I wrote, directed and self funded a short film called Steve the Cat in 2023 now I'm finally putting it online after an extremely humble (2 festivals) festival run.

Link: https://youtu.be/_z9de67KgBU

I made a post about my last short film when I posted it online and figured I'd do the same with this one. This was my second larger scale short film with a crew and overall I would say it was a more positive experience than the first, I think the film is better and had slightly better success with festivals. I attempted to take the lessons I learned from the first one and incorporate them the best I could, which resulted in a lower budget and more streamlined shoot. The budget for the film was around 5k and we got into 2 festivals. I'll give a breakdown of the shoot if I may.

Pre-Production:

I wrote the script for this film a while ago and had been meaning to come back to it. There are a few elements (I'll come back to those) that made it daunting to shoot so it sat on the hard drive. In early 2023 I decided to make a short film in the summer and chose the script to film. I spent a couple weeks updating the script and getting it ready to shoot. I also dealt with casting right away, the first short I made I casted pretty much every role through a local casting database and it was ate up a huge amount of time. I was lucky enough to have two talented actors who I was friends with who liked the script and were willing to come on board.

The next couple months I spent breaking down the script and finding crew. My goal for this project was to pair down the scale and keep things manageable. I shot in my apartment using a camera I owned (BMPCC 6K pro) and brought on a relatively lean crew. Crew was all sourced through people I had worked with on indie projects in varying capacity.

Also worth noting that I got let go from my job mid way through pre-production which was great for some reasons (the time off was likely essential in the film getting made on this timeline) and bad for others (my wallet and mental health).

In the middle of pre-production I decided to split the shoot into two sections, the difficult elements of the script that I mentioned earlier were a baby in a couple scenes and a animal shelter. I was having trouble sourcing these things on my budget so I decided to shoot those at another time. This was a necessary decision but one that I would really try to avoid in the future.

The Shoot

The shoot went pretty well. The first day was a bit of a struggle and we fell behind with our schedule. I also remember being underprepared for a couple things. This is a lesson that I will take forward is that there should be no unknowns on the day. Everything should be tested and planned, experimenting and working out kinks should ideally not be happening on the shoot day. A reason for this, and another lesson I will take away is that an experienced AD is so essential on these types of shoots. This is something we did not have and I will prioritize this for the next short. I remember the first day being a bit of a wake up call in how unforgiving a schedule can be. But it was still a positive day and we bounced back in day 2 and made up what we didn't get day 1. Filmmaking is tough (and exciting) because there will always be new problems, no matter how experienced you are things will always go wrong in new ways. I remember being reminded of that on the first filming day.

After the first shooting block I edited a rough cut and put the shoot out of my mind for a couple weeks. It's tough to have an exhausting shoot and know that your not really finished, but alas. I got to work on sourcing the difficult pieces of the script. Miraculously I found a baby to be in the film and a local cat shelter agreed to let us film there. The break between shoots ended up being 3ish months.

The next shooting block was 2 half days and went by fairly smoothly. It was nice to be able to watch a rough cut of the first half of the film and be able to address weaknesses in a new shoot. Shooting with a baby was new to me and extremely stressful so having an AD on set was essential and as I mentioned earlier was so important with keeping things moving.

Post

I edited the film myself which probably caused the post process to take longer but at this point I was running out of budget. Editing is always tough for me when its a project with a lot riding on it, but this went smoother than the first short. Also having already edited a rough cut of the first section made it easier to dive in after the second block. After everything was finished I hosted a cast and crew screening which I would recommend to every filmmaker. I applied to less festivals this time around mainly due to budgeting reasons. We got into 2 mid/small festivals and I attended both. That was a great experience and it was really awesome to go to an event centred around filmmaking and seeing your film on a big screen.

I am proud of this film though I recognize some things to improve on. Check it out if you want and let me know what you think.