Well, I'll Be Fracked
Enjoy this look behind-the-scenes from local actor Phil O’Brien on Fracketty Frack – a comedy sci-fi web series set in the Northern Territory.
IT STARTED LIKE most never-to-be forgotten adventures. With a phone call. Young filmmaking genius Nathaniel Kelly was on the line.
He’d received funding from Screen Territory to write his new web series, Fracketty Frack, and wanted me to play a conspiracy-theory-obsessed-stubborn-eccentric-old-bushy. Of course, I said yes.
Nathaniel is extremely talented and as a conspiracy-theory-obsessed-stubborn-eccentric-old-bushy, this felt like the role for me. But from day one, I learned that filming was more physically demanding than I could have imagined.
Nathaniel explained the first scene involved myself and Haylee Wright, another actor, sprinting full speed down this dirt track. Gulp.
“Was that full speed, Nathaniel?”
“Yes, sprint as fast as you two can go,” he said.
Well. Haylee is young, very athletic, and has legs like a brolga – I, on the other hand, have more of a wombat-like disposition.
‘Okay. Action!’ Yelled Nathaniel.
We took off. Haylee’s out front like Cathy Freeman about to win gold, and I’m trying to keep up like a dopey donkey.
‘Bloody hell,’ I was thinking, ‘I should have read the script more – I thought I was meant to be an old farmer… and here I am doing a Rambo!’
We did the sprint a few times so Nathaniel could capture all the angles. And the last take broke me. My lungs were a collapsed set of bagpipes. I’d done my knee, tore my groin and pulled a muscle in my back. I felt like a bloke that had just done the Kokoda Trail, albeit on all-fours.
“Ok Phil, your fight scene’s next,” yelled Nathaniel.
“Excuse me, fight scene?”
“Yeah, it’s going to go like this Phil. You’ll get dragged out of your chair and thrown on the concrete by this big bloke, then you have to roll around with him a bit, then this other bloke is going to choke you from behind with a bit of rope and then throw you back on the concrete. Then they’re both going to jump on you and hand cuff you.”
After doing that scene four times, I was fracked.
Filming finally came to an end for the day and good old Phil ‘Action Jackson’ O’Brien staggered off into the night like a drunken sailor.
But I tell ya what, it’s been an incredible experience.
The team is awesome and the story line has more twists and turns than two pythons fighting over a trapped rat. Put May 1 in your diary people, because this web series is not to be missed.
Fracketty Frack Web Series Launch
WHEN FRI 1 MAY
INFO frackettyfrack.com | facebook.com/frackettyfrack
Photo: Phil O'Brien
