The Idea Behind “special night”

The initial idea for this story was born out of a small writer’s group that Jon Edwards and I were putting together.  I’d been thinking of putting together a very simple story with just 2 characters for quite a while.  I wrote it up one day and everyone had tons of problems with it.  It wasn’t surprising, my first drafts usually are a total piece of crap, but what encouraged me, was that everyone who read it, could identify with the characters.

Flash forward a few months and we are knee deep in the production of “Chase: Cut Short”.  I’m feeling overwhelmed, nervous and out of control.  I vow to not do another project for awhile that would require us to be on location driving cars.  I just couldn’t handle it.  For my own mental stability, I went back to this simple story of two people.  I decided to dive a little deeper into my personal psyche and try to make these two characters a little more fleshed out.  Encouraged by the progress that I was making, I figured that this would be a good next project.  Not only would there be no cars to juggle, but I would set it in one location, thus getting rid of another problem that plagued me on “Chase: Cut Short” – multiple locations with no money and limited time. 

Flash forward a few more months and a few more drafts later, and I’m starting to get excited about this new project.  It was an opportunity for us to showcase what we had learned, up the production value of this new short and concentrate on making a piece that was more about acting and less about action. 

It was also a story that was universal and many people could identify with it.  Better yet, I could make it satisfy another artistic craving of mine.  Make a short film, set in one single location and never leave it.  Don’t even step outside for one single second.  I was intrigued by this minimalist style and it reminded me of creating a theater piece.  I thought it would be a great test too, to see if we could make an intriguing film, with very little movement and long takes instead of fast cuts.  I also decided to shoot it completely hand held.  I was trying to achieve a style similar to Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, Richard Linklater’s Tape and the films of Lars Von Trier.  I’ll let you be the judge and see if we succeeded or if was at least a good try.      

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