Matt Noonan, chief executive officer of Curious Film, has a very clear idea of his unfair advantage. Director, Taika Waititi, has won Pencils, Lions and a lot of other shiny metal things for Curious. He also wrote and directed the film that Curious co-produced, Hunt for the Wilderpeople. That film, released in cinemas last year, is the #1 New Zealand film of all time in NZ, the #1 New Zealand film in Australia and the all-time highest grossing film in New Zealand in 2016, triumping over Star Wars the Force Awakens, Dead Pool, Finding Dory and Batman vs Captain America. Waititi has wowed the world with his irreverent charm, humour and innate understanding of what puts bums on seats. Clearly, he also knows what puts success in agencies’ – and their clients’ – pockets.

Matt Noonan

But Noonan has brought someone else to Adfest. Curious, new director, Oliver Green co-wrote and directed Noonan’s Adfest presentation. It wowed the Adfest audience with its irreverent charm, humour and innate understanding of what puts bums on seats. As an ex-adman, it’s pretty likely that Green also knows what puts success in agencies’ – and their clients’ – pockets.

Awarded ad creative, Oliver Green, joins Curious Film’s director roster

So Noonan introduced himself as a film nerd who got into the only career that a kid born with “an adult’s head on a child’s body”, could have. He spent his childhood fantasising about himself in great movie scenes. “Even though I looked like a bizarre and poorly photoshopped monster, I didn’t let it stop me from having a normal childhood,” he said. Clearly he didn’t.

“Ever since I was a hideous and disfigured child suffering the loneliness of adult cranial syndrome I’ve loved films and wanted to make them. So when my body caught up to my face and head I decided that was exactly what I was going to do.”

What he did has turned out rather well. “We’ve been in existence for over a decade. We’ve won production company of the year a good few times. We made some great pieces of work and we’ve made some work that wasn’t so great. And I’m lucky enough to still love what I do even though I’ve been doing it since Jesus had a pet Dinosaur.”

Noonan was living and working in London when ads were important and iconic. “They were talked about. These ads were tent poles of our culture and regularly made it into mainstream conversation. At the same time, in film, VHS video cheapies and nasties were standard fare and TV was unwatchable, so often the ads were the best thing on TV. At least once in every ad break there was something funny, moving or cool on the TV.

“And of course TV was the only game in town because the Internet was still coal powered and when you used it made a noise like a fax machine being roughly taken from behind by an angry fox. And there was nothing much online except for puzzles for nerds and only one porno picture.”

But now? Whoa!!!

It took Green and Noonan 31 days to write their presentation because everything everywhere is so entertaining now. “The Internet should just change its name to the Distractacon 2000,” Noonan reckons.

“The competition for our content isn’t a show about an evil billionaire date rapist with tiny hands who uses Russian spies to become the boss of the world and take human civilisation to the brink of destruction.

“It’s an actual evil billionaire date rapist with tiny hands who uses Russian spies to become the boss of the world  and take human civilisation to the brink of destruction.”

We’re at the point where making content that competes with reality is almost impossible. So what’s the secret to creating content?

“Fuck knows,” Noonan stated in big black words on a bright yellow screen. Clearly Green knows how to grab his audience’s attention.

But you see, Curious reckons it actually has another unfair advantage. “Lately we’ve been making feature films.”

Curious got into films 10 years ago and produced short films that screened in competitions at Cannes Film Festival, Sundance, Hong Kong and New York. The company also got into distribution, acquiring the rights for films that won in competitions – even an Oscar.

Curious knows more than an observers’ amount of what it takes to make entertainment – people pay to see.

Curious Film: “fittest, meanest and most focussed” wins a share 7 New Zealand Film Awards

That makes the job of making entertainment people pay to not see (think about that for a moment), a whole lot easier.

And Noonan has five rules for doing that.

Rule-ish #1: Surround yourself with great people. (Like Waititi & Green, presumably)

Rule-ish #2: Take the baton. Making any film is a like a relay. Production’s job is to be always ready to take the baton.

“We know that by the time we get to talk to creatives about an idea, it’s been through a lot of ‘discussion’ and ‘learnings’ and that it’s hard to keep the energy up. At this point what the idea needs is new energy, ideas and in-creative risks.

“What’s an in-creative risk? It’s about understanding the idea’s limits and what it’s been through to get to this point and then adding energy and executing hard within them.

Rule-ish #3: Stop over thinking and under feeling. “Serve the audience first, the idea second the product third and then the strategy. Or to put it another way –  It’s only funny of someone laughs.”

Rule-ish #4: Do less. “This is a weird thing for a production company to say – but I think we should all be trying to make less. “We’ll never keep up with the meme culture of disposable posts. Real life is too good at producing these. Our future has to be to regain control of the conversation through the creation of cultural highlights, and not fall into the trap of doing a lot of small essentially disposable pieces.” Don’t make 100 things for $10,000 each, make 1 great thing for $1m.

Rule-ish #5: Only have 3 rules. People can’t remember more than three things at a time.

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