First Ep is up on YT so you should give it a watch. Maybe you’re in front of your personal home theater, maybe you’re taking a poop, maybe you’re ignoring your significant others family members during a family event, maybe you’re in a doctors lobby waiting for your appointment? All excellent locations to watch this work of cinematic majesty. Don’t be the uncool kid at school that doesn’t get the references, watch this gem and find yourself closer to the true meaning of life
Cast:
@chuckfu24
@_andrew_romano_
@paytonhubert_official
@kellycorinthian
Marc Lucia
Crew:
Sound mixer: @christopher.debonis
AD: @ash_bishop_
BTS/Grip: @bowjackfilms
Everything else: yours truly
This was the single most complicated shot in the film for obvious reasons. Long one takes require SO MUCH coordination and timing. Everyone's dancing together, the whole crew and the talent. Everything in the dance has to be in sync or we have to start from the beginning and try again. I think people use long one takes as an excuse to not be creative or write something that stands on it's own and rely on the one shot to do all that for them. I think the better reason to use one is how we did here, to push the story further. We're hitting a big moment of tension in the story, I didn't want anything to distract from that and break the tension. We're coming off the back of a longer dialogue scene with a bit of static back and forths cuts so this scene needed to be DIFFERENT. It had to stand out from the previous scene. I wanted one shot that to drag the moment out.
I spent an hour standing there before anyone showed up imagining the 300 different ways everything could move and tried a ton of different variations before settling on this exact camera movement. When the cast got there we practiced it for almost 45 mins without the camera on, the blocking was massive to the success, as I'm circling around the movement if things happened to early they wouldn't be on camera, to late and they'd impact the scene to make it feel rushed or abrasive. It took 9 tries to land this take and that's the take that made it into the film. Take 9. The camera over the scene basically does 2 full arcs around the talent and the intensity increases each time. This scene was shot alone. Me and the gimbal with some planted mics and ADR. Would you have guessed that?
Scene played out by: Clayton Royal Johnson, Lexi Shroll & Tyler Veinot
So this is a longer scene so this excerpt is from the back half. We filmed this scene at sunset which I feel added a ton of emotion that would have been lost is we tried to do midday. I let the sun do all the work and just staged a 4x4 bounce on a C-Stand off camera to send some of that light back in to fill shadows. Ashley ran sound with a zoom, I ran camera and that was our whole crew. Simple setups, no crew, tell a story.
I have a whole universe I would one day love to build out from this story but this scene was handled so well by Lexi and Clayton. Essentially these two are opposites, one driven by rage the other by loss and separation. I told Lexi to model her charachter after Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter and I think she crushed it. Distant from reality but grounded in it at the same time. I told her that Someone like Lennox is one of the few people you've let in, few that matter and she handled that so well with how distant she was to what he did to the other student but how quickly she recognized he was hurting but not showing it. And you see that through her performance. Why I bloked the scene that way to further emphasize her acknowlegement when joining him up top instead of where she first was sitting. I don't feel like the scene would have been as emotional if I didn't have Lexi join him at the end of the scene.
Clay's control over emotion has always been what I loved the most when working with him. When directing my notes were SO simple. Again, just with anger, and the whole scene would transform from the previous take. I'm in no way surprised he's being cast on the caliber of films and shows he is with that level of immediate control. And to then just be able to turn it off, come out of this big moment then make stupid jokes with me after. Incredible people
Scene excerpt from my first short film 'Lennox' played by
Clayton Royal Johnson & Lexi Shroll
I find myself still falling back into this style of scene coverage more and more even now with where I am in film. Shows like Ozark or directors like Hitchcock kept coverage fairly minimal and let the talent and story sell the scene and I've always connected with that. I filmed this scene alone so obviously have 8000 things I would change in terms of dealing with the sun but when you have no crew you do what you can and have fun. I placed the sun behind them to get some nice flairs and rim lighting and let it go.
I'm insanely hyper critical of my work which is a blessing and a curse. My work improves tenfold every project becuase I've chewed my previous film to bits to make sure those mistakes never happen again which allows me to keep getting better and more film intelligent, but it causes me to for lack of a better work be a prick to myself quite a bit which obviously isn't healthy. I'm proud of what I put out and definitely love how much I've grown from this film but holy f**k can Andy and Clay sell a scene. You don't need to know sh*t about the plot and can just be caught in this moment bc these two deliver so hard. Andy's scream at the end is still one of my favorite moments of anything I've filmed becuase he let that rip on his own. That's where he took the character in that take and I never looked back.
Scene excerpt from 'Lennox' available on my Youtube.
Scene played by Andy Gion and Clayton Royal Johnson
As I finish up post on my most recent short film I'm so freaking stoked. Watching my evolution as a filmmaker from project to project is huge for me and being surrounded by such talented cast makes this process a dream. I'm gonna be uploading multiple scenes from a few projects I've brought to life from paper to finished project to have like a little time capsule of my work that I can always look back at and remind myself of the progress and journey.
This scene is from my first short film 'Lennox' which I would LOVE to explore to the degree I have in mind but I'll save that for another day haha. This scene is played out by Clayton Royal Johnson, Andy Gion and Dennis Friebe. Enjoy
'Be Careful What You Wish For' Short Film Trailer
Trailer for my newest short film releasing Sept 1st!
"Be Careful What You Wish For"
This project tested so many elements of me that watching it back now and seeing the final product is just incredible. This film was cursed haha I stand by it and ain't letting go! It was a damn ball breaker as my dad would say haha, But we made it happen and I'm really really happy with what we did, especially what such a small crew with limited resources.
This is the largest narrative project I've taken on and it's freaking cool to have it behind me and say I did it. Everyone that stepped in to help and create it are just the dopest humans and gave it a life I really didn't know it was capable of. I might have doubled my blood pressure to get it finished but I would have done that with my diet soon enough so it was worth it haha
I'm proud, like honestly proud. I watch this and am like damn I did this, I shot this, I edited this, I did the sound design on this, I scored the composition on this. I don't feel pride a lot. It's got flaws of course, my crew was never more than 3 people and I self funded the project so that's to be expected. But I'm proud as sh*t with what we did.
My amazing cast:
Dan Contois, Lori Katz, Jeremy Wood, Payton Hubert, Holland Hayes, Charlie Prince, Christopher Applegate, Bryan Bachman
Crew:
Ashley Bishop, Jovan Burke, Loossendy, Latouche Matt Bishop
