By Ethan Benedicto
Directing a film and acting in it are challenging in their own ways, but doing both at the same time is worthy of renown and such is the case for 20-year-old Endeavour Hills local Tay Barrientos.
Her piece, titled ‘Liar’ won the Best Feature Film Award during SmartFone FlickFest 2024 which took place between 15 to 17 November, with the hour-long thriller filmed solely on her iPhone.
Combining well-placed elements of music, lighting, visuals, framing and most of all, acting, Tay was more than surprised when she was called onto the stage to accept her award.
“I didn’t realise I had won, I thought [the announcer] was just calling me up to the stage,” Tay said.
“I get up there and she hands me the trophy and I read it and it says, ‘Best Feature Film’; she hands me the mic and tells me to start my speech and I say, ‘what?’.
“But of course, I’m thankful and I feel great, it’s amazing to see all the hard work pay off.”
The film, which was first released in September, follows the journey of Mackenzie Belmonte, who tragically loses her brother after a car accident.
However, not all is as it seems; with the loss cutting deep despite the siblings’ shaky relationship, Mackenzie stumbles upon Harmony Love (played by Hayley Christine) and her brother Donovan Love (played by Bailey Christopher) who, on the same night, were also involved in an accident.
The film is packed with moments of grief and sorrow, but also resilience, mystery and suspense, where scenes of Tay battling through her emotions are aplenty.
Tay first attended a SmartFone FlickFest event in 2022, where she recalled being amazed at what the festival had to offer.
Little did she know that two years later she would be the one on the podium with the trophy clutched in her arms.
“I was really excited, I was still in shock,” Tay said.
“I feel like it didn’t hit me that we won until the next morning because I woke up in my hotel room and I went and checked that I still had the trophy, it was like a dream.”
From simply being in front of a camera to sometimes forgetting to press record, Tay said that the filming process “did get a bit difficult”.
“Especially the scenes where it’s obviously just me in there, me in the room, it was a little bit weird.
“I’d be talking to myself because there’s a lot of phone calls [in the movie], there’s no one reading me the lines, or the other characters’ lines, I kind of just had to say it in my head.”
Close shots also proved to be quite daunting at first, despite the final product delivering strong bouts of emotional intensity.
“It was weird to get those kinds of angles, I had to really hold my phone to my face, I had no tripod or anything,” Tay said.
“You know, having to do the scene, pretending that I’m on the phone, my hands up around somewhere else.
“I was holding the phone super close to my face, those were the scenes I definitely hated the most, I said to myself, this is not a good angle for me.”
The film took its first steps in February this year, but Tay hit some hurdles and progress halted for a few months when she found herself having little to no motivation to pick it up again.
“For a few months, I was just like, ‘I can’t’, and I didn’t want to do it anymore you know? I kind of gave up on it,” she said.
However, things changed when a spark of inspiration hit her after watching the movie ‘Missing’, especially the 2023 movie’s use of text messages and media.
“I changed the script a little bit, then I altered it, I also had to film some more scenes and redo them in June,” Tay said.
“From there I began editing and it was finished in September.”
Studying psychology and criminology, Tay’s expertise wasn’t necessarily in the field of media, yet fuelled by a clear vision and a headstrong attitude, all of her pieces fell into place.
“I had an idea in my head, and I would write the script while I was imagining it,” she said.
“I knew how I wanted each line delivered, so as we filmed, and because a lot of the scenes had me in it, I was kind of just bossing myself around in my head.”
The process of acquiring talent and filling in essential gaps such as music also proved to be a challenge, nevertheless, Tay remained resourceful, curating her own background melodies as well as sourcing key royalty-free music.
As for the talent and her co-stars, Tay got in touch with Hayley (Harmony Love), who she had met at a modelling event a few years prior.
From there, Bailey (Donovan Love) joined the team and told Tay that he was an aspiring actor, with Tay more than happy to provide him with a space to let loose his ambitions.
“For the characters and as I was writing, I made different random conversations that I would want in the film, even if I’m not going to use them.
“Donovan as a character, he wanted to be closed off and kind of creepy, and I knew I wanted Harmony to be one of those characters where you don’t know if you love her or hate her,” Tay said.
With a plot twist down the line, and considering that Tay has several alternate endings to ‘Liar’ completed and stored, there are plans of building herself up to more movies and “move away from my smartphone”.
“I feel like if I was to use professional lighting and cameras, I would want a team helping me, I don’t know if I could do it by myself, but I definitely want to do that eventually,” she said.
Over 40 awards across six categories were given during the event, with filmmakers, creatives and actors taking home prize packs worth in excess of $50,000.
As she savours her and her team’s award, Tay has a penchant for the directorial role, with any future projects seeing her possibly taking on a specific mantle.
