KEY POINTS:
You can't pull the wool over this nation's eyes. That's why the biggest challenge when making a film about killer sheep is making sheep look like sheep.
That's the key to ovine movie-making, says Jonathan King, writer-director of comedy-splatter film, Black Sheep. The difficulty, he says, is not
that you should never work with animals, but, making our woolly friends look authentic.
"We all know what sheep look like and we all know how they behave. So, if you see a puppet sheep that doesn't necessarily look alive, or a live sheep standing there looking tame when it's supposed to be chewing someone's face off, all those things are going to blow your illusions. That was a huge challenge. It's very easy writing the best killer sheep movie I could, but it's like, 'How do you shoot that?"'
Well, it helps when you've got Wellington's Weta Workshop on board, and more on that later. But first, what's this about killer ewes and blood-thirsty lambs?
Black Sheep has got it all - goodies, baddies, normal sheep, mutant sheep, weresheep and lots of gore. It's a film in the fine tradition of ... well, Peter Jackson's early efforts Bad Taste and Brain Dead, mostly.
Set on a remote hill-country station, the story starts with Henry Oldfield (who has a fear of sheep after a terrifying childhood experience) returning to his family's farm to sell his share of the land to older brother Angus. Henry doesn't know it yet but his brother is running a genetic-engineering programme on the property.
When two environmental activists accidentally release a mutant foetal lamb on to the farm it is a catalyst that turns the Oldfields' flock from grass-eating herbivores into flesh-eating machines.
It's up to Henry, along with carefree farmhand Tucker and hippy girl Experience, to stop evil Angus and the rabid sheep from taking over the beautiful New Zealand countryside.
As the film's tagline goes: "There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand and they're pissed off."
"It sets up a real world and straight away you see there are real characters and we're serious about the world you're being taken into," says King.
"But then it goes mad after that, because if sheep were tearing people's faces off in the first 30 seconds then it would get tiring very quickly.
"In a way it's a serious look at what would happen if this happened, and part of what happens is very funny. I always saw the funny and serious going hand in hand the whole way, and as it evolved we felt we had to deliver on what people know about cheesy sheep jokes and other grubby mythology, but there was always much more to it than that."
The first bit of human blood belongs to Gant (Oliver Driver), an eco-activist, who is attacked by the mutant foetal sheep we were talking about earlier. "Everybody screams with laughter and you know then the sort of film you're in for," he says, laughing.
The movie is a "dream come true" for King. He says that often during this interview. He's made adverts, music videos and short films, but the thought of audiences - especially New Zealand ones - seeing his first feature gets him frothing at the mouth almost as much as the mutant sheep in the movie.
"I was only ever doing [videos and ads] to make a feature film ... Not to knock anyone who's doing that, but you can do it for years and no one's going to come up and ask. 'Do you want to do a movie now?'
"You've got to want to do it. So, every day I got up wanting to make a movie and I was doing that stuff to make a living and to get experience."
King, who is the son of the late historian and author, Michael King (one character is seen reading his The Penguin History Of New Zealand), has always loved fantastical movies and horrors, like The Evil Dead and in particular Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead.
"Those were films made by guys who did it themselves, raised the money and made them during the weekends. I was building up a set of skills that if I had to make a film that way then I could. If I had a good enough script I could find the money and make it that way. I knew there was a great movie in that idea ... " The more he worked on it, the more layers appeared.
In the end he didn't have to fund it himself because Black Sheep was financed by the NZ Film Commission, NZ On Air and Korean company Daesung Group.
However, it does have a certain amount of DIY influence with the physical effects including lifelike prosthetic makeup, fake gore, and animatronic sheep, created by Weta.
"It partly did come down to budget because the big mega CGI [computer-generated imagery] films are expensive and we couldn't afford that," admits King, "but it helped shape an aesthetic which I think suits the film."
For Weta's Richard Taylor, the movie's effects designer and supervisor, Black Sheep took him back to his days when he worked with Peter Jackson on films like Meet the Feebles from 1989.
Even before he had read the Black Sheep script he was keen to work with King because "he's such an engaging and excitable person in a very low-key Kiwi way".
Plus, Taylor was excited by the fact King wanted to use old-school animatronics and physical effects to bring his mutant sheep to life.
"Jonathan wanted to do it in the style of all the monster movies that he loves and that's just music to us," says Taylor, laughing. "It's obviously a cost-effective approach in some cases, but the thing about animatronic puppetry is that the actor is physically able to play off it and in a film as visceral and messy as Black Sheep, that's not a bad thing. The opportunity to create humorous scenarios around mutated, and basically twisted little lambs, is hilarious and incredibly great fun."
The film doesn't solely rely on gore and horror to be funny either. You can't help but laugh when the sheep come thundering over the lip of the hill like woolly versions of the armies going into battle in The Lord of the Rings.
"The fact high technology can be used for comic relief is great," says Taylor.
There's a resurgence in the use of physical effects in movies, he says, because with the advancement in digital technology, anything is possible.
"So it now really comes down to personal taste and there are certain directors who are enjoying the hands-on quality of film-making utilising physical effects."
And Black Sheep is the perfect example: "You're putting character into creatures that are part of New Zealanders' everyday life and what's incredible about Black Sheep is no one's ever made it before. It's a joke that's been waiting to be told for the last 50 years."
Yet King has been careful not to make the film too hick and parochial so it will appeal to an overseas audience. He's been to film festivals in Canada, Spain and France and the response has been excellent, considering it is a tale about sheep. The film also won both the audience and jury prizes at the Gerardmer Film Festival in France last month.
"So they are getting it," he says. "You could make a film about sheep attacking people anywhere in the world but because of what we know about New Zealanders and sheep, New Zealand is the best place to do it. It meant I could have fun with New Zealandisms and put them in there and they weren't token because they were integral to the world of the film.
"For New Zealanders it's an affectionate laugh and not an earnest film about what it means to be a New Zealander. But for people overseas the more of that that's in there makes it unique for them. By playing with all this unique New Zealand stuff you're showing the audiences something they've never seen, and a fresh way into violence, scares and laughs.
"It would be very tired if it was just Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but sheep. And I was always very serious about making a silly movie.
"And I learnt so much about making movies," he says, still sounding chuffed, "and that's all I want to do ever again."
* Black Sheep, the debut feature by Jonathan King, in cinemas from next Thursday
