Cans

A comedy-horror short film where film cans get their revenge on the Film Laboratory workers in Colorfilm.

Filmmaker Roger Cowland handled the optical effects for 265 Australian feature films, including the Mad Max series, Babe  and Strictly Ballroom and also worked on many commercials, documentaries and short fiction films.

In 1985 Roger made the horror-comedy Cans (1985). Roger recalls: 'Cans evolved one night over a few beers with my partner, Barry McKnight, who wrote the intro. [It] contained a lot of stop-motion animation so it was very time consuming. [It was] shot after hours in the Colorfilm Optical Department, unknown to management. I was lucky that the guys in the department were keen to help. We had zero budget and the 16mm film we used was old short ends, and I made the hinged cans and bloody props at home. I remember the Karo syrup blood got a bit messy at times! Cans was going to be a longer movie with other scenes planned, but [that didn't eventuate] due to the loss of some key stop-motion shots due to fogged film stock.'