The Graveyard Shift
What’s the most exciting thing to happen in your local film scene recently? I can tell you what it is for me – a few longtime friends of mine got together, and through a tremendous two-year effort, successfully made a full-blown half-hour short film. And the best bit? It’s bloody fantastic.
My first encounter with The Graveyard Shift came two years ago, in our third-year university film production course. We all had to pitch a script, which would get voted on to see what would get made and all that jazz. Tremendous talent and good friend Tom Pottinger (NZ filmmaking royalty, as the grandson of early Peter Jackson comrade Tony Hiles) pitched a fun, action-comedy riff on Tarantino-esque Cinephilia and crime thriller antics – it didn’t get picked up, but sometimes not getting selected at the class level can be the best thing to happen to a student filmmaker’s script. Because now, you have the freedom, the friends, and the faculties to pull it off on your own terms, without university deadlines or oversight. It’s the best excuse you can get – and by gosh, Tom took the ball and ran with it.
After nine months of storyboarding the entire film (an effort unto itself), Tom assembled a motley crew of immensely talented people I’ve had the joy of working with myself over the years. The credits reads like a murderer’s row of young filmmaking talents to watch, and many people I’m lucky to call friends. Many late nights in late 2025 were dedicated to bringing this expanded script to life – even the hardiest of young filmmakers would be forgiven for being less than enthused to take on an entire production of night shoots, but they did it and the film is all the better for it.
Now, a year later, my friends successfully managed to get an actual cinema to host the premiere (special thanks to the Penthouse Cinema!). To say the atmosphere inside was buzzing would be an understatement. A crowd of sixty, maybe even seventy were gathered – every last one of us just so happy for Tom and all his crew for pulling off such an achievement. I in particular was excited to see how this five-minute pitch from two years ago had come to life. After a gracious and inviting introduction by Tom and producer Lawrence White, the lights dimmed and The Graveyard Shift began.
Of course the whole 32 minutes were great, but I was sold about five minutes in when the film made a Tarantino joke and it actually worked – massive sigh of relief there. The ensuing story from there was packed with riveting twists and turns, hilarity that played very well with our crowd, and some especially gnarly practical effects. Tom set himself up for a difficult tonal tightrope between humour and horror, but he actually pulled it off – seeing this with such a receptive crowd only heightened the experience. One particular off-hand line about ACC drew an especially loud laugh from all of us.
The talent extends in front of the camera too – our leading man Brock Oliver delivers a brilliant embodiment of constantly squirming fear in protagonist Derek. Equally as riveting is Peter Moore’s slimy, sadistic turn as the villain – major Michael Mann vibes, in all the right ways. On that subject, it’s impressive how much this avoids the usual student film pitfalls of being too in love with their influences – here, there’s absolutely Tarantino/Peter Jackson/Michael Mann influence evident, but the film doesn’t feel defined by such inspirations. Rather, Tom and his team take influence but filter it through the distinct Graveyard Shift lens – believe me yet when I say these guys are talented?
Hoping to see the full-length someday – until then, we’re lucky to have such proactive and skilled talents around. Am I biased? Yeah, probably. But my friends pulled off such an achievement – they made a sizable short film with their own time and effort, got it screened at an actual cinema, and it’s a ripper. I’ve been around to see its inception, and now its realisation. What’s not to celebrate?
Thumbnail, pictured: Producer Lawrence White (left) and director Tom Pottinger (right).