Many students at Innis College fancy themselves avid movie-goers, and often filmmakers. My friends in the Cinema Studies program are huge film fans, and some have even gone out and directed their own works. I hope my buddies Batu and David don’t mind the shout-out. They’re top of the game. I’m also among that group, as a three-time writer/director now, having three short films under my belt since I started formally in 2023. I definitely don’t have the amount of experience that a feature-film director would, but I’ve learned a few things from these endeavors—war stories, if you will—that may be fruitful to share.

My first short was a 90-second film called Mortu’s Redemption, about a reformed prisoner out on parole, trying to redeem himself and be moral in ever-tempting circumstances. This film was mainly a supplement for one of my three university applications—I’m happy to say, I got accepted into this particular school, but still went with UofT, obviously—and was quite modest in its approach. I enlisted the help of my good friends Jason, Colby, and Olivia, and went out one weekend in the freezing cold of January 2023 to shoot this picture in the car, outside and inside the gym, and at my house. The end result is a hastily-edited but still somewhat charming 90-second proof of concept that gave me some confidence in what I was doing. I probably should have moved the Kleenex box from inside the car during the shoot, and definitely gotten some extra takes out of my actors. We were embarrassed to really get down and dirty in the gym scene, which made it difficult to get good results; this definitely wouldn’t be the case today. Through it all, I gained a great appreciation for the organization and consolidation of forces it takes to get a crew together and compile the pieces—even if it is for a minute-and-a-half end result.

My second short film, titled PEEK, aired in November of the same year, and transitioned to the horror genre. I’ve never been a big horror fan, to be honest. I never grew up on horror movies—the closest thing for me was watching the shaving scene in Hulk (2003). This one began as a personal project, but coincidentally coincided with a Horror Film class assignment I had due, which aligned all the stars and resulted in quite a good product. For this one, I tightened the scope of the project, relegating the two characters to a single room, for about three and a half minutes. The story would be a basic break-in story: a monster of some sort breaks into a young couple’s house and terror ensues—except the camera never leaves the bedroom. We wait for the creature to come up the stairs and reach us, thus trapping the audience with the female character in this small, claustrophobic environment. I enlisted the help of an old friend from grade five, Diya, whom I hadn’t seen in many years, and my high school pal Alex to play the two young characters. I took the role of the masked creature on myself, which didn’t require much acting. As a side note, I had worked with Diya in grade five when I actually directed a humble school play about a Murdoch Mysteries-esque detective story and cast her as one of the leads. Who knew we’d cross paths again to work on my second film? Her acting skills had definitely improved by this point. My main goal with this film was to keep it humble and easy to shoot—with two characters, one location, and me behind the camera—while using editing and tension-building techniques to…well, build tension! I had an allusion to A Christmas Carol (2009) when the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge slowly comes up his creaky stairs to wreak havoc; so slowly, it was almost painful to hear every loud clunk on the wooden steps as he got closer and closer. That’s why I didn’t go crazy with jump scares, but tried my hardest to build up and increase the tension within the diegesis. Depriving the audience of crucial light in the scene at certain parts also added an element of surprise when the climax comes in a flurry. By this time, I had little equipment other than a DSLR Canon camera, a Rode shotgun mic, one battery—which had to be recharged in between scene breaks—and a flashlight taped to a scrap of purple plastic from an old duotang that would serve as my ambience for the lighting department. We played around with ketchup as blood and worked not to stab Alex with the huge machete, and ultimately, I think it came out quite great! As an exercise to build my tension-ramping skills, I’d say it worked perfectly.

My third and last film so far came out in May of 2024, titled Retrace. The picture was my most ambitious one yet, combining four professional actors—no longer teenagers—with a 15-minute run-time and a screenplay that was unmatched by my previous work. The story follows a man on the quest to avenge his murdered wife, whose drive-by shooter had been loose on the streets since her murder. Garrett, played here by the incredible Mason Sheaves, suffers from his frayed mental faculties since the accident and almost goes after the wrong guy during his vengeful mission. After consolidating with his Aunt Steph and shambling through theological psychology and polemical argumentation, he realizes none of what he thought he knew had actually occurred, but that the entire film was a closed loop happening inside a loose dream that foreshadowed real events. I hope that sounded confusing, because you should just watch the movie and experience it for yourself: bit.ly/retrace-film 

This film taught me various lessons: for starters, actually buy equipment. We shot this in March, when the weather hit almost -10 Celsius during our shoot, which made the mostly outdoor locations feel like shooting in Antarctica. No one was quite dressed enough, and holding the camera without a tripod or gimbal and trying not to shake was the challenge of a lifetime. I was thankfully supported by a DP, who was dating one of our cast members as well, and graciously gave us much of his equipment to use for the shoot. Unfortunately, he had more malicious intentions than I expected, as when shooting ceased, instead of giving me the footage immediately, he promised to send it online, before going home and sending me a contract to sign before he would give me my film’s raw footage. Basically, he was holding my movie hostage for a signature that would guarantee him monetary compensation should the movie do well! This should have been done upfront, and despite getting consent forms from the actors, I didn’t think to do the same for the DP during the fast-paced pre-production process. After a lot of argumentation, the whole thing was fixed, but it taught me a valuable lesson to always demand your footage immediately after wrapping up a shoot, shoot on your own SD cards, and preferably use your own equipment so there is zero hesitation when demanding your footage. More importantly, it taught me to be a stronger leader and it got my hands extremely wet with respect to writing a psychological thriller in the essence of films I love, like Memento or Shutter Island. It taught me how to reach out and cast real actors, and keep everything on a net-zero budget while having everything accounted for. An education unlike any film school you can go to.

What does the future hold? My plan for the moment is to direct another short, before moving on to my first feature film in Toronto. The Canadian system is much more dependent on public funding and grants than its American counterpart, which is more private-based. For a smaller-budget project, like I plan to go with for my first feature, I think sticking to the beautiful city of Toronto is the right move, as I know it like the back of my hand and I will have already acquired valuable connections. After that, they say the less individualistic culture of Canada necessitates southward migration at a certain point, but let’s see how patriotic I’m feeling at that stage. Maybe it’s foolish to plan things this big, years in advance. Maybe a boulder will fall on my head next month and end it all. Maybe nuclear war will break out. Maybe not. Being a filmmaker these days feels a bit like tampering with the atomic bomb, but y’know, I don’t mind being Oppenheimer for a while.