Last weekend was the soft premiere of my 5th short film, Companions in Misery. It was only for cast and crew. After the showing, a small group of us went to have drinks at a local brewery. The group consisted of myself, the director, the producer, the 2nd AD, his wife (Kate), a PA and a friend of one of the crew.
During the drive over to the brewery, Kate asked me if I had any scripts in my back pocket. She figured as an actor, I probably did. She had just finished directing her first short film and she was itching for a new project. Since I’m not a writer, I didn’t have any scripts, but I did tell her about a couple of ideas I had. The first was a feature film that was superhero based, the second, a short film that had some Black Mirror undertones. She loved the short film idea and suggested that we write it together and then make it. After telling the rest of the crew my idea, they were all in and the short film has a crew.
In the 24 hours after that, Kate and I hashed out the details of the story, she is in the process of writing it, I have cast about 80% of the role and created a movie poster. She plans to have a rough draft of the script by the end of the week and our tentative shooting date in January of 2024.
Because I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I am trying to figure out a way to fund the film so everyone involved can get paid. I have been tooling around the idea of selling my camper van for months now. I rarely use it and when I do, it’s for film projects. Since I am focusing on bigger projects now, the need for my van has dropped even more. So with that in mind, I decided to put it up for sale. The listing can be found on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.
Simon Shih 