Angus Young is making a name for himself in Australia and no, it’s not as a lead guitarist for AC/DC. The New York Film Academy Sydney graduate recently won Best Overall Film at the Willoughby Shorts Film Festival for his film The Lemonade Theory. Young teamed up with fellow graduate Ethan Thomas, who was the film’s director of photography on the five day shoot.
The short begins with Young Mother Sophia (Kelly Robinson), who wakes up to what she expects to be a normal day, but quickly spirals out of control. Much to her alarm, there is a strange man (Peter McAllum) in the house with her and no matter where she looks, Sophia can’t find her daughter.
Told from the first point of view perspective, the film is essentially a ‘monster in the house’ thriller about a woman and an evil housekeeper who drugs her and steals her children. When you watch the film for a second time, having known the ending, Lemonade Theory is about the housekeeper sustaining love in the face of adversity.
“Lemonade Theory came about through a story my father told me about his grandfather,” said Young. “His father was a sufferer of dementia and believed that he was living in 1930. It’s a jilting paradox to think that someone can believe that, so I explored the idea a little deeper and wrote the story to work as a love story.”
At the moment, Young is producing and directing a few projects. One project is an animated series called Elliot, which is working on again with his very close collaborator, Ethan Thomas. He’s also working on another animated series for YouTube and a very adventurous feature film, which is set to shoot around December 2016.
“In comparison to other film schools, which rely heavily on government mandated literacy and theoretical work, the New York Film Academy approach of practical immersion proved to teach me more in that short amount of time than my friends at competing institutions,” said Young. “After a year, and producing eight films—three of which have won several awards—I think NYFA has a thing or two to say about the teaching methods that really work.”
Young says he’d like to see himself constantly evolve, finding new and innovative ways to push the threshold of entertainment.