Hugh Humphreys
After writing and directing the globally successful action film ‘Gabriel’ in 2007, Shane Abbess is back with the sci-fi thriller ‘Infini’.
Set in a futuristic dystopia, a team of search and rescue soldiers is sent to the ‘Infini’ colony to rescue Whit Carmichael (Daniel McPherson), the lone survivor of a mysterious biological catastrophe.
Hugh Humphreys caught up with the film’s star Daniel MacPherson, and asked about working with Hemsworth, sweating in a factory on set and why everyone in this film had a point to prove.
Hugh Humphreys: When preparing for this interview, I actually couldn’t believe that ‘Infini’ is only your second feature film.
Daniel MacPherson: Wow. [Pauses.] Yeah, you’re right, actually, I had to think about that! [laughs] I had done ’The Cup’, which I thought would lead to more and it kind of didn’t; and I’ve spent the last couple of years with my head down taking a little of a break out of Australia, with my head down in LA, focussing on my acting. And this was the first job after that self-imposed exile, and we shot this nearly 18 months ago now. It was a long process in post-production with visual effects on a tight budget. But personally I have been waiting for this one – because I just can’t wait for people to see it – for so long, and we can’t wait for our little beast of a baby to be unleashed on the world.
HH: When did you first get attached to it?
DM: The process of getting to day one on ‘Infini’ was in some ways a lot quicker than from wrap to release. I found out about the film in August 2013, only about eight weeks before we started filming. My manager sent me the script and I recognised Shane Abbess’s writing immediately, after having read another of his scripts, ‘7th Day’ about 12 months before that. That’s a film that’s been circulating around LA for awhile and being very close to being made a couple of times with various big budgets, and I fell in love with that script and I recognised Shane’s beautiful writing style.
HH: Did you know for sure it was him?
DM: Well, I emailed my manager straightaway and asked ‘is that the same guy as the other movie?’ and he said yeah, that’s Shane Abbess. And Shane makes no beef about the fact he really didn’t want to see Daniel Macpherson for this role! [laughs] But my manager fought very hard and Shane and I had a Skype conversation and we just instantly clicked. We Skyped for about two hours, and found out a lot about each other. We both grew up in similar areas in the south of Sydney, and we’re born four days apart, and we had mutual friends growing up, and we both had something to prove to ourselves and to everybody. He’d just moved back to Australia and was 90 percent of the way to making ‘Infini’, and we had a really good chat and I rang my manager and said I would do whatever it takes to get this role. So fast forward to three weeks later, I flew back to Sydney on the last day of auditions and was there at 11am.
HH: And away it went?
DM: Yep, away it went. I was in Sydney for eight hours and flew out again that night, and woke up in Adelaide the next morning with an offer for the film. So that was the beginning of the journey.
HH: With Shane having such a distinct style of writing and directing, what was it like shooting this film with such a tight budget, especially with those effects?
DM: We referred to that set as the pirate ship. Because in the way the film was funded, we were able to operate very independently, and everyone involved had a certain point to prove. Everyone was driven by a little bit of “fuck you”, you know? Me personally, trying to prove that I was capable of more than people expect; Shane and Brian were trying to prove they were exceptional filmmakers and that ‘Gabriel’ wasn’t a fluke, and everyone in there was to prove something. Kids straight out of AFTRS and film school; everyone had a point to prove. And that really infected everybody; for want of a better term. This was not on a big set in Fox Studios, but in a factory in Western Sydney in oppressive heat in the summer. Everyone embraced it and it just got more intense as the shoot went on, and that’s where you see the intensity on the screen, it really translates from the set.
HH: That’s quite a unique environment for a film set, isn’t it?
DM: It was a perfect storm and very hard to replicate that environment, because you can only ever do it for the first time once. And the hardest part was to go onto the next set and that was a huge adjustment – going from having a huge collaborative process with Shane and a great writer and composer like Brian, to then jump onto a US TV series where I’m a supporting role series regular in a massive-budget fantasy series [The Shannara Chronicles] that’s shot a lot on green screen. That was like chalk and cheese, it was a hard adjustment, that’s for sure!
HH: Had you worked with any of the cast before?
DM: The only person I’d worked with before was Luke Hemsworth, and that was his very first acting job, and my first job on ‘Neighbours’. He came to Erinsborough High as the drug dealer on the local football team! And 15 years had passed when were buddies from LA and Melbourne, and we’re since very good buddies, and similarly the entire cast – we’ve been through an experience that will forever bond us. And also with Luke, he was trying to prove that he’s not his brothers’ brother!
HH: The ‘other’ Hemsworth?
DM: Exactly, and I think he’s done that. And I think we also unlocked performances out of people, like Luke Ford.
HH: Oh, I think he’s great.
DM: I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that he’s the best actor of his generation, and if not the best, then one of, and when he was thrown into the casting mix, I was over the moon. And I knew an actor like Fordy would make everyone better. I knew he would make me better, and make a better film. And he was like a hand grenade in every scene that he was in. He was the first one who demanded more of everybody from about day three, and it set a precedent that the entire cast was able to call each other out when they didn’t believe in a performance, and Luke set that bar. And fast-forward over 10 weeks and we were just out for one-upmanship. And everything just grew and grew from week one onwards, and we were left with a film that nobody had anticipated upon reading the script, but we knew we were onto something special.
HH: What’s it like being in a film with a whole lot of Aussies but everyone’s using an accent from somewhere else?
DM: [laughs] I think it’s because all of us at some stage in our careers are living or have lived in America. And that was important because we’d all been there. And a lot of Aussie actors these days have, even just for pilot season, and they know what’s required as an actor to pull off that performance. So it wasn’t like we were just Aussies ‘bunging on’ an accent, we had all lived and worked there, and that’s part of the skill set these days, to be able to do an American accent.
HH: Were you much of a sci-fi fan before this film?
DM: Some of my favourite movies happen to be sci-fi, but I didn’t realise I was a sci-fi ‘fan’, until after getting involved with Shane and Brian [Cachia, composer and producer]. ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’ are some of my favourite films, they’re sci-fi films that are some of the most commercially successful films of all time. And something more contemporary like ‘Minority Report’, that’s one of my favourite films as well. But in terms of classic science fiction, Shane and Brian are true aficionados. I have only really dipped my toes into sci-fi.
HH: What’s the reception been like for ‘Infini’, at Brisbane Supanova, and the Gold Coast Film Festival?
DM: Because I’ve been very closely involved with the film along the entire edit process, post-production, scoring of the project, it was weird. When I first watched it at a family and friends screening, I was left in my seat silent for a couple of minutes and woke the next day thinking about the film. So when we first showed it to a true audience, I was worried if they were going to have the same experience that we who worked on the film had. And thankfully they did, and they got it. We had a Q&A straight afterwards and the questions they were asking were the right questions being asked. And I was so overjoyed. I love that the film really stays with you, and you really contemplate the questions and it isn’t instantly disposable.
HH: What would you say your focus is for what you want the next stage of your career to look like?
DM: I spent most of my 20s and early 30s just wanting to be busy, and I have been [laughs], and I’ve got a lovely lifestyle because of that. But ‘Infini’ taught me that I really want to be satisfied and challenged, and now I’m really enjoying being 100 percent focussed back on my acting. And I guess, looking back on it, because I was doing so much of everything, I was a jack of all trades but master of none. But now I’m back focussing on acting alone, I’m finding it much more satisfying. Coming from long term series television, I’m loving shorter projects where I can devote everything I’ve got for six to nine months and then move onto the next project, and I can’t tell you how satisfying that is. And that’s what I’d like to see for me, a good line-up of film and TV with more substance in what I do, and hopefully more feature films.
Infini will be available to rent or purchase on iTunes and other digital platforms on May 8.
