Scenes from _the little things.
Mark Phillips
Saturday, May 24, 2025
MOST of us will never get to float above Brunswick in a balloon, but thanks to local film maker and puppeteer Jeff Achtem, we can do the next best thing.
A sequence flying over Sydney Road and other streets in balloons is one of many highlights in Achtem’s new 10-minute Virtual Reality film, _the little things.
Using the voices of Merri-bek residents from more than 50 interviews conducted by Achtem earlier this year, the film explores the subject of hope in an increasingly anxious and turbulent world.
Achtem has painstakingly edited the interviews into scenes featuring animated puppets set to distinctive Brunswick backdrops, including a cobblestoned and graffiti-covered laneway, CERES and Duckett Street.
Found objects – including a pair of plaid trousers, a bath towel and a child’s lunch box – add to the film’s distinctive collage-like style.
The film has been made to be viewed through a VR headset as a fully immersive, 360 degree experience and will be “screening” at Coburg Library next Wednesday and Brunswick Library next Sunday.
_the little things combines Canadian-born Achtem’s puppeteering with film-making skills he learnt at university in Montreal more than two decades ago.
Achtem describes the film as both a love letter to the Merri-bek community and a reminder to take pleasure and draw hope from the little things in life.
“We are just blasted with issues that are so complex — [the] cost living, crisis, climate, you know, upending of the world, sort of rule of law and the global order that seems to have direct impacts in our lives, real swings in voting patterns.
“It is totally overwhelming … So I feel like I wanted to be reminded that there was hope out there, and I found that, and now I want to share that in a fun way.”
Achtem, who lives in Brunswick with his partner and two children and is the founder and director of Bunk Puppets, said _the little things grew out of a regional Victorian tour in 2023, where he combined short recorded interviews with live puppetry.
“On the last day of one of those projects, I stumbled on this question of hope,” he said.
“I was asking adults about kind of the state of the world … and the hope question kind of came up, and I was getting some interesting answers at the tail end of that project. So in a way, this project then became a vehicle to, I guess, further explore that.”
Backed with a grant from Arts Merri-bek, Achtem started with the interviews he recorded with total strangers he approached at libraries in Brunswick, Coburg and Glenroy in February and March, shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Also in the backdrop were floods and a cyclone, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, along with the imminent federal election.
He said he would “randomly grab” people and ask them what they were hopeful about.
“There were a few tears which is quite random and interesting and touching, when a stranger, someone you’ve never met, you just sort of grab in this moment where they’re perhaps feeling something, and they just sort of let it out,” Achtem said.
With two assistants, he then spent countless hours painstakingly designing, filming and editing every scene in a caravan he uses as a studio, bringing the interviews to life with shadow-like puppet figures.
The most complex scene to create was the balloons, which travel from Princes Hill to Fawkner above a map of Merri-bek that was specially designed for the film by Zoe Miller.
The scene was inspired by balloons Achtem would see flying over his home at dawn when he would wake early when his children were much younger.
Two more scenes from the film.
Despite the use of 360 degree technology, Achtem said he was determined the film would have a hand-made DIY feel and he avoided using Artificial Intelligence to produce any aspect of it.
_the little things is Achtem’s third project produced for a VR format, even though he has mixed feelings about the medium which is primarily used for video gaming.
“The live performances for me are still sort of the main game, but I am very curious to see how storytelling can exist in in this 360 degree space,” he said.
“VR is the delivery system, but it also did seem to lend itself nicely to a kind of a solitude. It’s a bit like, sort of swimming underwater or something. With the headphones on, you really have a feeling of you experience it very much alone.
“… I don’t know what kind of future VR has. I don’t know if we all need it in our homes, but it is a pretty quirky, fun thing, I think, if you’re at the library and someone throws this [headset] in your lap and says, ‘Hey, check out this little thing’.”
Achtem says he has lived in “an optimism bubble” for most of his adult life, and it was good to be reminded during the interviews he conducted that not everyone feels the same, which forced him to reassess some of his own beliefs. One of his collaborators even told him at one stage that he needed to give the film a slightly more sombre narrative than the one he had first drafted.
But he said he was impressed by the sincerity with which other people sought positives in life which ultimately reinforced his own sense of hope.
And he admits that the project might not have seen the light of day if he had not discovered there was hope in the community.
“I think it certainly gives me hope that there are people out there acknowledging difficulties, that they are still working in their daily life to improve the lives of themselves and the people around them, and that there’s a belief that trickle effect will empower and improve the lives of others.
“Maybe on the back of some of those interviews I had a bit of a moment of wondering if I was alone in a bit of an optimism bubble, if I’d created my own silo.
“And I think now I see that there are all sorts of flavours of hope as well. There’s all kinds of ways that people are doing the mental gymnastics to get to a place of hope.
“And I really enjoyed some of the reflections by some people who I don’t think normally would be called on for their opinions and reflections on something like this.”
Achtem recalls being told once that “hope is actually a responsibility”.
“That’s stuck with me. I mean, we’re not hopeful in front of our kids and our other friends’ kids out of some sort of giant scam. We’re doing it because that’s the job to do, that’s how we build the world.
“And I think I’ve been reminded of that, and that’s good for me.”
_the little things can be enjoyed by children, but the film’s main intended audience is adults.
Achtem’s focus for now has returned to live performance with an upcoming tour to Korea in September but he expects he will return to VR film making as an extra creative outlet.
To show the film as intended Achtem will bring 10 VR headsets and headphones to screenings at Coburg Library between 1-3pm on Wednesday, May 28, and Brunswick Library the same hours on Sunday, June 1. Previous screenings have already been held at both venues along with Glenroy Library.
Once the current season is over, _the little things will continue to be available on the Bunk Puppets website.
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