Jungleboys

Director – Trent O’Donnell

Lawrence Leung, intrepid skeptic and comic, investigates the unbelievable. It’s Mythbusters meets Ghostbusters as Lawrence embarks on a mind-bending quest to examine the irrational and the impossible.

Race Relations is an 8 part comedy documentary series created for the ABC. Despite as much preparation as possible, working with John Safran on Race Relations required a lot of improvised directing as each location brought unexpected challenges and opportunities. The series was shot in 12 countries including Togo, Israel, Palestine, The Netherlands, India and Japan. The series concludes in The Philippines with John being physically nailed to a cross. Nails go through his hands and feet.

This is confronting and difficult to watch – and yet it’s a comedy segment. John’s “cheery” cooking show delivery contrasts sharply with the gruesome reality of where our meat based food comes from. The segment belongs to a series of two pilots that were commissioned by the ABC but shelved for being to controversial.

This is a classic John Safran moment – turning the tables on Mormon door knockers – and doing it in Salt Lake City. In directing this piece, it was important to keep it honest – this wasn’t a set up, it was important to keep it real.

The Chaser team came up with the concept of sending up the classic British sitcom, “Are you being Served” as the world’s first single entendre comedy. As the director of the sketch, the key to fully unlocking the comic potential of the script was to absolutely nail the look, feel and performance characteristics of the original show.

Another great Chaser parody. From a directorial point of view it was a fun challenge to balance the surprise comic elements with a faithfulness to Ron Howard’s directing of The Da Vinci Code.

Everyone has put their foot in it at some point in their lives. Here, an awkward scenes plays out when a friend mishears his mate in a private conversation. The plan with this piece was to direct these talented comedic actors, in adlibbing their way through a script structure to find the little moments of comedy.

Every girl knows about that time of the year – that’s right, election time. The Chaser boys were out to lampoon the coalition on their immigration polices and what better way to do that than with cute girls on roller blades. Sticking to the classic conventions that make up tampon ads, this was a nice opportunity to work with actress Matilda Brown who delivered a subtle dead pan performance.

One of the sketches from a pilot we shot in late 2010, this piece finds Captain James Cook and Botanist Joseph Banks returning home to an unimpressed representative of the King. Starting with a broad script idea we ad libbed the dialogue in rehearsal with the actors and brought the best stuff to set. The guys were able to deliver these ideas and more on the day and it was a case of selecting the parts that worked best in the edit.