Something weird in the Wheatbelt

That was until he started filming an alien abduction movie with WA novelist Destiny West.

Nine years ago he moved from the dense claustrophobia of Melbourne, Victoria, to the wide open spaces of Quairading, to produce High Strangeness, an award-winning feature length sci-fi film.

At first, Mr Jean Rimbaud said locals didn't know how to take him.

They would see him around town, dressed in his eccentric-style clothing and weren't sure what to make of the fact that he was a filmmaker in a town where nearly everyone else was a farmer.

High Strangeness is an abstract, bizarre, non-linear experimental film, set in the Wheatbelt.

It follows the story of a young woman and her sister who get caught up in the scary delusions of their neighbour, who warns of an alien race living among them.

The concept attracted the kinds of blank stares and confused looks Mr Jean Rimbaud was well-acquainted with, but he and Ms West overcame this by welcoming the locals on set.

"The thing in Melbourne is, if you say 'I want to make a film' people will say they're busy or doing their own thing," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"But come out here and say 'who wants to make a film?' and a hundred hands went up."

Everyone who appears in the film is someone who was just willing to give it a go.

The first challenge they faced with the local talent was getting them to understand that making a film without a million dollar budget, was even possible.

"At the end of the day, you need a camera, a microphone and people who are willing to play pretend," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"Everything else can be taken care of with modern technology."

Introducing the possibility of film making was something they wanted to share with the community, especially school-aged children.

"If they want to do something, they don't have to go off into the city to be a filmmaker, you can do it here," Ms West said.

"You've all got phones in your pockets with a 4K camera, you can shoot movies and edit on your phone," Mr Jean Rimbaud added.

"It's about breaking through and thinking you can do this sort of thing, you can do artistic things that seem magical, but are not," he said.

However, there is one thing rather magical about the film, something authentic and difficult to explain.

Mr Jean Rimbaud and Ms West spoke to people from across the world, who claim to have been abducted by aliens, to gather some inspiration for the film.

Soon after, Mr Jean Rimbaud had a mysterious phone call from the United States, asking him how he knew so much about aliens, and Ms West witnessed an unexplained encounter of her own.

One night, while Ms West and her daughter were driving back to Quairading from York, the night sky turned as bright as day as a huge, spinning light began to follow alongside the car.

"My daughter thought it was a jumbo jet coming crashing down, it was that bright," Ms West said.

She said the lights followed alongside the car for about 10 kilometres, and that on the same night, a friend who lived on a nearby farm also noticed a bright light in that direction

The footage filmed by Ms West's daughter made it into the final cut of the film, and was shared with people interested in paranormal activity, for verification.

With no planes, helicopters or drones flying in the area on that night, and no way to explain the size and brightness of the light, Mr Jean Rimbaud and Ms West put it down to being a real encounter.

"You wonder how many people have seen things," Ms West said.

"Especially farmers, they must have seen things but they just don't talk about it."

"I have heard there are people out there who can tell you a lot of stories if you ask them right," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

Last November, the duo held a local screening for the friends and family members of those who played a part in the film.

It was a moment which broke down barriers between unleashed creativity and rural life.

"I had people coming up to me saying you know, I thought you were a bit of a weirdo, but it turns out you've got a brilliant mind'," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

With the wind of High Strangeness underneath their wings, the filmmakers are in the pre-production stage of a new series, The Unhallowed, under joint venture Listen to the Night Films.

While still in the early stages, The Unhallowed as a concept has attracted the collaboration of American filmmaker Brian Trenchard-Smith.

While this name may be unrecognisable to those outside of the film industry, Mr Trenchard-Smith is experienced and well connected in Hollywood, close to the likes of Quentin Taranino.

Mr Jean Rimbaud said his proximity to the cult-status director was exciting and a little bit intimidating.

Both Mr Jean Rimbaud and Ms West have struggled with perfectionism.

She struggled with it early on in her writing career, recalling baskets full of crumpled up papers.

"You have these movies that you treat as religion essentially, and you don't ever want to disappoint the people who made those films, or the spirit of those films, especially when they heavily influence your own work," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"I think one of the causes of my perfectionism is the feeling of having a lot to live up to."

Their working relationship is complementary, with Ms West keeping up with the needs of the industry, sometimes having to pry scripts from Mr Rimbaud's hands to send off internationally.

But Mr Jean Rimbaud also credits Ms West for helping to improve his craft as a filmmaker, offering another perspective but also killing his darlings to just the best bits.

In fact, if it wasn't for her, High Strangeness might have been four hours long.

"If I made this film with anyone else I don't think we would have won at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"We have creative differences all the time, our styles are very different."

All the same, both have had to balance their creative ideas with being realistic, even a little bit more palatable to get their names out in the film industry.

"What direction do you want to go in?," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"Do you want to be successful and not want to rock the boat in terms of the content that you're putting out, or do you want to do something completely new and plant a flag?

"It's about weighing it up," he said.

The two passionately advocate for the Wheatbelt, hoping to bring some more cashflow through the towns via filmmaking opportunities and tourism, however they have encountered problems funding their films, due to their location.

They had a funding bid rejected in 2019 and believes film industry funding organisations are only interested in projects filmed in WA's South West.

"We were told it's not glamorous enough in Quairading, which in my opinion is ridiculous," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.

"It's the most visually beautiful place I've ever lived in."

"We want to prove them wrong, the Wheatbelt has got a lot to offer," Ms West said.

Australian cinema has always remained in the shadows of the global film industry and this duo living in the Wheatbelt wants to change this, proving there is talent out there.

They met via the internet but had heard of each other through their respective work in writing and filmmaking.

Ms West was previously a novelist and magazine editor, however filmmaking was something she always wanted to try.

She started to see her story telling in a more visual way and aesthetically, Australia's array of landscapes make the perfect settings for the horror genre.

"I think when it's green, I feel that there's more of an energy or vibration to it," Ms West said, reflecting on the seasons.

"It's not only the landscape and the isolation, it's also what else can hurt you here?

"It's getting lost out there, the snakes and the heat."

"Yeah, the idea of getting lost out here in the blazing summertime heat is quite terrifying on its own, you don't even need monsters really," Mr Jean Rimbaud added.

Ms West said she has been hooked on horror movies and books since she was four-years-old, when she would watch Hammer films with her nanna.

"My parents were good, they didn't mind what I watched... within reason," she said.

What has kept her interested in the genre is the search to find something that truly frightens her again.

"I think it's (the genre) has lost its libido a little bit," Ms West said.

"Maybe I'm just desensitised from watching so much.

"I want to put that back into it, I want to feel scared again, which is a strange thing to want.

"I want to have that feeling of not wanting to go to sleep at night, and I know a lot of people feel the same way, so I want to give that back to them."

Like Ms West, Mr Jean Rimbaud was mostly into writing before he got into photography and music.

"When you put those three things together, and mobilise them, you end up with filmmaking," he said.

"My entire life was leading up to this art form."

He grew up in a family who recorded home made films on a Super8 camera.

"We were always running around in the backyard with baseball caps on, like Steven Spielberg, with cameras making movies," Mr Jean Rimbaud said.