A short film about the end of a relationship viewed from the letters written to each other.
Making This
This was my first ever production! I had a lot of fun making this, and I had even more fun making this with friends.
Over the holiday season at the start of 2025, I spent a lot of time in bed and away from friends due to a medical emergency. The plus side is that I decided to purge my YT feed, and only keep the stuff I actually wanted to watch — and I got a lot of good short films. Language of memory by Devin Desouza particularly struck me. Not only was it a beautiful heart tugger, but also it a mere 1:04, it made me realize: “Wait, I could maybe try doing this — I already own a camera…”
Storyboarding on The Train
Between February and April, I spent some time story boarding and shot planning on the Caltrain. Two times strangers happened to get involved, both on the evening commute back home.
One time, a voice came on the loud speaker and announced the train would came to a halt in the because there was a vehicle blocking the crossing a few stops ahead. With an unspecified time to get going again, I struck up a conversation with the passenger across from me on the table — we were both curius how we would be passing the extra time on the train. They were studying for school, and I was trying to figure out my script’s ending. Together we talked through if we prefered a happier or sadder ending.
Another time, Stewart and I were jamming out on the train thinking about the upcoming shots we wanted that evening (Annie was coming over to film), and someone across the aisle spoke up and said: “I can’t help but listen in, but this sounds like exactly what I just went through — my ex and I wrote letters to each other in the past — I think shots highlighting x y or z relate the most…” That was a fun train ride as all three of us were just thinking of what spoke most truly to us, from the girl’s side and from the guy’s side.
Process
My process was scattered, but it was probably the best way for me to get started. In summarizing order:
- 03/07 - Boy Shoot
- Storyboard morning of
- Shoot boy scenes with Kelsey in the afternoon
- 03/09 - 03/12
- Storyboard more plot and scene ordering with roomies
- Make preliminary boy only trailer and learn Davinci
- 03/19 - Girl Shoot 1
- Finalize girl shots
- Shoot bedroom and couch scenes
- 03/23 - Girl Shoot 2
- Shoot deck and painting scenes
- 04/06 - 04/12
- Pick final song
- Pick final shot order
- Color grading/shot cleaning
- Sound design
- Make this page
As most people quickly learn, no amount of editing can materialize a shot that you don’t have. If I were to do this again, I would try to pick a song I have in mind at the beginning of the process — that dictates a lot of the emotions you want to bring forth.
I think as someone coming from photography, I also over indexed on every shot having to be cinematic. I think that bar held me back from getting particular shots that would have contributed a lot to the plot development or setting the scene/mood — even if the shots didn’t have perfect balance or lighting — I should have trusted editing to be able to cook something up in post.
But on the contrary, since I was new to all of this, I’m still glad I sent it even if things weren’t perfectly planned. After a while of planning, I’d just be whaffling between a few ideas, not knowing which would be best. In the past this would prevent me from ever finishing or starting a project, but here I just knew I had to keep the momentum moving since I knew that I didn’t yet have the skills or intuition — that would come later. I was okay with any one part not being perfect, as Joe Barnard says, the biggest risk to any project is not finishing.
One thing I loved doing is at each stage of the project, I would remake and export the best of what I had that day. It was fun each day to compare what I started with that day to what was done that day. Great dopamine hits.
Thanks
Thank you to everyone who helped me make this project possible. I am grateful to have the opportunity to create something awesome that captures a slice of our emotions.
Additional thanks to:
- My friends for being excited to see my WIP trailers — that gave me a lot of excitement to keep going beyond the initial 30s demo reel
- The boys for letting me learn how to use my camera on the ski trip
- Serena for just chatting and catching up about what it is like to produce
- Shereen for sending potential songs and chatting about the idea on the ski slopes
- C and M for helping story board on the train!
Behind the Scenes
