Aussie trio has a whale of time mocking Kiwis
By Josephine Asher
The creators of animation comedy Beached Az have proven that little fish can lure the big bites in film production.
Anthony MacFarlane, Jarod Green and Nick Boshier spent $16 on the first episode of the Beached Az series, which is about a whale who meets a curious sea gull, a nudist slug and a break dancing crab after becoming stranded on a beach in New Zealand.
That first episode attracted more than six million hits on YouTube. The three Sydney friends, all 29, went onto to create more than 20 episodes, a clothing range, an iPhone app and game as well as land a television distribution deal.
“So many people have really cool ideas and no one does them, they just talk about them. And that’s all we did until we said ‘let’s go and make them’,” says MacFarlane.
The collaboration began in 2008 when MacFarlane (seagull voice) and Boshier (whale voice) were sharing a house and running their separate video production businesses from their lounge room.
“When you know someone that well, you go off on tangents and no one else knows what the hell you’re talking about,” MacFarlane says.
MacFarlane and Boshier recorded their impromptu dialogue with a cheap handycam and then artist Green joined the project to create the characters. The animation was then posted on YouTube and Facebook.
None of the Sydney mates had been to New Zealand at the time but their exaggerated “beached ez bro” Kiwi accents went viral.
“The accents in Beached Az are over the top but it’s still pretty close to reality,” one YouTube user from New Zealand posted.
When Beached Az reached one million hits on YouTube the trio – now formally the Handsomity Institute – started to think about how to monetise the huge volumes of viewers.
While they did embrace non-traditional free file sharing they were keen to make money from their audience, MacFarlane says.
“We started looking at ways of making some cash off these people who were watching it, engaging with it and passing it on,” he says.
The trio decided to put their characters on t-shirts, cups and boxer shorts using an online service to create the merchandise. MacFarlane says all the guys had to do was upload graphics of the various characters.
Women’s clothing retailer Supré then jumped on board stocking and selling $1.4 million worth of Beached Az t-shirts creating its first men’s range in the process. The guys also created a game and an iPhone app.
“It was incredible to watch it explode,” MacFarlane says. “That’s when we went to the ABC and took it to the next level.”
All 21 one-minute episodes have aired on ABC1 and ABC2 and the complete collection on DVD will be available next month.
Greenpeace and a production company in New Zealand for The Apprentice (New Zealand) are among the many requests Handsomity Institute to use the Beached Az brand.
MacFarlane says evaluating the various options for the brand and commercial proposals has been tough.
“We get offers all the time from advertising companies. They’ve come in a bunch and it’s such a hard balance because cash is cash and if we don’t have cash we can’t keep doing what we love and we’d have to go back to our sh—y jobs,” MacFarlane says. “It’s definitely a business and we have to make business decisions.”
Cash has also meant better production values and the next 10 episodes will use more advanced 3D software and take about four months to complete but the collaborators don’t want to lose their original creative spontaneity.
“You can get so caught up in hoping you’re original that sometimes you lose what’s funny,” MacFarlane says.
“But if we’ve drunk too much coffee or doing whatever and we all laugh, that always works. We just have to go back to random and fun and if we giggle during a take that’s what makes it.”
Article from CareerOne, October 22, 2010.