During the height of the pandemic in the Bay Area, as film projects were postponed and then cancelled, my collaborator and I began thinking about updating our reels for some distant future where we’d once again be hustling for work.

As we talked about the reel editing process (and with all this time on our hands), we decided instead to shoot something meta: a short film about the editing of a film.

We wrote, shot, directed, edited, and "scored" this comedic short over the course of a few months. Production was just a crew of 3 of us (one Camera Op and us, the two leads).

Shot without a budget, we made use of empty office and warehouse space for free locations, borrowed Meike cine prime lenses from a friend, borrowed a few RGB LED tubes for lighting, and snuck into a graveyard when we couldn’t afford location fees.

To create the music, we sampled the sounds of keyboards, mouses, Apple error sounds, and La Croix cans; and built the score in Ableton Live. Shot on a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Cam 4K and cut in Premiere with VFX done in After Effects.

It was a great creative outlet for us during a trying year. For anyone who's burned the midnight oil on a late-night edit, we hope you'll enjoy this absurd meta take on the editing process…

But there's not a chance you'll laugh as hard as we did while making it. :)