Patrick, a strange and lonely resident, lives in a mobile home at the back of an isolated caravan park. After a violent thunderstorm erupts, a mysterious young woman appears at his door, seeking shelter from the weather. The longer the night wears on and the more the young women discovers about Patrick, the more difficult she finds it to leave. Soon, she begins to question Patrick’s intentions, while Patrick begins to question his own grip on reality.
Directed by talented Adelaide duo Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen in their directorial debut, the film stars Brendan Rock and Jordan Cowan in a ‘nightmare come to life’ horror / thriller exploring a mirage of power dynamics, paranoia and psychological twists. YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME was awarded Best Feature Film at SXSW Sydney 2023 and was chosen as the only Australian film selected at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
Leading up to it’s theatrical release in Australia, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the directing duo, Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen about the films incredible sound design, bringing together a crew as first-time feature film directors, and the excitement surrounding Australian horror films like Talk To Me.
Nick: I had the opportunity to see the film at BIFF [Brisbane International Film Festival] last year, on a cinema screen, and I’m so glad your film is getting a theatrical release because it absolutely deserves it!
Indianna Bell: Thank you!
Josiah Allen: Oh, thank you so much!
Nick: Definitely one of the reasons for that is the incredible sound scape and design of the film. The rain, the score, and the way certain lines of dialogue are muffled out, make the sound of this film a character itself. What was the process like working with your sound team to bring that character to life?
Indianna Bell: We had an awesome sound designer, Duncan Campbell! And in the script, there was lots of sounds written in, but it was one of those things that just became a beast of its own when we got into post-production.
As we were editing, we realised how important it was to tell the story through the sound, and that there were so many things that we could convey through sound that would really help aid the tension.
So, when it got to the stage of working with Duncan, he just blew us away and he was up for the challenge! We basically just kept adding layers, and layers, and layers, and really experimenting with how far we could push it. Like I said, it became its own beast.
Josiah Allen: And we were so lucky that Duncan was game to just dive into the deep end with us, because it was a big challenge and a big risk for him to invest so much time in it.
With our short films, for their scale and budget, we’ve leaned really heavily by design into sound. And so, we knew going in, it would be the case for this as well. We had lots of conversations with our incredible cinematographer, Maxx Corkindale, who would say we have to brighten scenes because you can’t see the person walking through the frame, but how there’ll be sound there to create the feeling of it all. It was such a relief when those things started getting filled up! It was awesome.
Nick: It definitely feels like this production is the epitome of ‘it takes a village to make a film’. What was that experience like coming in as first time feature filmmakers, and trying to gain that trust from all the other departments based on the unique vision you had for the film?
Indianna Bell: We were really lucky because of the fact that we’ve made short films before. We met lots of people at university and through making short films. And also through watching other people’s local work in Adelaide! It was kind of a mishmash of some new people that we’d never worked with before, and old friends from university who had helped us on previous films.
Adelaide is small! Everyone knows everyone, and then the filmmaking community is even smaller! So, it’s quite a lovely place to make films because of the fact that everyone is just old friends getting together. And if you’re missing a certain crew member, someone will know someone who will call them in!
We were really, really lucky we had such a lovely crew. The fact that these guys, some of them had not been heads of departments before…
Josiah Allen: But they’d gone off and had been getting incredible experience.
Indianna Bell: Yeah! They just hadn’t had the chance to be, you know, head of department for a feature film before. It was an easy choice for us because we thought they were amazing. And they wanted to do it because they’d have a chance to show off their skills.
We’re so excited we got a great premiere, and festival release, and now cinema release because it’s a chance to for all of their hard work to be seen. We’re so appreciate of it.
Josiah Allen: The luckiest thing for us is, because we were filming something in this dark box on one location, we knew we’d all start to go a little crazy. But everyone was lovely. That was the big thing – everyone was amazingly talented and lovely. It was the best environment to be locked in a dark box filming!
Nick: I’m curious about the screenwriting process of this story, because having watched it twice, and without spoiling anything, once you know how it end, you watch the film through a different lens the second time around! What was the process of structuring the story like that? Were you just putting in little bits and pieces in randomly as you went along, or was it all quite deliberate with the foundation of the story?
Indianna Bell: I’m so happy you said that! That’s our favourite kinds of movies, the ones with rewatch ability. We wanted to make sure that it played for a first and only viewing, but also that it had a few bits and pieces in there if you were to rewatch the film!
I think [the process] was a bit of both. We got the foundation of the story down, then weaved a few bits and pieces, and all that. But then also storyboarding before we shot, so things not necessarily in the script, we found it was like, “What if we cut to a shot of that there?” That’d be really cool, not really thinking about it, but then that becomes another visual clue!
Then you start to develop a language for the film that changes from the script stage, all the way to the edit, and you keep weaving in as much as you can. Even in the sound, we were getting Brendan [Rock, Patrick] to record some stuff!
Most people won’t pick it up on a first viewing, maybe not even a second viewing, but we know it’s there and it makes feel confident in the film and in the vision.
Josiah Allen: As long as we have the answers! We try to do the best we can with making the initial viewing an engaging experience by just doing the best we can, that’s for the audience to decide.
Then we kind of committed to some of the ambiguity with other things. As long as we had the answers, we felt like some people would, if they wanted to, hunt for them and find them. It was a great process!
Nick: I want to wrap up by pointing out that the last few years for Australian genre filmmaking has been unreal! We have your film, Monolith, Birdeater, Talk to Me! All of these amazing genre films from first time filmmakers who are putting Australian filmmaking on the map! Does that excite you both, not just being a part of this new wave, but for what it means for your future as filmmakers too?
Indianna Bell: I love that!
Josiah Allen: It’s so exciting! It’s super inspiring. And hopefully, Australian audiences continue to come out and watch these things in cinemas and support them. More will get made, naturally, if people go and see them!
Indianna Bell: We watch so many films that usually come out of America, and wonder why can’t this totally be made in Australia? And we love all the traditional, sort of, Australian films with a ute, and a dog in the back, and all that. They’re great!
But Australia is such a huge country that breeds really interesting characters, locations, and potential stories that really lend themselves to horrors and thrillers. There’s such an untapped resource out there of really cool, niche stories that can be made on a relatively low budget, that could come out of Australia.
It’s really exciting, and we hope to be a part of that weave in the future!
Thank you to Indianna and Josiah for their time, and to Umbrella Entertainment and NixCO PR for organising the interview. You’ll Never Find Me is in Australian cinemas March 14.
