Thomas Grainger

Has the boss bitten off more than she can chew? The Cupcake Bandit is a comedic short film created and produced by Thomas Grainger. Starring Helen Bath (Open Slather), this promising project needs your help to bring it to Tropfest 2017!

Helen is an uptight office manager on a mission to uncover the culprit responsible for her missing cupcake. One by one she interrogates her staff, convinced that each person has single handedly violated her personal space and taken what was rightfully hers.

Yet when the perpetrator is finally revealed, the surprise leaves everyone shocked, and Helen gagging...

Given that the location is rather simple, an office space, the production design focuses on playing with a vibrant, highly saturated and contrasting colour palatethat enhances the dark comical mood generated throughout the film. The contrast will assist in showcasing the dissonance on-screen between Helen and her subordinates.

The office hub/cubicles has been dressed, with photographs and trinkets, to give a sense of authenticity to the environment, and also to showcase the personality of the employees, adding another dimension to their characters.

(Helen’s Office Set - those posters were crafted, with love, by hand!)

A great deal of the film will be shot with the contrasting of a low angle shot from the workers' perspective, and a high angle shot from Helen's perspective as a means of playing up the 'tyrant' and 'superiority' persona that Helen exudes. In scenes between the coworkers, eye level medium shots will dominate the framing, placing the audience at the same level of the characters.

Production design, headed by production manager Emily Borghi (Red Christmas), and the film’s cinematic aesthetic, is greatly influenced by Wes Anderson’s use of vibrant colours, particularly in the films The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom.

The creation of The Cupcake Bandit is currently driven by passionate creatives, who are all up-and-coming and promising Australian screen professionals.

FAQs

1. How many cupcakes were used in making of the film?

Less than you would think! We used about 12 cupcakes in the film all up. The rest were eaten by the crew!

2. What did you shoot on?

We used a Blackmagic Ursa Mini equipped with  Canon CN-E 15.5-47MM T2.8L SP Wide-Angle and Canon CN-E 30-105MM T2.8 L SP Telephoto Lenses.

3. Is this film based on a true story?

No! However, I’m sure we can all relate to having that difficult boss who just seems so out of touch with reality that there’s no hope of getting across to them. Each of the characters in The Cupcake Bandit are sort of stereotypes or caricatures you’d expect to fill an office space. The film’s not meant to be serious or authentic at all. At the end of the day, it’s supposed to make you have a bit of a laugh!

Fun Facts

• Stacey Petersen, who plays the office vegan Annabelle, use to be a vegan. (She is now vegetarian.)
• The employees work for a PR firm: Pink Pineapple PR. The company logo can be seen throughout the film.

• The cupcakes in the film had more of a caramel flavour than a honey flavour.

• Kris Stanley, who plays Dianne, had to dye her hair grey for the film. She usually has pink hair. On the first day of shooting she went around shouting: "You’ve turned me into a tampon!".

• Hannah Bath, who plays Helen, had to eat seven cupcakes in the final film sequence. She doesn’t want to look at another cupcake any time soon.
• The film’s DOP was a last minute addition, who jumped onboard 3 days before shooting commenced!

Making a high quality film is never a cheap exercise, even when you’re on a tight budget like us! Your support will help us meet our minimum budget requirements in the respective departments:

Production: $1,800

1. Equipment: $1,300 – including cinematic lens hire for our Blackmagic Ursa Mini Camera, wireless director’s monitor, memory cards for the shoot. These are our ingredients for making the cupcake rise!

2. Production Design: $300 – we’re dressing a completely empty office floor and turning it into a funky PR office for our cast! This includes printing posters for our fake company in the film: Pink Pineapple PR! The cupcake’s got to look pretty in it’s environment after all!

3. Sustenance: $200 with a cast and crew reaching 20, we’ve got to feed these hungry people, or they’ll all be like Helen on the prowl for her missing cupcake!

Post Production: $850

1. Colour Grading: $250 – The film’s gotta look good. Without a decent colour grade our Canon Cine Lenses won’t be showcased to their full potential on-screen.

2. Sound Design: $250 – A film without good sound is like a cupcake without icing. The audience knows something’s missing and it’s not going to leave a warm, sweet taste!

3. Promotional: $350 – Apart from the $45 Tropfest entry, we’ve got our fabulous website, social media advertising campaign costs, and the goodies we’ll be sending out to you all!

Total costs: $2,650

That’s not to mention all the extras we’ve spent on petrol, lost income taking time off work, buying bits and pieces out of our own expenses. We’ve gone well over $3,000, but would like to make back as much as we can!

Oh boy, there’ve been many! First there’s the mammoth task of turning acompletely empty office space into a lively and convincing PR firm – hello production design challenge! This includes fitting the office out with fully functioning computers and monitors, personalising each work station, bringing in furniture and pot plants, and goodness knows what else... and all for within $300!

Due to confidentiality and security reasons, just landing an office space has been quite the effort!

Creating a high quality and hilarious short film for Tropfest means that the overall production value has to be top notch. We’re doing our best not to stint on equipment and including the right skilled people for the job, without it breaking the bank in the process and coming within a reasonable budget.

Having lost our original DOP and one of the producers for the film shoot, this has made the organisation a lot more of a challenge – but one that has only spurned us on to create a fantastic little film that you’re all going to be so glad that you backed when you see it on the big screen at Tropfest 2017!

The star of our film: the cupcake, needs to be hand-crafted to meet the description of the film: a ‘honey nut artesian cupcake’. Finding someone to make a whole batch of gourmet cupcakes isn’t the easiest task – but The Cupcake Factory (Drummoyne) has been our saving grace!

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