01
THE STORY
"I wrote a movie. You're in it."
What started as a simple conversation with my co-worker about home movies, escalated into "what if I made a movie with our friends but no one had the full script, only their own parts." Within about a week I'd knocked out a 48-page script.
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Many of my projects start spontaneously, followed by years of execution. I'd made short videos for my channel before and pictured this project simply as a scaled up version of that. Science fiction is one of my favorite genres and I found inspiration in the Twilight Zone trope of everything being normal, but one thing is askew. I essentially took a hard look at my friends and family and the resources available to me and asked myself, what can I make with this? SAUCE[R] is the result:
"What would you do if you received a letter from yourself from the future?" Intrigue spreads faster than hot gossip through a small midwestern town when cryptic letters appear out of thin air. Is it real, a hoax, or a vast conspiracy? The puzzle proves too irresistible for a resident struggling artist, sending her down a distracted rabbit hole of clues that all seem to point to a ticking clock with one outcome: death. Can she rally the neighbors to change their fate or is the ink dry on their future?
02
THE STARS
"Your friends are really good sports."
I'm not even sure I remember the moment I asked my friends to be in this project, but they were all game. Though some took a little bit of coaxing. When I started at my current place of work, I was suddenly gifted a whole new set of nerdy, hilarious, and immensely caring friends. SAUCE[R] is a love letter to them, my family, and my neighbors. It was easy to write to their strengths. None of us are professional actors, we are just people working on instinct to tell a good story.
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So many people capture the world on their phones and record home movies, but how many of them have a plot? I really wanted this movie to serve as a time capsule of our time together, no matter where we go from here, we will always have this project to look back on and show our kids how we used to be cool, how we used to dress, the places we used to hang out, the people we shared adventures with.
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I was as dumbfounded as my dad watching the early footage that they agreed to do this project with me. He said, "Your friends are really good sports."
03
THE PROCESS
"Plan the crap out of it and read the cards."
SAUCE[R] is a no budget film and took just shy of two years to complete. First came the script and then the planning started. In order to coordinate such a large cast, I split the script up and gave everyone their parts so that I could shoot them individually and cut them together. It's easier to line up one person than large groups of people. No one was expected to memorize lines, cue cards were used for all of the dialogue.
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The movie was shot on an iPhone 6 and 13, edited in iMovie. No microphones. Real locations, no sets.
04
THE
VISION
"Looks good to me."
My goal with the look of this film was to show my characters in their natural habitats, engaging in their favorite activities. Very little styling was needed. It was shot in Kickapoo, Peoria, and Pekin, IL. Warm, rural small town living is the perfect backdrop for things to go slightly amiss.
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Movies that I draw inspiration from or movies that make me want to make movies:
- Super 8
- The Vast of Night
- Me, Earl and the Dying Girl
- Escape from New York
- Real Genius
- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
- Ghostbusters
- Say Anything
- E.T.