March 1, 2016

In what would’ve been just a typical search for a story pitch, David Farrier, a New Zealand journalist, came across a bizarre Internet sport called “competitive endurance tickling.” Interested in doing a short story on it, he started digging around and found himself threatened by the agents of the competitive internet sport and facing immediate backlash. Farrier and his co-director Dylan Reeves decided to continue prodding at the peculiar Internet-underworld of competitive tickling, and found themselves tangled in a web of corruption and vicious blackmail. Farrier and Reeves created the documentary “Tickled” in attempts to find some answers and solve the perplexing mystery of this Internet tickling bully.

**Q: So this story, you stumble upon it in the beginning, but it pretty much turns into a full-fledged investigative piece. Instead of diving in and exposing this as a written piece, what made you decide that creating a documentary film would be the best way to convey this story?**

A: Just a couple of things. I think the fact that it was about this tickling competition, which was a really visual thing, made me realize you know, you could never get everything across everything that had been happening if you had just been writing about it. You kind of had to see it to believe it, in a way. So it was partly the tickling, and it was also partly the fact that once this company wanted to set up meetings with us and that sort of thing, we thought it would be best to document what they were saying and begin the persuading with that visual sort of a thing, instead of just writing about the experience. So it was those two things.

**Q: And it sounds like this investigative work was a little different than what you were doing before the time, is that correct?**

Yeah, totally. Back in New Zealand, I’d find all these two-minute entertainment stories, so interviews of bands and interviews of authors, and stories about plays that were traveling through town, so it was quite sort of like New Zealand, just doing weird things. The longer format was pretty unique, and also just being able to discover new things as opposed to just talking to someone who was touring the town.

**Was there a noticeable transition, would you say, between that form of journalism and what you had to do for this film?**

It was quite different, and I was lucky enough in that the newsroom I worked in, in New Zealand, I worked alongside investigative reporters. But I guess it was the just the idea of, not taking everything on text, being able to sort of look beyond what people were saying and again just the opportunity to take time when you’re working in a newsroom each day, and just expected to file stories, by 6:00 each night. Whereas with this, we could kind of take our time a little bit, and take time to actually figure out obviously some things that weren’t known before we came along. If I would’ve done this as a two-minute news story, it would’ve been a very different thing.

**I understand, so more of the digging process; I guess that would make sense why this also transitioned nicely into a documentary piece.**

Yeah, it’s like the more we found out, the more it was obvious that this would be a longer story. Because it was like peeling back an onion, there were all these different layers that we never expected. So on the surface, this thing looks like this slightly quirky, two-minute story about a tickling contest, but the more you look into it, the more layers you kind of have to justify giving it a lot more time.

**Right off the bat, we pick up that the subjects of the film, these people that you were investigating, wanted to stop you from making this documentary. How did you weigh the risks and benefits of continuing with the investigation? What convinced you to keep going?**

I guess I sort of have the advantage almost of having not too much to lose, I mean working as an entertainment journalist in New Zealand, it’s not like I had a lot of money to lose. You know I just sort of thought the story justifies going through with it. We found out as well, we weren’t the only ones who were sort of having difficulties with this competition, there were other people involved that were also going through similar struggles, and we were better off than them because we had a bit of money from our Kickstarter to start making the film. We saw the film as being a way to potentially stop ourselves and these other people from being harassed. If we get this thing done, then we’ve got a chance to hopefully stop this happening to other people.

**As far as I can tell, too, these people that you’re investigating, don’t know that you finished this documentary and are just now putting it out. Is that correct?**

We kept it pretty secret, so after Sundance’s world premiere, yes, they knew about it, and one of the people from the film actually came, you know one of the so–called agitators from this film came along to watch it. So that created quite a weird balance of people that were sitting around them in the theater. So I guess they know it’s out now, so up until a month or so they had no idea. We finished filming in America and we came back to New Zealand and we kept totally quiet on it, because we knew we didn’t want to agitate them anymore. We wanted to make the film with the least number of legal tricks possible, and we did that, and I think they probably got a bit of a shock when it came out.

**Do you anticipate them to do anything about it? Do you think you’ll get an actual reaction out of them?**

We’re waiting to see what happens. We have heard from a few of the people in the film and they’re not happy. But we haven’t had anything too crazy happen yet.

**You guys obviously put together a great film. It’s an incredible story, and was really intriguing. I found myself being drawn in, for as strange of a story it sounds like at first, it definitely pulls you in as a viewer. But is there anything specifically that you’re hoping for viewers to get out of watching your documentary?**

I guess the most specific thing is if anyone’s thinking about taking part in a competitive endurance tickling competition, they’ll maybe think twice. And then on a slightly wider view, I guess there’s just a whole precautionary tale about the Internet. I feel like we’ve had the Internet for a long time, as younger people we think we’re pretty savvy with it, but I guess it’s all warning that you can still get sucked into certain things on the Internet and you’ve got to be super vigilant to think twice about who you’re communicating with and who you’re talking to. And I guess on a third level as well, we’ve sort of put out there what’s going on, and it’s some pretty shady stuff, so I’m just hoping that someone takes it further, and whatever authority maybe steps in and goes “Hey, this isn’t right, we should do something about this,” and putting it out there in the world hopefully some other people step in as well to try and stop it happening to other people.

**And now that this project is done, are you thinking about pursuing more investigative work similar to this? Can we expect to see more of this work from you?**

Yeah, there’s definitely a few other avenues of documentaries I’m pursuing. I’d like to make some other docs obviously. Right now when you rang, I’ve just been sort of working on some of those, so trying to fetch out some of those ideas and where that goes. So I guess in my time doing my job, there’s been a lot of things I’ve sort of come across that I haven’t gotten to do further, so I’m kind of going back to some of those stories as well and just sort of digging a little bit deeper into some of those and some other ideas I’ve got. I’m definitely keen to do more similar work. I had a great team that I was doing this with — (the director of photography) and the producer, Dylan, who I worked with as well, they’re all pretty creative people and would like to work together again so definitely trying to make it happen.

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