay Schreiber, who assisted him. They’re incredible. Anyone that works in Brisbane on film, especially in the really indie world, knows Michael. He does everything. He’s an incredible talent. But the weather was amazing. We would get these beautiful clouds and overcast skies that would just naturally happen to make the shots look amazing, especially with our odd framing style that we have, where you’re just showing a lot more sky than you normally would. But it didn’t always behave. [Laughs]. Mother Nature shot us in the foot when it flooded the tree, and that’s when we freaked out the most. The tree was fully flooded. It was past my knees. I think it was past Guy’s knees, who’s a foot taller than me. He’s a giant of a man. And then within a few days, it completely disappeared. You couldn’t even tell that it had rained. You’d think it hadn’t rained for a month. It was incredible.

You just mentioned that odd framing style there, and it definitely is something that everyone who watches this film will pick up on. I kind of interpreted it as though everyone always had somewhere to run if they needed to, because there are a lot of open spaces within each shot. Can you talk us through those conversations and how you settled on that?

Your interpretation is part of the reason. I also wanted to make it feel like Rick was trapped. He was trapped in frames where he didn’t have room and they were uncomfortable. The idea is so that when you’re watching the film, especially in the first half, it just feels uncomfortable to look at. And then in the second half, to feel wrong. That’s what I was going for. Guy and I decided on that framing style really early on. We studied a couple of cinematographers and movies and TV shows that had done similar things. e looked at Łukasz Żal who shot Ida and Cold War for Paweł Pawlikowski. He brought that framing style into the mainstream. 

And obviously Mr. Robot too. I freaking love that show. And he also shot I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which is also quite an inspiration on the film. But particularly Ida and Cold War, we studied those, and he obviously uses it in a completely different way. They use that framing style to make a whole other thing. Obviously in Ida, there’s something going on implying some kind of deity, a God watching over. There’s a religious aspect to the framing style. Whereas we went for the uncomfortable route, which may be more what you see in Mr. Robot. We made a list of cinematography rules. I don’t know if we completely followed them, but we made a list. I remember the very first rule was no normal framings. Everything had to be framed in an unusual way. I don’t know if we 100 per cent achieved that. We had a really short filming time and were trying to shoot the whole thing in 14 and a half days, but it was what we were going for.

Did I hear somewhere along the way that there’s a colour version of this film?

Oh, God. I’ve never watched it all the way through in colour. I would probably rather die than release it in colour. I love black and white so much. I’ve had a few people ask me, why is it in black and white? And obviously, I mentioned Ida and Cold War in black and white. I mentioned Eraserhead in black and white. Most of my favourite movies are in black and white, but really, black and white feels like a dream to me. Black and white doesn’t exist to us humans except for on the screen. I wanted the movie to feel like a dream, and black and white helps do that. It also helps things feel a bit different and a bit odd and dark where you need it, and sometimes even silly where you need it. But colour, I would not want to release this in colour because we made the whole film knowing it was going to be black and white from the start. I don’t know if we wrote it down as a rule, but we’d already decided. Production design, costume design, everything was done for black and white.

But the movie in colour is really funny when it’s not meant to be and probably not funny when it is meant to be. So the different bedrooms in that house, one of the rooms is bright pink and one of them is bright yellow, one of them is baby blue, and the monk robes were a bright, silly red. A lot of it was really silly. When we were filming it, we had the monitor and it was in black and white, and what Guy was looking at through the camera was black and white. And you’d spend all day stareing at black and white. But then when you would look away from the monitor everything would pop. It would pop in probably the wrong ways. Every now and then I would switch the monitor to colour and this, “Ah, that colour’s horrible.”

How would you describe your overall experience making your first feature?

It was a lot of fun. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted to enjoy it. I had a short film that I’d made a few years ago that was a real miserable experience that made me nearly quit filmmaking. And I learned a lot from that, which was, I’m not making any money here off this. I’m working a whole other job full-time. I made a little bit of money off music videos, but it was nothing serious. It’s not enough to pay the bills. So I know I’m doing this for fun or pleasure and creative satisfaction, so I knew it had to be fun. Most of the people on set, we’d all gone to film school together. Not everyone, but a lot of us had. So it was a lot of friends hanging out.

In the afternoons, Michael, the sound designer, he would run D&D sessions, and we would play Magic: The Gathering. We’d play games of Commander, and there was a pool there that we’d swim in and drink a ridiculous amount of beer. So it was an incredible time. It was really sometimes challenging, but I like a challenge. I look for satisfaction, and I know that satisfaction requires challenge, but it was a good challenge. It was really incredible, especially the shoot.

Meat Daddy will screen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival on Saturday, 12 September. Details here. 

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