New Short Film “Jake’s Dilemma”

On a whim I got a few people together to make a quick short film. I got Nick Rubing-Bradway to DP and cover sound. Nick and I have worked together on several projects includes some short films he has written as directed. He was also on crew for “Fumes” a short film I directed and starred in that is currently in post production. I also asked Juliette Trafton to act with me in it. Juliette is a friend I have wanted to work with for some time. In order to make things easy, we took an old audition speech I have done for years and re-contextualized it in a new space with the addition of another charger. Juliette and I improved around the speech to create a scene that didn’t exist before.

The idea was simply to shoot something in an afternoon and play with the results. After the excitement and frantic execution of  “Fumes” I wanted work on something simpler. On “Fumes” we had a lot of new tech that I had not previously had the chance to work with. So there was a lot of ‘new’ equipment on set, new decisions for me to make, lots of new details to keep track of on top of my acting and directing. So this film was an experiment in less. I took one lens, the Canon 50mm f/1.4. I had a single lav mic to record sound (It would have been better to have 2, so both actors were covered at all times). I decided beforehand that all shot were to be locked on the tripod. There would be no movement of the camera. By eliminating these variable I was able to focus more on the composition of the shots and how they worked together. Telling the story with what at time felt like still pictures.

This is the extent of my designs for this piece, to display it here for people to see. I hope you enjoy it.

Big thanks to Jonah Sachar and Mike Staff at Jake’s Dilemma for use of their downstairs party room.

There is a password on this video: Baron