Still from Roy Hollsdotter Live (2003; dir. Matthew Saville).

‘Radar: Matthew Saville’. Originally published in Inside Film magazine, August 2003.

Simon Sellars speaks with IF Award winner Matthew Saville, one of the shining stars of the year’s program of short features.

Roy Höllsdotter Live, Matthew Saville’s 52-minute “short feature”, was a hit at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. It has since bagged an AWGIE award (Best Original Television Screenplay) and two AFI nominations (Best Short Fiction Film and Best Editing in a Non-Feature Film – Geoff Hitchins). Before MIFF, Roy won a Dendy Award for Best Fiction Over 15 Minutes, as well as an Australian Cinematographers Society Golden Tripod (for the work of its DOP, Laszlo Baranyai). But for writer/director Saville, it’s the usual story: he hasn’t come out of nowhere, and he’s not an overnight success. He’s put in the hard yards and it’s paying off.

Saville moved to Melbourne from Adelaide 20 years ago. He can pinpoint the moment when he decided to study film at the VCA, “probably halfway through making an AV Jennings TV ad. I first studied graphic design and then went into advertising, doing lots of typography. I got sick of that, went to film school and when I came out I had these two things: film school and graphic design. So I started doing title sequences for kids’ TV.”

Saville still designs titles and recently worked on the series Bootleg and Worst Best Friends. He also writes and directs for Channel Ten’s comedy show, skitHOUSE, and enjoys the discipline of banging out 30 sketches a week.

“I like getting runs on the board. Even though it’s just a 90-second sketch and there’s no character arc and no subtext, there’s still a process you go through: pre-production, production and post-production. So you’re making 30 short films and none of them are art but it’s good practice. You can work on instinct a little: ‘we’re a bit behind schedule, so we’ll do this handheld’.”

Saville has been making shorts since his VCA days, but Roy Höllsdotter Live is the first longer-format production he’s attempted – even though the script has been kicking around since 1994. When Saville found himself on another film with Roy’s producer, Trevor Blainey, the project began to take shape.

“We were on this film set; Trevor was a production accountant and I was third AD. We were in the pub one night, crying into our beers that we wanted to be filmmakers when we grew up. Trevor said, ‘Put your money where your mouth is. If you think you’re such a good writer, show me your script’. I’m not so sure he actually liked it to begin with – he just saw this character Roy, and he knew this guy Darren Casey [who plays Roy], and it all developed from there, rather than some sort of cinematic epiphany.”

This exchange heralded Blainey’s new career as a producer, as well as jumpstarting an important phase in Saville’s development. Originally Roy was to have been a full-length feature, touted as one of the AFC-funded “million-dollar movies”. But then the money ran out after the first few films got up, the AFC weren’t doing features any more and Roy Höllsdotter Live was again on the backburner.

Enter SBS who, in partnership with the AFC, are developing a slew of 50-minute features with a view to feeding Australian drama into its programming schedule. The initiative also provides filmmakers with a chance to bridge the gap between short-film and feature-length production. Roy was among the initial crop, and Saville is already working on the script for his first feature – “a pretty big-budget film and a different kettle of fish: Roy was three major characters, four locations; this one’s something like 22 major characters and 40 locations”.

Despite its low budget, Roy is a smart-looking film, with Saville quick to lavish praise on his crew and Blainey in particular. “This was Trevor’s first film as producer but about his 30th as a professional, because he was working as a production accountant since the 1980s. He managed – out of favours and good will – to attract crew members we wouldn’t have attracted otherwise. You don’t see those names on a production of this budget. We were very fortunate.”

But there’s no danger of Saville resting on his laurels. He’s consistently developing new projects (he’s also working on an opera with his wife, composer Bryony Marks) and he has a realistic approach to the hype surrounding Roy.

“The way I’m contextualising it is that I’m really happy for the people who worked on the film. Most of them don’t work at rates commensurate with their experience, so the fact they get this recognition instead is really good. Roy is about friendship, so it’s important that I worked on it with friends. For me – and I think for everyone involved – the awards don’t rationalise why we made it. They’re wonderful, but for me the reward was just making the damn thing.”

Roy Höllsdotter Live is currently touring Australia and will be screened by SBS on 25 October.