Bad Virtue Productions doesn’t shy away from calling itself small. It’s simply a reality for the team of talented, thrifty filmmakers. With producers and specialists based around Australia – all with their own day jobs and other responsibilities – Bad Virtue Productions is driven not by strict commercial goals but the joy of sharing ideas and exploring their creative potential. The company is ambitious, but it aims to be realistic in its approach and what can be done within limited budgets.
Peter Cullen is a writer, producer and director with Bad Virtue Productions, and explains how the company was created with old friends, who all shared a passion for screen creation. For him, that passion struck early.
‘I had the opportunity to see Jurassic Park when it came out in cinemas, as a five-year old – not sure what my parents were thinking,’ Cullen says. ‘That was probably the first moment where I went, “Oh my god, this is magic, and people make this.”‘
Even since then, Cullen has sought out ways to pursue filmmaking – from family holiday videos, to studying at university, and working in the screen and television industry in Australia.
Since 2022, Bad Virtue Productions has mainly developed short films that tell unique stories, but its latest major project, Deadman’s Land, is its most ambitious yet: a full-length action-adventure film exploring the horrors of war, but through a surreal lens. It’s a quest story, Cullen says – in more ways than one.
Bad Virtue and Deadman’s Land – quick links
The creation of Australian-made film Deadman’s Land
The Bad Virtue Productions team had been primarily releasing its short films on YouTube. Pervitin (2024) charted the use of harmful stimulants in the second world war, and Despair (2023) also focused on the human toll of that war, achieving widespread acclaim on the platform, as well as high levels of engagement.
‘What’s good about YouTube is you can make your project, and then you’ve got the opportunity to get it out to as many people who are willing to watch it,’ Cullen says.
‘The cream always seems to rise to the top. Some of the stuff that’s made by filmmakers is just amazing, and you can see that with the millions of views they have … I think YouTube’s a great platform to say, “Hey, I’m trying to create something.”‘
Leaning into an audience on YouTube has also aided the financial stability of Bad Virtue Productions, with ‘a little bit of income’ helping to offset the production costs of future projects. As Cullen says, Deadman’s Land has been made on a very small budget of just over $30,000, with direct contributions from the crew – so anything helps.
‘We were making predominantly short films,’ Cullen explains. ‘I guess our business model was to make short films until we make something that’s really great, and then we’ll try to get funding, we’ll try to get investment, then we’ll make a feature once we’ve built our skills.’
What ended up happening was more complex, as the team found it ‘very difficult’ to secure funding once the idea of working on a larger film started percolating. They had experience on the short film festival circuit, but found return on investment difficult to obtain. They were also unable to secure funding through local screen bodies due to the highly competitive application process for this kind of support. It meant a change of plan.
‘We went, “Okay, well, if we’re going to make a short film for a festival and we don’t feel like we get the return on the investment for that, why don’t we just try to make our own feature on what we have access to?” And then we just went through that.’
Making the most of a tight budget
Together with his partner Nicola Cullen, a writer, assistant director and production manager, they went through every resource they had available from their prior short film work, including props, costumes, potential locations, talented friends, camera crew, drone crew and VFX artists – ‘everybody that we knew that could help bring it together,’ as Cullen says – and decided to just go ahead and make a feature.
‘[We decided] let’s just slowly chip away at it on weekends, on public holidays when we had chunks of time,’ he says, in an approach that mirrors how recent Australian film French Girls was made.
With a very limited budget to work with, it was all about making clever, tactical choices to ensure the film could be delivered to a high standard, with the compromises as invisible as possible.
That included making the most of their time shooting in Cullen’s stepfather’s factory, which was transformed into various sets while it was out of use over the Christmas period, and whenever else the space was available.
‘We were very resourceful,’ Cullen says. ‘We waited until we had the right story … and that we had the right assets to make it work. We knew that we’d have to get a bit creative and ask favours along the way.’
The thrifty approach meant the creation process took two years. It was all about using the resources they had when they could, working around changing life schedules, and dealing with an array of technical filming challenges – including corralling the schedules of 50 cast and 30 crew that ‘came in and out almost on rotation to fill spots’.
‘We had 12 locations, four custom sets, five sets that needed to be transported to locations … It just became so big,’ Cullen says. ‘When you’re doing a unit base, there’s seven marquees and gazebos, and two portaloos that we as producers are bringing in the day before, and setting up at two in the morning, and then rolling cameras at six.’
It was a mammoth task, and one Cullen admits might have been too ambitious for the funding they had available.
‘We put everything we had into this,’ Cullen says.
The realisation that they didn’t quite have the resources – time, hands, money – they really needed came about ‘three quarters of the way through the film’ and by that stage, it was more a matter of planning and learning those important lessons that could serve them well moving forward.
At that point, the team also got even thriftier with their budget, working harder to raise additional money to see the film through to release. That included offering paid show reels for local actors, with those looking to shoot professional reels able to hire the team’s sets, crew and camera equipment.
‘We did about 20 of them and charged money, just to be able to keep the production going.’
Rising costs, sneaky surprises and the harsh realities of filmmaking
The film’s financial challenges were also exacerbated by movements within the global economy, which impacted both the cost of living and the cost of essential film equipment. As Cullen says, the rising cost of data storage, driven largely by the AI industry, meant that even a simple storage device that previously cost $200 went up to around $900 during filming.
‘It wasn’t just that, it was everything else,’ Cullen says. ‘Even the price of the food that we were using on catering, it almost went up 30% across production. Sometimes you don’t think about that stuff when you start.’
ScreenHub: Anthony Frith on Mockbuster: ‘I had my cake and ate it too’
Deadman’s Land had a set budget allocated at its start, and logistics for the entire production became increasingly complex over its two-year run. As well as storage for film and food, fuel prices went up, and so did the pressures on all the crew and actors.
During filming, the Bad Virtue Productions team came to realise that perhaps Deadman’s Land would be ‘it’ for the team: that they’d been able to realise the dream of creating a feature film and grappled with the enormity of such a project, but that it might also be the end.
‘You never want to go backwards, right? … We hope that this film is successful enough to bring some of that money back, and maybe give us a little bit that we could go and do another of these,’ Cullen says.
But the team remains driven by the passion that shaped Deadman’s Land, and the desire to create. ‘It’s crazy what people – creative people – will do just to show that they have love for the art.’
Gathering support for Deadman’s Land
Deadman’s Land was recently aired during a special premiere that reportedly sold over 280 tickets, which the team was ‘over the moon’ about. The team’s next steps are more complicated, as they’re currently seeking distribution – a process that Cullen describes as being particularly difficult, and rarely talked about.
‘There seems to be two paths for someone in our position,’ Cullen says. ‘You try to get distribution, or you go through an aggregator, and they get the film on those [streaming] platforms for you. But they’re not going to do it for free. They expect to be paid, and it’s quite expensive. It’s quite a chunk of the budget … upwards of a quarter of the money that we spent to make the film, just to get it on a platform.’
As Cullen says, the team is used to the world of YouTube, where you can monetise individual views and get a slice of the advertising revenue. But charging money for people to watch a film, or having it on a streaming platform, is an entirely different beast.
It also comes with its own marketing and discoverability challenges, as films on these online platforms become ‘one of hundreds of thousands of films on there’.
‘You’ve got that conundrum of … we have to get it somewhere that people can see it, but then we still have to have money in order to market it, to send them to that site to see it. So it’s just more money.’
The plan for Bad Virtue Productions now is figuring out how to best apply their resources to get the most eyes on the film, whether that be through unique marketing tactics and word of mouth, or other ‘smart’ ways to show it to enough people, he says.
‘We know it’s not a massive film,’ Cullen says. ‘But we think it’s got a little bit of something for everyone.’
As the Deadman’s Land team continues to investigate new opportunities for the film, Cullen is most excited to see it ‘finding a home’ where people can better connect with it, and understand the film’s intentions.
‘It is different,’ he says. ‘It’s not a cookie cutter war film. We don’t even brand it as a war film. We call it an action-adventure because it is set in World War II, but its a quest film … I’m really excited to see what people think.’
‘There have been times in my life where … projects have started and people have dropped out. So, to actually get a 90-minute film finished to a standard that we’re all so excited about, with 400 VFX shots and 50 cast, 30 crew?
‘I’m so proud that we didn’t just pull the pin, because there are so many times where we had one day where it was 38 degrees and that’s the only day that we could get 30 actors to all commit. And that’s the thing. When everyone’s busy and they’ve got their schedules, you’re not getting them back. You’ve got that one chance.’
He adds, ‘We had monsoons, washed-out days, and we had locations fall out, and equipment break, and hard drives crash. So many times we could’ve just gone, “Ah, it’s no big deal. It’s just a little short. It’s just a little film. Don’t worry about it.” There’s so many times that we thought like that, but we were able to regain our composure and finish it.
‘I’ve just had a young son and he’s about to turn one. I think in a few years when he’s ready to watch the movie, it’ll be really cool for my wife and I to sit him down and go, “Hey, you know, when you’re mum was pregnant she made this movie and she’s in the film, pregnant.”
‘To be able to actually finish it, I think is what I’m most proud of.’
