“Meet the Feebles” is a Feature film produced by Wingnut films and directed by Peter Jackson. The film was produced with the use of puppets and costume characters. Upon its release the film was banned in many countries due to the film’s rather naughty content but was well received in some territories including Australia where “Meet the Feebles” was the tenth most popular film in its first year of release.

After finishing his first film “Bad Taste” Peter was thinking about his next project. While walking along the foreshore at Seaton Beach in Wellington Peter and Cameron discussed the possibility of making a short about a bunch of animal characters performing in a television variety show. The story would concentrate on the unsavory behavior of the characters back stage and how this would ultimately affect their performance on stage in front of the television cameras.

Peter wanted to use puppets in a similar fashion to the “Muppets”. But instead of the wholesome approach Jim Henson took with his puppet show, Peter wanted to take the opposite approach. Peter asked Cameron to think about what characters might be suitable. Cameron dreamt up every insane, awful, disgusting and despicable character he could possibly imagine not expecting Peter to take any of Cameron’s ideas seriously. But to Cameron’s surprise he found Peter and co writers Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair writing a film script based on Cameron’s character ideas.

With their own money and time Cameron, Peter, Fran and Stephen assembled a bunch of rebel film crew and together they made a short film.

Not long after the short film was completed Peter managed to gain financial support for his feature film “Brain Dead”. The team, which made “Meet the Feebles”, now found themselves engulfed in the pre production of Peter’s second feature film. Unfortunately the finance for “Brian Dead” collapsed during pre production and the film was canned. Thinking about how sad Peter must have been feeling at the collapse of his dream Cameron felt he had to see Peter. So Cameron popped into Peter’s little house on the beachfront in Seaton and was warmly welcomed. Not long after Cameron arrived Peter’s friend and editor Jamie Selkirk arrived followed by executive producer Jim Booth. Before long Peter’s tiny house was filled with friends and fellow film crew. With his spirits lifted by the obvious support from his friends, Peter and his supporters began to plot their next move.

Everyone agreed the best idea was to attempt to gain support to turn the short film “Meet the Feebles” into a feature film and some how Peter managed to convince the New Zealand Film Commission to fund the feature. Cameron had his concerns about the low budget that Peter and Jim proposed but Cameron went along with Peter’s proposal hoping he could somehow make it work.

Cameron led a small team of five very talented puppet makers including Richard Taylor who went on to win 3 Oscars for his work on Lord of the Rings and together this team worked their butts off for many months making puppets, blowing their heads off, exploding their chests and slicing their poor little foam bodies in half.

Shooting the film was painstakingly slow and proved very difficult for head puppeteer Jonathon Acorn and his team of puppeteers, having to lie upside down, push their arms through small holes in walls or hang suspended from ropes for hours at a time, and then expected to perform with character and flare. But in the end the puppets where brought to life with Danny Mulheron playing Heidi inside a foam costume character giving a particularly brilliant performance. After spending several months inside the costume and perspiring several kilos of weight from his body, Danny swore he would never perform inside a costume character again. Cameron believes to this day Danny has kept to his word.

Despite the obvious concern about the film expressed by the New Zealand film commission and the many difficulties in realising an ambitious vision with little money, Peter managed finish his puppet splatter film, his persistence, hard work and inspirational leadership making the difference.

Upon completion of the film Cameron realised that his life with Peter working as a SFX technician would never be enough for him. Having gone through the wonderful experience of making the characters for “Meet the Feebles” and bringing them to life Cameron could see that to be truly happy his future lay with character driven projects. Cameron was offered the opportunity to become the head designer for the children’s department at TV3 Network in New Zealand. Their plans included launching a daily kids program featuring a number of puppet characters. It seemed a perfect opportunity for Cameron to continue with his ambition so he took the offer from TV3 bringing with him all the knowledge he had gained working on “Meet the Feebles” and Cameron’s many years of work with Peter Jackson.

Cameron won the New Zealand film award for design for his work on “Meet the Feebles”. It took Peter Jackson another two years after completing “Meet the Feebles” before he finally managed to secure finance to re launch his film “Brain Dead” which he completed and was well received both locally and internationally.