#afithesis

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.