The film follows a music student trying to finish a university project who purchases an old synthesiser, against a shopkeeper’s wishes.
The festival success came as a shock to the five teenagers, who are in their second year studying film at Massey University in Wellington.
“We just simply didn’t think we would win because we were up against actual thought-out short films. I discounted the fact we could even have a possibility of winning,” Nixon said.
Nixon said the making of the film was “non-traditional” and kept to a low budget. The only actor was 19-year-old Downing, who also composed the music.
They improvised in most scenes and wanted to make the film “pretty hypnotic,” he said.
“We just had one actor and no car - we were just in the halls. We started writing and ended up with a film about a guy who takes an old keyboard home to finish his school music project. It ends up possessing him,” Nixon said.
He said the project was “pretty rough” but competition judges described it as “wonderfully weird”.
While Mckinley and Nixon had been making films together since childhood, after their success they decided to join forces with the other three filmmakers to form the collective Silver Window Productions.
The group had since made two short films and had just shot a third in Maketū.
Nixon said all their projects were self-funded and ideas for future projects were “never-ending”.
“We can just do whatever we want by ourselves. We are not getting paid and we own the stuff - so we can spend as much time as we want on it.”
His advice to other young filmmakers was “do it again and again” until you start to notice small improvements.
“It might seem like you don’t have enough time, gear or money. But you can get there if you just keep on getting better at the small things that don’t cost anything.”
Symphony of Possession was also named a Wellington City finalist in the 48 hours film competition.
