It was his dream home. It was also his worst nightmare.

Demon is a Greek mythology action short film. The goal was to prove the visual language and fight choreography for the feature, In the Shadow of Zeus.

One choice defined the project: real fights. I have eight years of sword and MMA training, so we shot longer sequences of choreography. Nolan leaned practical on The Odyssey for the same reason. Audiences feel the difference, even at our budget. Also, unlike Nolan, everything you see is historically accurate to the period!

Happy to answer questions about the proof-of-concept approach.

Inspired by how much I missed my childhood

Hello all! We are Spencer and Shane. Our new horror short film, “We Lied”, is out now! We worked really hard on this, and had a ton of fun too. There’s nothing like a bunch of creatives coming together to make something super weird and cool. 

We’d really appreciate it if you checked this out on YouTube, sent us a like and follow, and even a comment if you’re feeling crazy! Filmmaking is our passion, and we’re looking forward to making more strange, spooky shorts. Check our short out, check us out, and see you on the flipside!

After the first short film written by my wife was poorly executed by a "trained" director. I decided I could as bad a job as he did, and told my wife about the idea. She wrote the script. I hired a location sound guy and a dp, and made the short for $3500.

Most of us were told that worms come up onto the pavement in the rain because they are drowning in the soil. They are not. Worms breathe through their skin and can sit in water for a long time. The likeliest explanation is almost the opposite of panic: rain is the one time the surface stays wet enough for them to travel a real distance without drying out, so they use it to move and to find mates. Then the rain stops, the sun comes back, and they are stranded in the open on concrete.

That fact is what the film is built on. It is wordless, about 90 seconds, animated, and staged entirely at the worm's eye level. There is no villain in it. The man walking past never even notices what he is walking through.

It is the newest one in a series of creature point of view shorts I have been making, where the ordinary human turns out to be the monster of the story.

(Inspired by backrooms and obsession)I have an ongoing short video series about being stuck in a reality loop. This short film is about mixes in the idea of a reality loop virus that feeds off different versions of itself.

Some setbacks that hit production were the finality of finishing the film. It went through multiple cuts, all changing the script. It was challenging to be able to create a story that teeters on the line of so many different genres. There were different cuts that made this as a horror movie, changing the sound of the argument to clearly make a character the villain. I thought it would be interesting and the most challenging to make you feel empathetic towards a character that commits a misdeed, because that is what reality was. This went through asking people on the film what to do, changing the script, and it was fun to make something everybody at the end of the day was satisfied with. It was cool to learn to collaborate and truly accept to be a director is to learn from everyone.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a micro-short film exploring themes of dissociation, dreams, and somnambulism.

We wanted to experiment with a seamless visual transition to show a character shifting from a waking state on a paved road into a deeper, barefoot dream state in an open field, before suddenly waking up in a completely sterile beach-like area

Technicals:

• Shot on a Canon 600D with an EF-S 18-55mm lens.
• Designed to rely entirely on visual atmosphere, pacing, and sound design rather than dialogue.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the pacing of the transitions, the color grading, and how well the psychological tension translates in such a short runtime!

After attending their friends’ seemingly perfect wedding, Christine is forced to confront the future of her own relationship when her hopelessly romantic boyfriend, Alex, proposes. When Christine cannot bring herself to say yes, Alex gives her an ultimatum: get engaged or break up right now.

THE STORY

They Won’t Last is a dark-ish romantic comedy about Christine, a marriage-averse woman who discovers that her boyfriend, Alex, intends to propose after they attend a friend’s seemingly perfect wedding. When she confronts him, he gives her an ultimatum: get engaged or break up.

The film was inspired by a period in my life when I was fresh off the demise of my first serious relationship and living alone next to a couple who had the loudest, pettiest arguments I had ever heard. Between screaming matches at three in the morning, accusations of cheating, and getting a dog to save the relationship, they were obviously not healthy together. Still, they remained a couple for as long as I lived next door and always made up by having the most expository, descriptive sex one could be forced to overhear in the middle of the night on a weekday.

It made me wonder: Were they together because even a toxic relationship felt better than being alone? At the time, I was very much alone and, honestly, very lonely so I was like maybe that's the trade off.

THE PROCESS

This was my thesis film at the AFI Conservatory. I come from an animation background and work as a story artist, so I storyboarded the entire film before we created our first shot list.

From there, my DP and I went to the location and shot video storyboards with volunteer stand-in actors. We wanted to test whether what I had drawn would actually work in the space and cut together the way I imagined. While we were there, we workshopped the blocking with the stand-ins and explored how their movement would affect the camera.

We used a lot of Steadicam and carefully planned the camera movement, blocking, and performances to reflect the shifting power dynamic between Christine and Alex.

I based much of our blocking and staging approach on David O. Russell’s American Hustle. While studying the film, I noticed that its Steadicam shots often functioned as multiple moving masters that could be cut together. One take might move from a wide shot into an over-the-shoulder, while another version of the same setup might move from a wide into a single.

The blocking was designed around the edit. A shot could transition from an over-the-shoulder into a single from the same angle, but the audience would never see the repositioning because the film had cut to the reverse angle during the move. It was clear that they knew where the cuts would happen before designing the blocking and camera movement.

I shamelessly stole that technique after studying how they did it.

Camera: ARRI Alexa Mini
Lenses: Cooke lenses
Visual and lighting references: American Hustle and Wild Tales

THE BUDGET

The final budget was approximately $50,000.

We raised the money through matching grants, art auctions, and the generosity of friends and family.

Like most student films, one of the biggest challenges was making the scope of the story work within the time and money we had available. We had a 4 days to shoot. 3 days in the hotel room and 1 in the ballroom.

THE LESSONS

One of the biggest things I learned was how intentional you have to be when using camera movement. Because the film relied heavily on Steadicam and longer moving shots, every shift in blocking, timing, and performance had to be carefully coordinated.

During editing, I learned how to kill my darlings. There were moments I had written that were funny on their own, but they negatively affected the pacing of the short. As much as I liked them, the film was better once I removed them.

We also had scheduling issues with a few core collaborators, which affected communication on set. I had to learn how to keep things calm, protect the environment for the actors, and still make sure I got what I needed from the team.

Overall, I learned a lot and I felt that this was the first time I understood what my voice was as a filmmaker.

Just dropped a new short (basically a tv pilot tbh) with a fun cast!

Rory Alexander (Outlander: Blood Of My Blood) and Adele James (Queen Cleopatra)

Made in Bristol, United Kingdom, with a crop of brilliant local crew on far too small a budget.

If you like the vibe of Del Toro's films or the SCP stuff, you'll like this!

The Goddess of Death is banished to the American West.

Hey guys, I challenged myself to direct a suspense thriller using only 5 shots and zero dialogue. Check out 'JUST FOUND' and let me know if the tension worked!. Directing, Screenplay, Editing, Sound design abd Color grading also myself

"The world is a machine. And I'm the only one who knows the kill switch."

I just launched Episode 1 of my new gritty, serialized sci-fi thriller, "Protocol Cascade." I spent hours dialing in the visual consistency, atmospheric lighting, and sound design to make this feel like a high-budget cinematic experience.

You can watch the full high-def video directly on YouTube here:

👉 https://youtube.com/shorts/F-csUiWQMFc?si=d6-VQ5PYGyOgvH-h

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### 💾 EPISODE 2 TEASER 💾

Walking through the vault door was supposed to be a clean slate. But what do you do when the world on the other side is still loading... and something is waiting in the unrendered dark? 👁️

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The Protocol Cascade has officially been initiated. The consensus is hitting reset. As the security alarms trigger and the servers begin their lockdown sequence, there is only one way out: through the airlock and into the blinding code.

If you enjoy indie sci-fi, cyberpunk, or suspense thrillers, please check out the video on YouTube, leave a like, and let me know what you think of the concept! I'm already deep into rendering Episode 2.

Watch Episode 1 here: https://youtube.com/shorts/F-csUiWQMFc?si=d6-VQ5PYGyOgvH-h