Barking Mouse has spent most of 2019 working with the University of Technology social impact unit on a short documentary that follows the team’s world-first social impact measurement toolbox. The documentary follows the story of 25-year not-for-profit, Sydney Street Choir and the profound impact the organisation has had on the lives of disadvantaged people in […]

Before I begin, I’ll flag this as under ‘food for thought’. It’s a complex topic, and I’d very much like to address it more in future. But for now, let’s take a brief look at The Unlikeables. Warning: contains spoilers for Breaking Bad, There Will Be Blood and Nightcrawler. I’ve often heard the comment “I […]

During the masterful opening scene of The Social Network Rooney Mara’s Erica Albright tells Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg that, “just because something’s trite doesn’t make it any less true.” When it comes to our creative endeavours I tend to find, more often that not, she’s right. Our creativity is a journey. Yup. It sounds like […]

It’s that time of year. We all quiet down and look forward to whatever it is we spend our holidays doing. It’s also a time we tend to reflect on what our year was like. For us it was crazy. We started with Ruff Sleepers, then booked a nation-wide TVC and photography campaign. We’ve had […]

During my time at university I often bit off more than I could chew when it came to my projects. I attended what is now Western Sydney University at the burgeoning media campus. It was still coming together at an institutional level, so there was an element of getting away with murder when it came […]

  Back when I was six and seven years old I was a dinosaur nut. Pretty common, but I was pretty nerdy about it. I got a weekly magazine, watched every movie possible with dinosaurs and had a generous amount of dinosaur toys. The toys were great, but overwhelmingly the films showed monsters. Still, I […]

What’s The Scratch? You’re reading it! It’s the Barking Mouse blog, where we discuss our industry, creativity and the nitty gritty of creating content — whether it’s narrative, commercial, corporate or internal. The blog will be back as schedule next week, but we wanted to put out a notice saying it has a new home […]

Back in 2014 I wrote and directed Rustling, which was a short intended to work with no dialogue and, hopefully, no exposition. The objective was to rely instead on other cinematic tools — performance, cinematography, sound design, costume, editing — to connect the audience to a particular emotion. In this case anxiety. It’s the only […]

In the middle of 2017 we shot Staying the Night. It was a year-long journey to take it from page to screen, beginning with a simple script meeting with the writer, Alex Beauman. Alex brought Staying the Night to me to help develop the script – this snowballed into the gift and responsibility of being […]

Creativity is a weird thing. It comes to everyone in different ways at different times, and it can be a process to anticipate when and where it will happen until a pattern emerges. And then there’s those for whom this isn’t an issue. It is for me, so I’ll speak from my experience. I’ve definitely […]

  Film, television and media production is, at the end of the day, an industry. And like any industry there’s waste. Some unavoidable, but a lot of it is unnecessary. Many houses have switched to digital only paperwork and the like, and that is something we’re making a part of our rebrand. Further, we’ll be […]

  One of the more common things I’ve heard about film is how sound is the ‘second most important’ aspect of filmmaking. I’ve always found that to be an odd thing to say. In my favourite Tony Scott film, Crimson Tide, a radio technician getting a signal is all that can stop a nuclear holocaust […]

  Before I begin, I’ll state the obvious: a series of blog posts can’t cover the breadth nor depth of this topic, so I’m going to look at bits and bobs in a series of posts. There’s a thousand moving parts being a short-form director, millions when working long-form, but one constant is the importance […]

Back in 2016 we headed over to LA WebFest, where we had some nominations for the first season of our online series A Shared House. While there we met two dead-set legends — being as Aussie as possible here — in the forms of Luke Goodall and Marc Gallagher. They do sketch comedy and a […]

In 2018 we have the largest audiences ever at our disposal, yet it can still be hard to get our content in front of the right people. The Internet has brought the democratisation of media in one way, and a mess of noise in another. We can all make and post content, but there is so […]

We’re changing names. We’re growing, we’re ambitious and we’re excited. Later this month we’ll be relaunching as Barking Mouse™, following the premiere of our latest short film Staying the Night at AACTA-accredited Byron Bay Film Festival. The change has been a long time coming – we’ve been developing the change since January. When we started Hustle the […]

Shooting at Wayward Beer Co. to produce a 30s spot highlighting the lack of television commercials promoting beer for women? A thousand times yes. It was a serious challenge. The brand is a bar, beer and upon spending some time there you’ll appreciate it’s also a feeling. Corny, but it’s true. It’s an incredibly relaxed […]

When we first met with the Ruff Sleepers team it became apparent, quickly, that the issues facing their new not-for-profit endeavour were far more complex than I had initially understood; people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness, need services for their pets. It’s not often you’re provided with an opportunity to subvert opinions […]