An original concept developed and produced by Mashup Pictures, Housemates is a light-hearted documentary series that shines a light on how Australians live, by barging in intriguing shared houses across Melbourne.
After a successful first season the program has grown from its ABC iview platform to TV broadcast episodes and a larger multiplatform component.
Housemates’ Director Rob Innes tells us more.
Can you talk us through the inception stages of the project?
House sharing is such a universal and relatable experience. It’s a topic that has become a frustrating and nervous one for many of us who are in the millennial age group so exploring this topic seemed a timely and natural idea. We knew of a few interesting share houses that each had their own story, and the first series came from these original houses. It grew into the finished documentary we have today.
Can you describe the filming process at such transient environments as shared houses?
As each story and house was different, we took a unique approach every time. We would do master interviews with key housemates, and then spend the rest of the time filming actuality and capturing real moments. Filming in a private house throws up many challenges and obstacles, and there’s a careful thin line we had to tread when filming in someone’s personal space for long periods of a time. There’s a lot of trust building between myself, the crew, and the housemates in the first day or so. We kept the crew to a minimum, with just myself, a camera operator and a sound recordist, so that we could manage the internal spaces and also not interrupt the real moments that were happening.
Did the changes to duration and broadcast platform affect the content of the show?
I had always imagined the episodes being 30 minutes from the beginning, so when Series 2 was commissioned and we moved from 13min iview episodes to half-hour ABC2 episodes, it felt really natural. Also, iview and ABC2 share the same target demographics for this sort of program, so the series’ voice and tone remained true to the first series. We see both series 1 and series 2 as one, so it was important to maintain a consistency across the two formats.
Will you be venturing to other formats and genres at your upcoming projects?
For now I’m focused on documentary and short-form scripted comedy. I would like to venture into feature docs as well but it’s all about finding the right project and story that speaks to that format. I’d like to continue to blur the lines of documentary formats and push the boundaries of what is meant by ‘documentary’.
Housemates S2 premieres 4 October on ABC2.