The Mystery Moose is a 40-minute mockumentary following an "aspiring" influencer and his friend in search of the elusive and possibly extinct Fiordland Moose. Going into the rugged wilderness of South New Zealand, the two risk it all in hopes of becoming internet famous.
Acrozora, the collective of William Preat (Filmmaker and Composer) and Knight Mitchell (Filmmaker), is a newly established platform for the two's collaborations whether that's through film or music. The Mystery Moose is the collective's debut feature film released on February 5th 2025, entirely independently produced, directed, edited, etc., the film features an original soundtrack produced and composed by William Preat.
https://open.spotify.com/album/39a4PfVeXR6Ur7xqn07Eov?si=OqMPSFO1SoWfQMg53HfoWA
The idea for the film was first conceived in the middle of 2023 when we stumbled upon conspiracy videos online of the Fiordland Moose. It wasn't long until we had booked flights from our hometowns in North Queensland down to South New Zealand, our bags stuffed with camping gear and camera equipment. We landed in Queenstown at the start of 2024 and were definitely travelling on a budget, sleeping in our tents whenever possible. Funny story, the first night we landed we accidentally threw out our RODE mic and checked the bins the next day to find it had been emptied...
Anyway, we were in New Zealand for a bit less than a month and were filming on hiking trails and hitchhiking to different destinations filming the beauty on a Sony A6600 and DJI Mini 3 Pro (tying the moose narrative into the experience whenever we could). The whole trip was surreal - from being invaded by mice; to filming in 90km/h winds on a glacier; to being so far from civilisation and at the mercy of New Zealand's insane nature and landscapes.
A behind-the-scenes cut from William Preat here:
After returning back to Australia, over the next year, a lot of time (and project files) was invested into the making of the introduction sequence in After Effects and Unreal Engine. The introduction is essentially a visualisation of the brainwashing that a lot of susceptible audiences face (especially with AI) through the consumption of short form content. That was really the message we wanted to send home with the film: a cautionary tale on the effects of overconsumption in contemporary social media.
While working on this, William, over in Finland, had been going on usual hikes to try to get a shot of a moose in the wild (we didn't find one in New Zealand) even taking a trip up to Lapland to try greatening his chances. The end section of the film was shot mainly in Lapland and Austria, and by some crazy luck it was on one of William's last routine hikes that he happened to run into a family of moose, quickly staging his character's reaction.
It was only a couple of days after William got back to North Queensland that Acrozora was formed, the collective putting together the film over one week. It was seven long days in the studio producing the film; from scoring, to sound design, to editing and colouring and on the 7th day the film was completely finished and uploaded to YouTube.