How “Fing!” was made with absolute intention

When director Jeffrey Walker read David Walliams’ bestselling 2019 book Fing! to his kids, they giggled at all the right parts. The story follows Myrtle Meek, a spoiled girl whose librarian parents will do anything to keep her happy, including tracking down a mysterious creature called a Fing in the darkest corners of the jungle. The story is a trip—and funny. 

But turning the whimsical tale into a $16 million Australian-UK co-production presented Walker with a problem just as fantastical: creating the Fing itself. 

For Walker, who worked with The Jim Henson Company on The Portable Door (2023), going digital wasn't an option. “Ultimately, we realized that the heart of the film was going to be whether [Myrtle] could pick up Fing and give it a big cuddle,” he says. “And we could never have achieved that unless it was going to be a real, physical Fing on set.” That decision shaped everything.

With producers in the UK, filming in Brisbane, and actors like Taika Waititi coming from New Zealand and elsewhere around the globe, Walker couldn't afford ambiguity. He storyboarded every shot before cameras rolled. He locked the film's color palette across costume, production design, and props. He shared daily editing assemblies on an iPad near the monitors so three hundred crew members in Brisbane could see how the film was being cut together in real time.

And at the center of it all was a Dropbox folder, what Walker calls “the hub of all the creative on the entire film.”

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Walk me through how this film came together.
When I was sent a script, I read the book to my kids. I've got kids who are right in the perfect age bracket. They thought it was naughty and cheeky.

The script had enormous amounts of heart to it. It took on themes of children who perhaps are a little bit misunderstood and don't really know how to love themselves yet. Fing is introduced to Myrtle and it's like a part of her. I really thought that was quite beautiful.

What kind of film did you want to make?

I recently did a show called Apple Cider Vinegar for Netflix, and we shot it all handheld, very fast, very spontaneous. 

This was different. This was my feeble attempt at taking an Amélie or Wes Anderson-type approach. I love Wes Anderson. I love the films Taika Waititi directs. I love Amélie. But that photographic style is not often used for children. It's sort of got a tongue-in-cheek quality to it when you watch it as an adult audience. There's a sort of knowing quality. Often they'll track through the wall, they'll do something to say, “You're on this filmmaking journey with us.”

With this one, we did do a little bit of that. But I did think there was a way to keep the emotion between our wonderful little girl, Myrtle—played by Iona Bell—and Fing, and tone back that full approach, but still be able to draw the comedy that comes from that photographic style.

I was going to mention Wes Anderson. I'm glad you did first. I saw the parallels. Visually, the film is so exacting and dialed in. You can't just show up and wing that style.
You can't turn up and fluke a frame in a Wes Anderson film. That takes an incredible amount of planning and preparation. So this is the first project I've done where we storyboarded every single shot. My cinematographer and I spent three hours every morning storyboarding, then we'd go and prep for the day. It bolted together like a Lego set. It just had to click together. We had a very short amount of time to film it—both in the filming and in the edit. There wasn't going to be room for exploration.

And those storyboards became the master document?
Yes. Instead of looking at a scene and going, "Is that a dolly? What are the variables?" on this one, we had the frames to refer to. The stunt person could instantly see, "Oh, that's a fall," or "That's happening off camera." By having such a strong working document that came so early, the departments prepped in a very different way than when it happens and unfolds more organically.

That's pretty vulnerable, putting your work-in-progress out there for everyone to see.
Initially, when you feel very insecure as a director, you sort of want to hide your ideas a little bit because you're fragile. But on this one I was really keen to put everything up there. The more transparency that I can build into the process, the stronger the vision.

Once you were shooting, what felt different because of all that prep?
Because we had the storyboards and everything was shared on Dropbox, departments knew exactly what was going to be within every frame. They could bring the colors together. The costume department could see what art department was doing. By the time cameras rolled, there were fewer surprises. We didn't have to argue about hypotheticals.

What do you hope folks feel when they walk out?
I hope the film has an enormous amount of heart and that there's a lot of fun for the audience to experience together as a family. I think it's a little forgiving on parents who are at their absolute limit with their children and feel like bad parents. You judge them at the start of the film, and by the end, you feel empathy and love toward them.