In the fall of 2016 Sarah [Giercksky] and I replied to a Facebook post in a Film Forum which was looking for actors and film makers to start a collaborative group that would produce short films together. The post was created by Katja Gustafsson, a Swedish DJ and TV producer and a prominent influence within the LGBTQ community.
We met with Katja at a café in Stockholm and discussed her vision for the group, explaining that she wanted to create a community of talents with a variety of skills that would meet up weekly to create short films together from the ground up; developing a story, writing a script, planning the shoot and then filming and acting in them etc.
We thought the idea was great and attended the first meeting shortly thereafter. There were 9 of us in the group and we decided to name our little production team “Popcorn Short Films”.
Other than deciding on a name, our first meeting consisted of introducing ourselves to each other and sharing our various areas of expertise and interest.
Our first project was a short written by Anne Visuri called “Aren’t They Adorable”.
Anne directed her film and I took up the position of DOP and also did the editing. We all pitched in and had a great time through the entire pre-production, shooting and post-production process.
We all learned a lot from that first short and used the time afterwards to analyse our workflow and discussed what worked and what could be improved, learning from our mistakes and expanding on the things that went well.
We then voted on our second project. Sarah pitched an idea she had about 2 mime actors who on the night of their big performance are given different feedback from their director and one of the mimes becomes jealous of the other.
Sarah Directed and played the jealous mime and asked me to play the role of the other mime. I also organised the locations and again edited the film.
The team really pulled this project together despite all of the issues we had. We ended up shooting the whole thing in around 4 hours including makeup time and set up changes. This was largely thanks to the incredible amount of planning we did in the Pre-Production stage. The detail in which we had discussed the shots needed meant that we knew exactly what to do when we were on set.
Sadly Popcorn short films disbanded after only 2 projects and we all went our own ways. The few months we did work together were very useful to my learning curve as a producer and I learned how to manage and be part of a small team working with no budget and collaborating and creating for the joy of the art. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to grow and expand on their craft should find a group of people and just create and learn by doing.
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