Melbourne based film production collective (and oh so much more) KROZM are Christopher Hill and Lachlan Dickie. Affectionately referred to as Geronimo and Jesuswind, their Myspace lists Chevy Chase, sea voyages and market food under influences; their relationship status is set to swinger and their mood, virginal. Oh, the irony.

Creative live wires, they’ve been busy constructing otherworldly stage designs and live visual sets for big name bands, dabbling in high-end surf cinema and securing representation with US heavy weights Mighty 8. They also boast an over-achieving back-log of distinct film clips: Cut Copy, Architecture In Helsinki, Sarah Blasko, Van She, Children Collide and the Midnight Juggernauts are just a few KROZM clients to date. The recent release of the Juggers 'Vital Signs', directed by KROZM, has taken the collective heart rate of music buffs sky high (mine included). Mereki Beach asks the inescapable question; are KROZM the epitome of cool?

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So...are you?

Maybe in an alternative universe... perhaps one where we ride gold segways down the boulevard high-fiving everyone we pass.

Surreal characters (usually sporting an alternative to the traditional human head) and non-linear narratives seem to play a part in most of your work, and I hate to get all 'Total Recall' on you, but there seems a certain 'futuristic' element running throughout. From where does this aesthetic spawn?

We definitely both grew up on a diet of science fiction and fantasy films so obviously those things are going to influence some of our aesthetic choices. I guess we are also both dreamers and optimists for the future, so when we put our heads together it's easy for us to just run with our imaginations to create worlds of our own. I think we like the idea that what we create has a more timeless feel to it. Not necessarily futuristic but an alternative to the past and present. There is also the fact that we are in 2010 'the year we make contact'. So from some perspectives we are actually living in the future.


Midnight Juggernauts - 'Vital Signs'

How important has 'who you know' versus 'what you know' been in your professional progression? And, how much shit did you have to do for free before you started being able to eat your profits, so to speak?

It's been a bit of both. In the beginning whilst still at university we made a bunch of video art, short films, short animations etc. A lot of our friends who saw our work were musicians so it was an obvious progression. They needed videos made for basically no money and we were looking for any excuse to make something. We've been lucky that the bands we began working with have had the same progression in terms of artistic choices. It definitely helps if what you know is similar to what the people you are working with know.

As for making money from music videos lets just say if we solely depended on them we would nourish ourselves entirely on carrots. However we do get bigger budgets than we used to but we usually just get overly excited and think up more elaborate ideas.

Did you always want to make music videos or is it the filmic form in general that excites you? If so, what other cinematic adventures can we hope to see from you boys in the future?

Again it's both. We both have always had a passion for music videos as we also come from musical backgrounds. But as directors obviously our ultimate goal lies in the feature film arena. Music videos are great as you generally have a lot of creative freedom and the short turnaround time means that you are constantly progressing onto new ideas. However we are often talking about feature film ideas and the itch is definitely growing. I am not sure what plans we have for the immediate future... but we'd definitely like to venture out into a more narrative direction.

Your clip for Jet's 'She's A Genius' was completely massacred by someone who obviously wasn't a genius. There is no question here, just commiserations.

Thanks, yeah every month we light a candle for that one. It's very strange because even Jet themselves dislike the 'massacred' version. Still not sure why some edit house trainee was allowed to mess with the edit of that one. All we can say is that sometimes the 90's MTV executives and band managers like to pull strings that they no longer know anything about.


Jet - 'She's A Genius'

There's a surprise moment with a dickie-knee-style replica of our bike riding character pushing past a security guard that always gives me a laugh though so it's not all bad. We've always wondered who directed that bit.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Yes, personally I've seen one. I wrote a short story about it for my narrative class at uni and to keep with the music video topic it actually features the video for Metallica's 'Enter Sandman'.

Happened when I was about 13 years old. My sister and I were staying at my fathers place. It was an old farm house on a huge property in rural NSW. Anyhow it was about 12:30 at night and I was sleeping on the floor in the lounge room. My sister was asleep on the couch behind me and my father had gone to bed about 30 minutes before. I was, of course, up [with] eyes glued to the latest videos on Rage. Anyhow I had just watched Metallica's 'Enter Sandman' and had switched off the TV feeling somewhat satisfied, I was lying there staring out the glass doors to the grassy hillsides surrounding. It was then that I spotted this glowing light appear over the crest of the hillside and then slowly make it's way down the hillside, somewhat like the glowing light alien at the start of Starman. It continued down the hill growing in size. I was hypnotized and before I knew what was happening the light had become a glowing orb which had somehow come right through the glass door and was hovering above me.

I can only describe it as a large clear glowing bubble surrounded by static blue electricity. I was petrified with fear and lay there trying to yell for my father. The sphere just hovered above as if staring at me. Finally I choked out some sort of yelp and the sphere shot off down the hallway and disappeared. My father, woken by my yelling, rushed into the room. I explained what had happened. Surprisingly he took me quite seriously and simply said 'Yes I know. That's nothing compared to what I have seen in this house." He then went to bed. The next morning he told me of the numerous strange shadowy spectres and glowing lights he had seen in the house. Apparently months later when my father spotted one of the shadowy spectres he plucked up the courage and simply said 'what do you want'. The spectre just said a name. My father than found out from the owner of the house that one of the previous tenants that had rented the house had hung himself in the house after his girlfriend had left him. The name the spectre had said was the girlfriend’s name. According to various ghost hunters and mystics the glowing sphere thing is the common description of spirits seen at haunted locations.

Now I'm just waiting to see an alien and a bunyip, then I can retire.

It's great when film is truly utilized as a medium and uses this advantage to create realities and worlds that only exist otherwise in dreams or, in your case, old farm houses. KROZM seems to do this well. Is this part of your creative philosophy/ ideology?

Definitely. That’s the basic premise of most art. We find a lot of ultra realistic hard ass gritty stuff completely boring, unless someone has a fantastical tale to tell which happens to be real. Generally Lachlan and I like to play with reality. We like to ask the question 'what if?'


Sarah Blasko - 'Bird On A Wire'

And how about artistic integrity... it seems you're doing pretty well in that department thus far, but the way you're headed, Fitty Cent's gonna be asking you to make him a clip with a Hollywood budget in no time at all. Do you guys have to like the project you're pitching for or do you accept that commercialism is just a part of the world we live in?

Artistic integrity is purely subjective. If 50 Cent asked us to make a video for him we'd say yes. Why not? We'd probably ask ourselves the question; What if 50 Cent is dressed as a teenage Japanese school girl and is riding a flying narwhal through the desert? Wonder if that would work as a music video for a mainstream hip-hop artist?

It definitely helps to like the music you’re making the video for, however we also like it when people give us complete artistic freedom. Sometimes these things don't come hand in hand.

Collectives seem to be all the rage these days, with groups like Collider and KROZM forging an independent path for up and coming creatives who don't want to be tied down by the man. Do you think we can expect more of this? And do you believe this means a positive expansion of creativity in film-land?

When we started out the Australian film industry seemed fairly barren and inhospitable. So we built ourselves a little campfire, called it Krozm and huddled around it for warmth. This has definitely allowed us to continue to develop our own voice and it's nice to discover that people have appreciated what we have managed to do on our own, with pretty much no support from the film industry around us. I think the very conservative film market in Australia is indeed expanding creatively and it seems that the only way this is happening is by people creating things independently.


Architecture in Helsinki - 'That Beep'

What does your workplace look like?

Laptop, desk, lamp, a row of hard drives, a bed, a shelf of books, a window, a pile of clothes on the floor. Or sometimes an armchair, a plasma screen, a pile of VHS tapes, a kitchen, a dining table, a scenic picture of some mountains, a fishtank and some indoor plants. From the outside it looks quite similar to the Epcot Centre.

It seems impossible to find images of you guys on the Interweb. Are you really that bashful or are you trying out that whole Daft Punk/Bloody Beetroots/Batman/Tuxedo Mask mysticism thing?

From the beginning we decided that Krozm would be an anonymous thing. Although we did take one press photo a few years ago which involved us dressing up in some home made costumes and posing in the park. Lucky you didn't find that one! There's probably some on-set photo's of us floating around on the net but I usually duck out of the way when someone's taking a photo on set.

Some people say Lachlan and I look like brothers. Others say Lachlan looks like Wes Anderson's younger brother and apparently I look like Chris Martin from Coldplay. Personally I fail to see the likeness though.

Mereki Beach

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For more Krozm check out their website or myspace.