Three years later, he returned to Uruguay to enroll in a Communications course at the Catholic University. Simultaneously, he started working for a production company, making TV Commercials. However, his first serious assignment was to coordinate the television coverage of a presidential campaign in Uruguay's 1989 election. The same year, one of his short films, made within the academic environment, was bought and shown nationally by Channel 10 of Montevideo.

In 1990 he quit his job and started writing his thesis about Film as a System, the General Systems Theory applied to film-making. Three-hundred pages later, he graduated and a Lecturer position was offered to him. Daniel spent three years putting his theoretical research into practice and making more and more short films with his students. The lack of an established professional film industry in Uruguay, finally brought him to Australia. He found work in the Pay-TV industry; first at an Italian-spoken channel and a couple of years later, he moved on to the movie channel where he still works as a producer. His latest achievement is a Promax Award, won with a trailer made for the Australian TV premiere of "The Thin Red Line". However, for a long time another project has kept him very busy: his self-penned, self-funded short film TWITCH, a dark comedy about sex trading, mutilation and quiz shows.

When and how was TWITCH conceived?

I wrote the first draft in 1995, that is five years ago. However, the idea started during my first year in Australia. From the information desk at Sydney’s airport, they sent me to Kings Cross, red light district and backpackers’ Mecca for cheap accommodation. I ended up staying for a whole year there where I started observing and interacting with the locals. It’s amazing the amount of information you can gather from people. As a filmmaker, I was particularly interested in the seedy side of the Cross, the street workers, the drug dealers, the scams; it wasn’t that difficult in the end to gain a clear idea of how things worked and to generate a few ideas as the base of what ended up as a short film.

But surely there’s a big distance between those ideas and the final product, considering TWITCH belongs to the fantasy genre. Can you elaborate?

Yes, you’re right, it is actually a cross-genre film. Even when overall it’s a dark comedy, it starts as a film noir and it gradually moves to the horror arena. It was a good opportunity to work with genres I like in a short amount of time. Even when you are in the fantasy domain, you need to set the story somewhere and it doesn’t need to be Mars; Kings Cross can be as good.

Did the script change much since its first draft?

Well, not really. Despite I ended up writing six or more drafts, all of them were meant to address minor issues related to the characters and the dialogue; the story was pretty much there since the beginning. That’s the way I work; I wouldn’t write a single line of dialogue if the plot is not defined. The title did change, it was originally called "Twist Of The Finger", which was a very accurate description of the film but a rather clumsy title.

What was people’s reaction to the script?

It was great, the film was made on the strength of the script. The cash budget required to make the film equals 50% of the total budget, the other missing 50% is representative of how much the cast and crew liked the project.

You even got well known names like Jessica Napier and Barry Crocker interested.

Yes, that was fantastic. We sent the script to four actresses, all of them more or less with the same experience Jessica has. I was surprised when I found out they were all interested. After that, it wasn’t necessarily a selection process but mainly timing that allowed us to work with Jessica and not the others. I would have loved to work with all of them. However, I am certainly very happy that in the end it turned out to be Jessica the one for the job. As for Barry Crocker, we were equally fortunate, though his role demanded one day of work only, which made things easier.

Was it difficult to work with well known actors?

Not at all. That’s something great about Australian actors, they are very down to earth. Sometimes it was probably difficult for them to fit this short film in their schedule. Jessica had just finished shooting "Cut" and the week after our shoot, she was due to start the rehearsals for "Angst"; so I guess it was a bit difficult for her to focus but she managed very well in the end. Barry Crocker was booked for a day’s work but by midday we had already shot all his lines plus extra footage, just in case. He’s a great professional and the film wouldn’t have been the same without him.

How did you discover John Condon?

We were looking for a young, fresh, naïve looking actor to play the lead, someone who would look out of place in Kings Cross. It was our production manager who knew someone like that. After a few meetings John became Dave, our hero from Wagga Wagga. He is certainly less experienced than the other actors but that same difference would play in favour of the film. We didn’t want him to have too many preconceptions about acting. Young local actors are not that familiar with genre cinema and after a couple of films, generally quirky "slice of life" comedies or dramas, they tend to acquire a sort of "hyper-naturalistic" style of acting. However, John, whose experience was performing in stage plays almost exclusively, had that extra quota of expressionism perfectly suitable for horror movies.

What about Paul Tassone? He plays a great pimp!

I knew Paul through a common friend; I had seen very little of his work but after meeting him, a year before TWITCH, I always kept him in mind. I wouldn’t say he’s a "method" actor but from all the actors involved in my film, he certainly comes the closest. He would go home and come back three days later to continue the shoot and it was obvious he kept thinking all the time about his character. He’s a very creative actor and if given enough freedom he can come with wonderful ideas. One of the best scenes of the film, his awakening in the bathtub, was something that wasn’t in the script and that we worked it out together.

Where did the shoot take place?

The Quiz Show scenes were shot at Metro Screen in Paddington. That was only one day of work shooting against a blue screen. Most of the film was shot in a tiny flat in Kings Cross; there is also a photographic sequence for the opening titles that was shot in the streets of Kings Cross. A good and economic way to show people overseas what the Cross looks like.

Why did you shoot the rest of the story in Kings Cross? Wouldn’t you’ve been more comfortable working in a more secluded neighbourhood?

Of course, particularly when you consider the size of the flat we used. However, Kings Cross is quite unique in a way; it has a seedy side which is quite visible but there are also expensive hotels, restaurants and people who have lived there for ages and have become almost immune to the dangers of the area. Ironically, this is well reflected on its architecture; among the tacky striptease clubs and the neon lights, there is an abundance of Art Deco buildings or what’s left of them, which produces an interesting contrast. I knew the actors had to get there, not before coming across drug addicts, prostitutes, etc. I wanted them to have a clear geographical and psychological idea of where they were for the whole duration of the shoot. It might seem a bit excessive for a dark comedy but I wanted them to take their performances seriously; this is the sort of film where the laughs originate from the bizarre situations and not from actors trying to be funny.

To what extent did the small space you had to work with alter your original plans?

To some extent but not a great deal. I would say that the size of the place altered my plans very little; I did change a few things but this was because we only discovered the flat a couple of days before shooting. Obviously the room we found differed a bit from the room I had in my mind when I wrote the script. However, I always had a tiny place in mind plus I’m used to work under those circumstances anyway.

Your film has a high amount of shots, was this part of the plan or a consequence of not being able to move the camera that much?

Oh, it was definitely part of the original plan. This is a story that revolves around the cutting of a dead body, that’s the reason why we did a high amount of shots, certainly high for an Australian independent short film. Sometimes, in the name of narrative economy and production costs, people tend to mistrust this kind of stylistic choice but I was determined to cut the time and space around the characters as much as I could without becoming annoying or turning the whole thing into a music video. This still requires continuity and therefore, a high number of shots.

Why were you so concerned about the shots cutting neatly one after the other? These days people accept jump-cuts within the same shot.

Yes, today that’s common but I still see it as the easy way out. It has become a bit of a cliché among arty student films. We had to keep a certain stylistic ingenuity subordinated to the characters, the plot and the genre. I take pride about the fact that it is a very involving film; I didn’t want to constantly remind the viewer that he or she was watching a film. Apart from that, even when the story is set in the present, I wanted to achieve an almost old-fashioned look, mainly to reflect Kings Cross. When people think of the Cross, they don’t think of today’s Kings Cross but the one a couple of decades ago. We looked for an Art Deco building and we were careful not to use digital special effects; for some crucial scenes we went as far as employing animatronics to allow everything be photographed optically and not digitally. Even when not crucial for the project, I think that was achieved as a bonus.

Was that the reason for shooting on film and not Digital Video?

Well, not the only reason. There was a much more pragmatic one. I wanted to finish TWITCH on film to have a print to send to most film festivals around the world. Some of them won’t even touch it if you haven’t got a print. We could have shot on DV and then transferred the whole thing onto film. However, even when Kine transfers have come a long way in the latest years, the good ones are still very expensive, making it as expensive as it is to post-produce the whole thing on film. We shot the Quiz Show segments on video to give it that authentic television look. However, we re-shot them on film from a TV-set to integrate them into the main story. Also the opening titles were composed from 35mm still photographs on Digital Betacam and then scanned onto film.

What sort of editing system did you use?

A Media 100.

A Media 100? Can you edit film on that?

Yes, you can. You can shoot at 25 frames per second to match the speed of PAL video and today I would recommend everyone to do this. However, to make things difficult, we shot at the standard film speed of 24 frames per second. In that case, the rushes have to be transferred to video at 24 frames per second. On tape, this creates a hybrid frame every second that makes up for the missing 25th frame. The speed on video becomes identical to the final one on film and therefore the audio remains in synch. You save 4% of film stock that way but you have to be aware that the material on tape is only good for off-lining, you won’t be able to broadcast that due to that hybrid frame. You’ll spend more on negative cutting and the final tape version for broadcasting will be done using a print and not the negative. The print has less detail and more contrast than the negative, unless you order a low contrast print, which will be good for transferring to tape only and not for film projection, so there go your savings. If you live in this part of the world and you don’t have access to a more sophisticated non-linear editing system, just shoot at 25 frames per second, it will make your life much easier; at least until High Definition TV is implemented, which I was told, will run at 24 frames per second.

Is there a "message" in TWITCH?

I guess the underlying message would be you cannot go down to Hell as a tourist; once you’re there, there’s no way back. Each character pays a price in the end that is more or less proportional to their sins. Most is left to the imagination of the viewer but I doubt he or she would come with a completely different conclusion. However, my intention was mainly to provoke viewers, play with their emotions a little bit, make them jump and make them laugh. It is also an "up yours" to the nineties, my way of saying goodbye to the dullest decade I happened to witness. Now, this is a personal motive, it is not something that comes across when you watch the film; except for its "politically incorrect" nature, which after films like "There’s Something About Mary" or series like "Southpark", it ends up being quite tame really.

Yet not a Government Funding Body’s favourite, I guess…

Believe it or not, we didn’t try all of them, so it would be unfair to generalize. However, I can assure you they either leave that stupid notion of political correctness behind or the Australian Cinema dies. Very sad indeed and very "Un-Australian" I must add.

So, what’s next?

Believe me, TWITCH is keeping me very busy. So far I have also taken care of the marketing and the festivals strategy. It might be a short film but once you’ve invested so much time and money, you have to keep going until the film pays off one way or another. As soon as I can put it to rest, I’ll start working on a Fantasy Thriller, an idea that has been haunting me for a decade or so; I won’t tell you much more than that but as you can see, I like to take my time with my projects.

Sydney, December 2000.