On the left, is a green door decorated with pictures of arts and film stills. The most conspicuous among the pictures is a small black and white film poster that reads Johnny Ghost. The word 'ghost' sends shiver down the spine. What could possibly lie behind that door?
Five minutes later, a woman of an average height walks down the corridor. Her smile eliminates the uncanny ambience. She's Donna McRae--an actor, a film director, a lecturer, and the occupant of the room behind the green door. The room has a surprisingly warm atmosphere in contrast with the corridor outside. The light exposes Donna's features: her hair is blonde with streaks of dark brown, eyes are pale blue and a smile that often blooms.
Her office is in a disarray state with boxes and papers here and there. She's in the process of moving out--her PhD result came out last night. "[The result was] great! I don't have to do anything. They loved it, they loved it. Phew!" Donna looks relieved. "[I'm] moving out from this office once I get the PhD."
Her figure, supported by her pleasant being, obscure what she's truly interested in. "Well, my PhD was about ghosts cinema. Ghosts in films. So I actually like ghost films," she smiles.
An Adelaide born actor, Donna began her performing arts education by joining an acting course. From that, she worked as an actor and was involved in a few short films and commercials.
 Donna has known from her childhood that she would be an actor someday. However, she never thought she would be a film director too. (Photo: Pingkan Isabella) |
“I met a director and we made a short film together,” she says. “So I just started writing [for film] and then I went to a couple of workshops … and [my friends] said ‘why don’t you directed yourself?’”
With that in mind, Donna did a postgraduate diploma of narrative filmmaking in Victorian College of the Arts. She came to Monash University afterwards to do Masters and soon enough, she finished her PhD degree in film.
During her free time, Donna watches as many films as she can; yet ghosts films indulge her most. “Those sort of films are the ones lived more up to the imagination. We don’t know whether it’s inside the character’s head or actually happening.”
“I don’t like blood,” she laughs. “I’m not sort of into there, but I’m interested in scary sort of ghostly presences and things like that which my whole PhD was about. That sort of like ghosts: if you think about memory and grief and longing.”
Her interest of ghosts and life experiences during Melbourne’s 1980s punk era has brought her the idea to write a film. Thus, Johnny Ghost was born.
Johnny Ghost tells a story of a musician who decides to move on from a terrible accident that happened in the past during the punk era, but is haunted by the ghosts of her past. The main character, Millicent—played by the AFI award-winning Anni Finsterer—was inspired from Miss Havisham, the character of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
Donna wants the film to “tapped into the other worldly state of [Millicent’s] mind.” As a result, she shot the film in black and white. “I want it to be in neither world—of we don’t know whether it’s real or it’s imagined. And I thought black and white would work that way.” Donna says black and white tone stresses the shadows and contrasts of objects. Also, she adds, it hides the low budget of the film.
Johnny Ghost is one of the reasons Donna went after the PhD scholarship—that is, to fund the film. During the filming process, she suppressed the film expense. Donna hired only five crews, cut down the shooting process into 10 days, used free locations (such as Monash campuses and her own flat) and edited the film herself. “It took me a year to edited it which obviously cut down all expense … It was a big process.”
However, the effort was paid off. Johnny Ghost won the best editing award at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival last December. It will join another underground film festival in Portugal this June.
What’s next?
“I’m in the initial stages of something new … it would take shape as a Western, but it’ll still have ghosts. So, ghostly Western,” she chuckles. “I want to … go for the scare. The real sort of shiver up.”
Donna holds her own philosophy of ghosts films, “If you leave something up to the viewer’s or the audience’s imagination, they’ll think of worst horrors than you could ever put them—because you always think all the horror, the things, inside of you.”
Yes. That happened not long ago before Donna revealed what is really behind the green door.
