Coffee Break

Synopsis

When an aspiring musician breaks up with his girlfriend in a coffee shop, the entire world weighs in on whether or not he made the right decision.

The Experience

After four years at Dodge I got my chance to shoot my thesis film and put everything I’ve learned to use. Teamed with a producer we gathered a full crew and were given 6 six days to shoot with 6 months of pre-production and 3 months of post. We had the largest amount of extras that had been seen at Dodge. With over 30 characters, each of which had at least one line, the shoot was challenging but fun nonetheless.

There were many challenges throughout production. With so many characters casting took much longer than any other project I had previously worked on. Locking down locations presented its own set of difficulties with business owners and landlords many times disagreeing on whether they wanted to allow a student film to be shot in their coffee shop. It didn’t help that I had injured my back snowboarding earlier that year and was suffering from a herniated disc and displaced vertebrae. Thanks to the amazing cast and crew I was able to push through the pain finish the shoot as if my back was perfectly fine.

This was the first time I was directing a script that I had not conceptualized the original idea, however the story spoke to me and I knew that everyone would be able to relate to it too. Even though the script was complete I was still able to infuse it with many of my own ideas, and we even ended up changing the ending the day of shooting.

Winner of the Platinum Remi at Worldfest Houston 2019.

“Coffee Break” is currently on the festival circuit.