It’s a post-apocalyptic action-adventure, starring pandas. Only at Fantastic Fest. Actually, at Fantastic Fest and available online at Wastelanderpanda.com. Fantastic Fest screened six 10 minute episodes of the Australian web series “Wastelander Panda” as a movie and the team behind “Wastelander Panda” was in Austin for the screenings. Wastelander Panda: Exile tells the story of a panda named Isaac and his family’s exile from The Tribe of Legion and their battles with human tribes, all while wearing articulated panda heads. Director Victoria Cocks and producer Kirsty Stark took us through their unique vision, which you can see for yourself online.
CraveOnline: Are the panda heads fully animatronic?
Victoria Cocks: No, so the mouth movement is a latch that connects under the actors’ lips, so when they open their mouth, the panda mouth opens but they have to over-exaggerate quite a lot to compensate for the size increase in jaw compared to theirs. The eyes move via an attachment at the back. All the lip moving and blinks of the eyes, most of the eye movement was done in post by our VFX guys.
How hot was it out in the outback with panda heads on?
Victoria Cocks: This time it wasn’t as hot. It was becoming winter. Last time we filmed out there was summer, so it was boring. This time around it was quite wet and a lot more moodier which ended up looking better if you ask me. Having clouds in the sky instead of hot summer sun.
Is it important that the pandas just be characters in this world? There’s no joke about, “Oh, they’re pandas.”
Victoria Cocks: Yeah, there’s a whole history of pandas growing up with humans. Then when the world started falling apart, pandas became more and more obsolete because they were the only tribe not killing one another to survive, whereas the humans did. So in this world, seeing a panda is something of a novelty because they’re rare, but it’s not unusual for an animal to walk and talk.
Where did the idea for post-apocalyptic pandas come from in the first place?
Victoria Cocks: The idea came from myself and Marcus [McKenzie] who plays Arcayus. I wanted to make my own world up because I was heavily influenced by a lot of video games. Using an animal was always something we wanted to do because it has a totally different mind. It’ll be cool to write from a different mindset to a human being’s. Why a panda? There’s no more reason than because it rhymed with Wastelander Panda. Then the more and more that we’ve done stuff about it, the more people have told us, “Did you know that Pandas are the most adaptable animals? Did you know that they are a symbol of peace in other cultures?” I think all this stuff is meant to be.
Which video games were you influenced by?
Victoria Cocks: Fallout 3, Borderlands, Rage, Red Dead Redemption and Resistance. Probably Resistance 2 and 3 were the games that influence a part of Panda.
What was the first web series of “Wastelander Panda” about?
Kirsty Stark: We’ve done three stages so far. The first was just a three minute prologue that we did to try and get the idea across to people because when we first started to pitch it, they would say, “Oh, so it’s an animation?” or “Oh, so it’s a comedy?” They didn’t really understand what we were trying to do, so we put that online just to get the tone across. And then we needed something to bridge between that and the larger series that we wanted to tell. So instead of doing a standalone story, we picked three elements from the overall story we’ve developed.
We did one that was the history of when Isaac and Rose meet for the first time. We did one 15 years later of when Arcayus and Rose first join together. Isaac dies after this series and adult Rose tracks Arcayus down in order to avenge Isaac’s death and go and track down his killers, so she joins up with Arcayus and that’s the main story that continues from this point on. Then we also did one that was to appeal to the online action fans, and that’s Akira, a giant bison, fighting Arcayus in a fire pit. They give different elements of the world and explore the scope that we were hoping to achieve with the over all series.
Is the plan to release this 60-minute piece as a feature?
Kirsty Stark: We think it works better as the six 10 minute episodes rather than one hour.
Victoria Cocks: This is six 10-minute episodes sewn together for festivals but it’d be better if people could see it as a webisode. As you can tell, the one hour is not paced like a feature but it’s paced for a web series. If you watch it you’ll probably understand the pacing a lot more.
Kirsty Stark: You can feel the music going up to a point where it wouldn’t necessarily in a feature film.
Victoria Cocks: We certainly wouldn’t write like that if we were writing a feature.
Is the three month jump then one of the act breaks?
Kirsty Stark: That’s the first episode break.
That sounds like it’s hardly as big a jump as the 15 years.
Kirsty Stark: The previous ones weren’t really designed to be watched continuously. They’re more as three separate films.
Was it fun coming up with panda booby traps?
Victoria Cocks: It’s fun working out how to kill people when you’ve got a force as big as a giant animal. It makes a little more sense.
Kirsty Stark: It is fun but also we had to work within a pretty tight budget so we couldn’t do everything we wanted stunt-wise, kill-wise. So we just went back to simple stuff which is brute strength over speed over fighting skills, things like that.
Do you direct and produce other things in Australia?
Kirsty Stark: Yeah, this is the only project we’ve worked on together at this stage. We also have done a game that’s in very early stages of development. That’s a long way off.
Victoria Cocks: This is probably the strongest thing that I work on as a director. Kirsty does producing for other things too. This is right now, I guess, our strongest thing together.
Kirsty Stark: And we both work in other areas of the film industry that we’ve come up through different departments to get to this point.
Victoria Cocks: Camera departments, things like that.
Kirsty Stark: But this is the first major project we have done as creators as opposed to assistants I guess.
What has the reaction at Fantastic Fest been so far?
Victoria Cocks: Fantastic Fest was definitely the correct audience for this. They seem really open and accepting of bizarre concepts without questioning them in a negative way. The general response we’ve had online is probably 97% people really like it. If anyone doesn’t, it’s usually because they can’t see through the panda thing which I would be more upset if they said it was poorly written or poorly directed or a poor concept. No one’s said that. It’s pretty much been, “I don’t get the panda thing.” You can’t really go anywhere with that. That just really tells you you’re just the wrong audience.
Kirsty Stark: It’s either that or it’s the tone. They go in expecting it to be a comedy or a spoof and it’s not. Then they can’t adjust their mindset to what it is.
Victoria Cocks: Some people have said, “I thought this would be for kids and I was offended that it wasn’t.” It’s kind of like, that’s not my fault. Watch the rating.
And if it’s at Fantastic Fest it’s not for kids, unless it’s their special Bugsy Malone screening.
Kirsty Stark: But the Fantastic Fest audience has been really amazing.
Victoria Cocks: I probably never want to show anything to another type of audience again. We feel really at home here.
What are your favorite post-apocalyptic movies?
Victoria Cocks: Escape from L.A., definitely The Road. I’m a huge fan of The Road. I think a lot of the bleakness in Panda is probably from reading that book and from the film itself.
Do you have to feel a national sense of pride for Mad Max?
Victoria Cocks: Yeah, we get compared a lot to Mad Max. The first time we ever put anything online everyone was just like, “Oh, it’s Mad Max with a panda.”
Kirsty Stark: I think that’s also because people don’t really have a massive repertoire of post-apocalyptic films so in Australia you get compared, but for the wrong reasons. Oh, you’re doing a post-apocalyptic film. Mad Max is post-apocalyptic. Are you trying to do Mad Max with a panda? It’s actually quite different.
And when people say Mad Max they mean The Road Warrior because the first one is quite different.
Kirsty Stark: Exactly.
If it makes you feel any better, I asked the director of The Rover the same thing.
Victoria Cocks: We definitely know what’s been done before us. I think we’d be closer to The Road than Mad Max in tone. Even just setting and stuff like that, it’s very bleak, it’s very sad. It’s more like The Road than anything else.
In Hollywood we talk a lot about the unfortunate lack of female directors. Is it a little better in Australia?
Victoria Cocks: I think from my experience in Adelaide there are a lot of women. Not a lot, but there’s a good handful and no one seems to treat them any different to the men. I probably haven’t directed enough to know whether there’s some kind of bias.
Kirsty Stark: Percentage-wise, in terms of the industry as a whole in Australia, it’s similar to here and it’s way down in women, but we’ve been lucky that we have some great role models and they’ve been really helpful and willing to give us advice when we need it.
Victoria Cocks: A lot of guys are the ones who taught me how to edit and how to shoot. I’ve been on a lot of sets where I’ve been fortunate enough that a very renowned gaffer would go, “Okay, this is how you block for a gaffer so I know what to do.” They’ve never treated me any different. That’s why I don’t really have any kind of want to be like, “Oh, I’m a woman filmmaker.” I just want to be known as a filmmaker.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
