Movie Making Moments: "Someone Else's Trash" & "Out the Window"

Someone Else's Trash

"One of my favorite moments was during a 24-hour-film challenge, I was sick with COVID and was co-directing this short film with some friends. It was hectic and tedious, but was the most fun I’ve ever had on set. Our crew consisted of five people from our Video Three Class. The prompt was “Someone else’s trash is someone’s treasure”. We had to have a backlit shadow shot, we needed money, sunglasses, and gloves in our film, and the required line was “It was broken when I found it." With those prompts, my team came up with the story Just Animation, following a kid’s imagination when he finds an abandoned, broken toy. While we faced many challenges, it still holds up as one of my favorite short films."

Story written by Liam M., future director. Liam is currently a freshman at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.

You can watch Liam's film, Just Animation, here.

Out the Window

"We were almost done with the short film, and the weather was growing increasingly humid inside the small car we were filming inside of. Even with the windows rolled down, the sweat was still collecting on my back. That’s Arkansas for you.

It was a bit of a psychological drama: Reese, a teenage girl, was grappling with the death of her best friend, Jordan, causing her to imagine him beside her in the car. The ending revelation was simple: the dead friend would suddenly disappear. The girl would glance over at him, glance back, and then look back over once more and poof, he’d be gone.

What had been so exciting about this cinematic exercise was that everyone in my class was given the exact same script. No exceptions or edits allowed whatsoever. Nonetheless, our script was so vague that we could twist and distort it in whatever way we wished. Being intrigued by anything psychological at the time, I challenged myself with the notion of creating something unsettling and disturbing. In fact, I even shot it all in black-and-white just to further the emotions I hoped to deliver.

I genuinely liked this plot design and was excited to see how it’d turn out on camera, especially as I began to edit it. Right before I yelled “action,” the actor playing Jordan said to me: “Do you just want to me climb out the car window?” Originally, I planned to do shot-reverse-shots to show Jordan disappear. At first, I was a little confused because I didn’t yet realize Jordan’s actor wanted me to do a continuous shot where I’d pan side to the side to reveal his disappearance.

As soon as the idea clicked, though, I was on board. We shot that moment a couple of times before we got it down just how we liked it. But as soon as I got the optimal shot, I knew it’d be one of the most powerful in the short. We wrapped production and I quickly got into editing. Just as I expected, I loved the shot.

Looking back at this little moment, it reminds me of something my film teacher just recently told me. He suggested that we, as filmmakers, over-plan our short films and understand the cinematography, blocking, and framing of every shot we are going to take so that when we get on set, we can make creative decisions, like this one, with the rest of our team. I had spent hours upon hours developing a shot list for this short, even though it was a mere two minutes long, and it had paid off big time. Just because I knew exactly what I wanted to do didn’t mean I couldn’t be open to improvisation in the moment, allowing me to produce something even better."

Story written by Jesse C., future screenwriter. Jesse is currently a junior in high school at Thaden School in Arkansas.

You can watch Jesse's documentary, Boston Mountain Youth Ranch, here.

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