Vonderful Vellington Vampires

Yes, this is a write up on the premiere of Taika Wai­titi & Jer­maine Clem­ent’s new film What We Do In The Shad­ows.

Yes, this post is well after the actu­al Wel­ling­ton premiere BUT it’s not like there has­n’t been A LOT of cov­er­age of the film.

Wel­ling­ton, and the rest of the coun­try, has been pretty excited about this film con­sid­er­ing the pub­li­city for it, includ­ing the release of the offi­cial trail­er, only really kicked off just over a month ago. In fact one month ago the only people who really knew about the film were those involved in it OR those that keep a really close eye on over­seas film fest­ivals and knew that the film had already screened at the SXSW and Sund­ance film fest­ivals.

For those of you who have been liv­ing under a rock over the last month, and have not looked at a screen of any kind, here’s a wee burst of info to get you up to speed:

• The Offi­cial Trail­er
• The chan­ging of the Wel­ling­ton Air­port sign from Wel­ling­ton to Vel­ling­ton

• The Vam­pires Guide To Vel­ling­ton was part of a make of over of the Pos­it­ively Wel­ling­ton Tour­ism web­site where the vam­pires were front and centre. (and the out­takes from that video).
• The Deli­cious Necks you­tube chan­nel that has plenty of extra bits and pieces star­ring the vam­pires of the film.

The premiere was held at The Embassy and had a drip­pingly great red car­pet out for the even­ing

You could get your photo taken with the stars and, for me, the most import­ant thing: sample the spe­cially made beer from Tuatara Brew­ery: Deli­cious Neck.

Wel­ling­tons finest were out in force, many in vari­ous cos­tumed states, includ­ing Grant Robertson who looked very fetch­ing in his Drac­ula-esque cape. The theatre was packed – ver­ging on over flow­ing and every­one was obvi­ously in high spir­its because: how can you not be excited about being at a premiere of a film as fun as this.

Fol­low­ing the screen­ing, which had the audi­ence in hys­ter­ics, the stars all came out dressed up as the char­ac­ters they por­trayed and answered ques­tions, as part of a Q&A ses­sion, in char­ac­ter lead­ing to even more laughs:

• Q: Will there be a sequel? A: Vell, the dir­ect­ors could­n’t be here tonight and you vould have to ask them.
• Q: Where’s the after party? A: You should come back to our place, it’s per­fectly safe…
• Q: Who’s on the menu tonight? A: Vir­gins.….…… so Vel­ling­ton is safe, don’t vorry.

The film runs in a sim­il­ar way to how the Q&A did – free flow­ing, kinda off the cuff, loose but not out of con­trol. The act­ors obvi­ously work well togeth­er and really enjoy them­selves. I under­stand that the script was not seen by any of the act­ors and the dir­ect­ors simply gave scene set­tings and ideas and they act­ors worked with those.

I won’t go in to great detail about the film – briefly: this mock­u­ment­ary, fun­ded by the “New Zea­l­and Doc­u­ment­ary Board”, fol­lows the lives of three vam­pire flat­mates in Wel­ling­ton, and the inter­ac­tions and chal­lenges they face day to day in their home town. This isn’t a Vam­pires versus *insert oth­er myth­ic­al real creatures here*, it’s the story of a group of friends just deal­ing with whatever life throws at them.

Part of what I loved about the film is just how loc­al it is – it’s a bril­liant dis­play of Wel­ling­ton loc­a­tions with Cuba Street, Cour­tenay Place, The Big Kumara (RIP, if that’s your kinda thing/Good rid­dance from the rest of us), Boo­gie Won­der­land and the Rita Angus Retire­ment Vil­lage in Kil­birnie all make appear­ances.

I was slightly con­cerned that all the com­ic gems had been crammed into the trail­er, as that seems to be an ongo­ing issue for many com­edy movies, but the trail­er does­n’t even cov­er a frac­tion of the laughs. Well, I sup­pose it does lit­er­ally have a frac­tion of the laughs, but it’s a very small frac­tion.

What I’m say­ing is: There are a lot of laughs. So many I’ll be going to see it again.

So.…

Well done to the film makers and every­one involved in mak­ing it. I may or may not be one of those people*, I may or may not be on the cut­ting room floor.** I’m def­in­itely not bit­ter about it because it’s such an incred­ibly fun film!***

We’ve seen Taika Wai­titi on Twit­ter say that, not only is What We Do In The Shad­ows cur­rently #1 at the NZ box office but it had the highest NZ open­ing week­end of any self-dis­trib­uted film! Well done! You can even help pay for dis­tri­bu­tion of the film too – by drink­ing a Deli­cious Neck you are help­ing fund the spread of a great Kiwi film.

Good Beer + Good movie = Great times!

*I was an extra and spent a night one Cuba street look­ing like a reg­u­lar dude

**I saw the scene I was filmed in but I was not in it

***Go and see it!!!!!