Posted July 21, 2017 20:18:15

A zombie apocalypse in Alice Springs, bush cooking and a witch who hunts people in the outback are the themes of some of the films that screened in this year's Phoney Film Festival.

Sixteen young people in Central Australia used their mobile phones to make short films as part of the festival, which celebrates DIY movie-making.

The third annual Phoney Film Festival in Alice Springs on Thursday night was a celebration of high-tech, lo-fi filmmaking, open to young people aged 12 to 25.

There is only one hard and fast rule: all films must be shot on phones or tablets, event organiser Melanie Gunner said.

"I probably check my phone a thousand times a day, so I guess it makes sense that we would use our phones to make a movie," she said.

"There's a film about the zombie apocalypse in Alice Springs, bush cooking, and a witch who hunts people in the Outback. It's pretty random."

This year's festival was themed Youth Adventures in the Outdoors.

"We grew up with the outback as our backyard," Ms Gunner said.

"We want people to see the outback as we view it, as kids who grew up here."

The Bush Witch Project

Ms Gunner, along with her 16-year-old sister Annabelle, 20-year-old Kieren Tohi, and 19-year-old Sean Kidd placed second and won the people's choice award for their film The Bush Witch Project, which spoofed the 1999 horror classic The Blair Witch Project.

"We pretty much took a camera out to the bush and just recorded anything that happened, and turned it into a horror film," Mr Kidd said.

"Making films is hard … we shot five hours of film for a five-minute movie, editing it together on our laptop. But it was fun."

Horror hot-dog

It took just one afternoon for Kevin Jacob, 18, and River Pachulicz, 19, to make their film Hungry.

"Everyone was talking about the viral hotdog on Snapchat, so we decided to make a horror movie based on that," Mr Pachulicz said.

"The hot dog's mission is to turn everyone else in Alice Springs vegan," he said.

Mr Pachulicz is not a vegan but he said he does have severe food allergies.

"Directing, acting, editing, we didn't know how to do any of it. We learnt so much," Mr Jacob said.

'The hard part was the acting'

The Alice, made by brothers Dan and Mitch Donaldson, took home the top honour for best film.

It was shot on a tablet drone and features some breathtaking views of Alice Springs and the East and West MacDonnell Ranges.

Ms Gunner said young people had grown up with easily accessible technology which meant that filmmaking was not so foreign to them.

"I'm pretty used to shooting stuff on a mobile phone because I've grown up with it. The hard part was the acting," she said.

A judging panel voted on the best film but the audience voted for the People's Choice award on mobile phones.

And the prize? A trophy shaped like a gold mobile phone.

Topics: short-film, carnivals-and-festivals, alice-springs-0870