Music Video
Train by Tommy Novak
An early music video about ageing, love and the quiet determination to keep moving through an indifferent city.
- Year
- 2015
- Client
- Tommy Novak
My role
- Director
Selected credits
- Starring: Tommy Novak, Roslyn Banks, Robert "Bob" Smith
- Cinematography: Tom Rawson
- Produced by: John J Cross
- 1st AD: Saba Shariati
- Music by: Tommy Novak
The project
Train was one of the first music videos I directed while studying film at SAE, made for a friend I met while studying music at the Australian Institute of Music. Tommy Novak, grand finalist on The Voice Australia 2026, has always had a talent for writing beautiful, heartfelt songs. It also starred my nanna and her partner, making the production unusually personal.
The approach
The story follows an older man travelling across the city on his anniversary with flowers and a gift. He is knocked down, loses the gift and begins to run out of energy, but help from a stranger and the memory of love keep him moving. The concept stayed deliberately simple so the performances and the song's bittersweet feeling could carry the film.
What remained
The project shaped lessons that still guide my work: emotional weight can live in small gestures, thoughtful casting matters, and a clear story does not need to be complicated. Its student-production roughness remains part of the record of where my directing practice began.
Check this project out next:
Beetols They Do It
→