Don't Watch
Don't Watch is a Psychological Horror short film that I produced, audio-engineered, and assistant directed. Written and directed by Anthony Crulah, Don’t Watch explores the story of Justin, a man who doesn’t find the thrill in horror anymore, and his experience with the interactive horror film tape "Don’t Watch" which takes one’s worse fears into play to curate its watcher’s own horror experience.
Working on films can be difficult. As one of the many projects of many different medias that I have worked on in the past years, this one has been one of my favorites, mostly because of the team I worked with.
Communication is key when it comes to working on a big project like this, or in fact, any project, and creating a healthy environment for communication can be difficult especially when a team member wants to have full control of the artistic vision of a project. This has been something I have had to deal with in the past with other directors and it creates an overall bad experience for everyone, crew and actors included.
Thankfully, this was NOT one of those projects. It was a project where the director and I were able to work together on his vision and communicate with our team about their views of what we were creating.
We had a cast and crew that thrived while working together and I couldn’t hope for a better set of filmmakers to work with on this project with, especially in my last semester of community college/
Personal Takeaway:
Parks Liquor
A three-episode sitcom that was filmed in industry standards timing.
A crew of 13 students came together to film this project in three weeks. We worked four days a week for over 10 hours a day to create this, very, rated-R sitcom and, although stressful, being put in this work environment was able to prepare us all for what it would be like in a real industry position.
We rotated through all roles during this production including director, technical director, assistant director, floor manager, camera, grip, audio engineering, boom, and even acting in some student's cases.
I happened to direct scenes in both episodes 1 and 3 including the longest scene in the whole show that ran almost a full 6 minutes (episode 1, 3:10 to 9:00) as well as two shorter scenes in the final episode (episode 3, 15:04 to 16:47)
Special Thanks to Micheal Grimes, the professor and producer of our insane little sitcom, for being the most amazing mentor, teacher, and friend. He was the best there ever was and I'm so glad he was a part of my life, even if it was for a much shorter time than anticipated.