The V 48 hour Furious Film Making Competition is now going into its nationwide finals presentation and Hamilton group Guerilla Monkeys managed to win their way into the top 12 with their horror film “Sum of All Parts”, snatching up the Waikato awards for Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Music and Best Use of Prop. We moseyed up to one of the Guerilla Monkeys called Chris Tan and politely nudged him to answer some questions about the whole ordeal.

MM: What was/were your role(s) in the 48hr film?
CT: Mine was director/producer/editor/cinematography, Ben (Woollen) was music and sound, Ross (MacLeod) was script and actor.
Actually, easier list is here: www.xris.net.nz/films/sumofallparts/sumofallparts.html

What did you think of getting the “horror” genre?
Aight… At first I was like, “Aw crap, I hate horror films,” but they’re so much fun to make and we all just had a blast with it and at times, kinda going overboard with the blood and guts and everything. So yeah, I hate the new ‘torture porn’ horrors of today, but love the old school horrors and ours is kinda a bit of both in a way, but much more retarded.

Awesome. What genre would you have preferred to get?
Honestly, I wouldn’t know. There were 6 genres revealed and 6 hidden ’til the night. I was hoping we’d get one of last year’s genres of Unnecessary Sequel cause we could have had a lot of fun with that. But really, I don’t know. Musical is the one we avoid like the plague, but in retrospect, that would have been a lot of fun to do as well. I’m sweet with the fact we got horror.

Were the required incorporations much of a drag to put into your film? When I watched your film nothing really stuck out like a sore thumb, which generally happens in most 48hr films with those kinds of things…
Not really, we just made sure that the requirements both didn’t draw too much attention to themselves and were integral in some part to the actual film itself. Conveying Kerry Post is a perfectionist was definitely the hardest as we didn’t want to beat it over the head that that’s what he is, and with regret we had to reiterate it a bit through dialogue, but in doing so we tried to poke fun at him being more of a very imperfect perfectionist. Hopefully that was pulled off all right, but I guess that’s up to the viewer to decide.

Were you surprised to find that you had won the Waikato finals?
Totally. My first words were “FUCK OFF!” in a very surprised sense. Certainly didn’t sink in ’til way afterwards. Was quite overwhelmed and ran away for a bit but yeah, wasn’t really expecting to win. Always just do this competition for fun, you know.

Did you score a free camera out of it? I can’t remember what the prizes were.
Yeah, we got a camera for the cinematography prize, we’re also in the national run against the other cinematography winners to get an upgrade to and even bigger uber super camera, which I very much want, but doubt to win.

Oooh, neato. Well, your film does look pretty sharp. And has a choice soundtrack to boot, too.
Totally, the music is the one thing I’m most proud of and the only thing at the finals I was hoping we’d win and get hissy if we didn’t. Ben did much awesome.

So what’s your acceptance speech for if you do win?
“Fuck off!” Honestly I’m not even thinking that far. All I’m planning is how drunk I’ll be for the night and that’s about it.

Ahh, the life of a film maker…
(Laughs) I’m working on it.

All of the finalists films will be screened and voted for on Thursday 3rd July at 8.30pm on C4. For the moment, you can watch them here: vimeo.com/fortyeighthours2008/