‘It has been bizarre’: Brisbane filmmaker in demand in Hollywood after Oscar nomination

His 11-minute animated film – made in his mother’s loungeroom – earned Lachlan Pendragon an Oscar nomination. Now the young filmmaker has exciting Hollywood news.

Lachlan Pendragon. Picture: Tara Croser

Lachlan Pendragon doesn’t have “people”. He doesn’t have a team. A publicist, a minder, a fixer, a driver. What he does have is a collapsible table from Bunnings, a shoebox full of tiny figures, some craft foam, some embroidery thread and a very big imagination. Big enough to take him all the way to the Oscars.

All the way from this small room in his home in Regents Park, Logan, to the famous Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. All the way, on March 12 this year, to take his place on the red carpet alongside Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Because Pendragon’s 11 minute, stop motion, animated short with the long title – An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It – garnered a Best Animated Short nomination at this year’s Academy Awards.

Lachlan Pendragon with the characters from his Oscar nominated animation. Picture: Tara Croser

It’s a remarkable achievement for a student film (Pendragon made it while studying animation at Brisbane’s Griffith University)
and even more unusual for a stop motion short, the somewhat niche genre generally not an Oscar contender.

But Pendragon’s story of hapless office worker Neil (also voiced by Pendragon) realising all is not what it seems at the company where he works as a telemarketer proved to be the little film that could, chugging its way through the film festival circuit to arrive at Hollywood’s “night of nights”.

All Pendragon, 27, had to do was figure out how to get there. From his mother’s loungeroom in Regents Park, where he wrote, directed and animated his short (the collapsible table is currently folded away in the corner of the kitchen) a still slightly bemused Pendragon tells his lockdown fable for the ages.

“I made it here over about 10 months during Covid, and I made it as part of my higher degree at Griffith University, which meant that everything I did had to be justified through an academic concept,” he says.

“That was really my focus when I made it; I didn’t think for a minute it was going to take me to the Oscars.”

And when it did, Pendragon didn’t quite know how he was going to get there. Enter Screen Queensland, Screen Australia, his mates, his university and his family who made sure Pendragon would be there on the night to hear his name among the nominees, an event he describes as “surreal” – much like the film that got him there.

An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It has what Pendragon calls a “ridiculously meta” storyline, one which sees Neil toiling away in his office job, and slowly realising that he is in an animation.

Lachlan Pendragon and mum Melinda attend the 95th Annual Academy Awards on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California. Picture: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

Specifically, Pendragon’s animation – at one stage Pendragon’s (relatively) giant hand reaches into the set to curl its fingers around Neil and move him. Much of the action is viewed through a camera monitor, the set is visible on the collapsible table, and the effect on the viewer is both inclusive and unsettling.

In the vein of a Truman Show, or Westworld, the clever animation is both a homage to the old-fashioned toil of handmade, stop motion animation in a world of CG wizardry, and a Kafkaesque comment on challenging the status quo. When the Ostrich makes his appearance in the office (“I liked the idea of having something completely out of place in this setting”) he tells Neil: “Question everything, young man, the world is not what it seems.” But here, in this loungeroom, Pendragon’s animation world feels very real, with the tools of his stop motion craft on shelves and boxes, nestled in trays of miniature faces, limbs and clay figures. Pendragon takes out a shoebox and opens its lid to reveal the Oscar-nominated Ostrich itself. Wrapped in bubble wrap beside one of the Neils (Pendragon made six).

“I researched the charm of stop motion, the materials and the textiles you hand make, or sew, in a world of computer-generated integration and technology,” Pendragon says.

He holds up one of the Neils, turns him around in his hand. “So I had to make six of him because he’s in every shot – that’s embroidery thread on his head for hair, and I had to sew all his shirts directly on his torso because his head is too big to fit a shirt over it.”

Is he a skilled tailor? “No,” Pendragon laughs. “There was a lot of trial and error, I think each miniature white shirt took me about three days.”

Such is the work of the stop motion animator, creating a miniature reality that requires precision – and patience. On what Pendragon describes as a “very good day”, a “high five kind of day”, he would capture just five seconds of usable film.

“On average you are making about a minute of film a month. So you have the puppet, you take a photo, you move it, you might need about 20 different mouth shapes, matching which mouth to which face as it opens and closes. And you have to be so careful with the set, nothing can move so you have to make sure everything is tacked down.”

How did I get here? Picture: Tara Croser

And so, over 10 long months in 2021, and with encouragement from his university supervisors Dr Peter Moyes, head of the Griffith School of Animation, and Louise Harvey, Head of Technical Direction, the film painstakingly came to life.

Pendragon and Griffith University began to enter it in festivals, word of its quirky charm began to spread, and Pendragon was invited to show it at the Melbourne Film Festival, where it won Best Australian Short Film, making it eligible for submission to the Oscars and so, Pendragon smiles, “the madness began”.

Pendragon was at home, by himself, at about 2am, when he learnt his film was nominated for an Oscar. He didn’t want to wake anyone in his family up, so it wasn’t until later that morning he sent his mother a text.

“I watched the nominations being announced on a live stream, and they ask you to record it, but to hear your name being read aloud – and in my case the very long title – felt just crazy, just surreal and then I just had this moment of thinking ‘So, it looks like I’m going to the Oscars’.”

And when he did go, it proved more surreal than a movie about an Ostrich delivering truth bombs to office drones.

“It is quite insane,” Pendragon notes about the Oscars ceremony, and the lead-up to it. “They start closing down the street to erect this huge marquee about a week beforehand. They shut off the streets surrounding it, and in the lead up you are allotted a time to arrive. It was quite tricky to get there with all the shut-off streets, so we ended up just walking there from where we were staying. It was quite funny there because we ended up joining this parade of really well-dressed walkers coming out of hotels and also going there.”

A scene from Lachlan Pendragon’s animation.

Pendragon said he had to show his QR security code (sent to him by organisers) at every corner until he arrived at the numbered bay he had been assigned and where nominees are usually met by their team – their manager, their PR representative, or someone from their studio, or production house. But Pendragon had none of these, so instead he was met by an Oscars representative, who showed him the ropes of the red carpet.

“Basically, they have your name and your film written on a piece of paper and they move you along the line of press to see if anyone wants to talk to you,” Pendragon chuckles. “With me it was kind of ‘anyone, anyone?’ Not a lot of people showed a lot of interest.” But red carpet veteran and Australian television stalwart Sonia Kruger saved the day, calling Pendragon over for a long and lively chat.
“I was pretty happy to see her,” he confides.

Once inside, Pendragon says nominees are shown to their seats; his, he cheerily notes, “waaay up the back”, until his category was close to being announced.

“All the production people are at the back, and big stars at the front, but when it’s your film’s turn they move you down the front. And then, suddenly you’re there. I remember looking down the row near me and there’s Steven Spielberg and off to the side there was Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman waiting to go back to their seats, and then I look up and there’s Lady Gaga performing.

“For a young guy from Logan with a little animation film, it was pretty amazing.”

Pendragon’s film didn’t win on the night – that honour went to the British short The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, and it didn’t matter. Pendragon truly was just happy to be nominated. And his mother, Melinda, who he took as his “plus one” on the night, was happy for him.

Lachlan Pendragon. Picture: Tara Croser

“So, I took my mum to the Oscars,” Pendragon smiles. “Because she let me take over her loungeroom for the entire 10 months I was making my film, and had to move everything out of the way, but also because she has always supported me. She’s very much a follow your heart, follow your passions, go for your dream sort of parent, and animation is not the world’s most secure or lucrative profession, but she’s never been a ‘go and get a proper job’ sort of parent.

“She’s supported me through my Bachelor of Animation, then my Honours and my higher degree research doctorate of visual art, so I was really happy to be able to take her.”

Was Melinda Pendragon fazed by the galaxy of stars surrounding her?

“Not at all,” Pendragon says. “She’s a teacher’s aide working with special needs children so that’s her world, and that’s who she cares about – although she did say to me at one stage, ‘Look where we are’.”

It might also be prescient to look where Lachlan Pendragon is going, because an Oscar nomination means all sorts of studio doors open, and all sorts of collaborations and offers are on the (non-collapsible) table.

“I have had Zoom meetings with people who would normally be very hard to get to, and it has been bizarre having people you have looked up to your whole life suddenly talking to you about future collaborations, but I’m trying to just take my time and think carefully about what is next. Right now, I’m just really happy to be home, happy to be with my family, and happy to go back to teaching at the film school.”

This year, Pendragon began a part-time job at Griffith, and he says one of the best things about his Oscar nomination is what it might mean for his students: “I think the nicest part for me is being able to really show them what is possible, what can happen to you from here.”

From a loungeroom in Logan, with very few resources, and no financial backing.

Just you, a table from Bunnings, some craft glue and your imagination – backing your story, backing yourself.