Man, to state the obvious this was absolutely amazing for an independent film, great camera work, framing, acting, story - but more than anything I just love how you and the team took the initiative to go out and make this. Super inspiring to see people coming together for the sake of creating something unique, well done
Sam, thank you so much! This comment means a hell of a lot coming from you. We're really proud of the flick, and hearing stuff like this truly motivates us to make more and more. Love you. Stay creamy.
Holy hell man. I really don't know what to say. I can't believe you did this in 3 days and on an $8k budget. This is one of the best short films I've ever seen.
I had the privilege of watching this a few months ago and it’s absolutely amazing what Zach and the crew was able to do. A beautifully shot film and a great story and plot. Kudos!
In Nigeria, we say 'ómò!!!' meaning 'wow!!!'. This is just... Wow. Great work. The BTS made me appreciate this even more. I really would love to read the script. Great work.
Wow! Zach and everyone involved you did a truly amazing job. Love the twist at the end! No lie everything about this I really liked. It easily stands up to the best sci fi’s out there, and managing to get that much world building and storytelling in only 14 minutes is amazing. You pulled this off really really well! Looking foreword to now watching the making ifs, even though we have seen bits over the last few months. Proud of you Zach, and truly inspired too. 🎉
It's been a while I have seen this kind of CONTENT on RU-vid especially in Filmmaking. I mean story, shooting, colors, acting and music all are just so much refreshing. I was thinking a few days back, about what is happening with youtube filmmakers, why no one is releasing something new, something unique, and here is a Zach with this banger.😍
Great work! This plus the behind the scenes video makes me want to go film. Thanks for being a beacon of the indie film community and good luck on your next project!
You are doing a great job in the direction and editing field. It felt very inspiring while watching the film do more film like this and with tutorial 🔥❤️
That was so cool. Effects were great, the concept and story so well thought out. The acting and filming were so professional. It was tense and scary. You are so good at this genre. What a wonderful future you have. Congratulations !... L uv grandma.
I did not get the story. Why there were lackouts, why the parents were dressed in masks, why theypursued her, who had drowned in the pool, who was the person in the mask who was getting up from the pool?
@@AnuclanoI think the main female lead is an AI meant to be a daughter/home companion. The masked person getting out of the pool was the husband, who clementine called dad. I’m guessing they wore masks so they weren’t recognized by the clementine home companion. What was unclear to me was what went wrong exactly, I’m assuming that was alluded to in her early convo when saying her parents were mental and her “moms” blood on the broken glass? The house turned against them? I’d have to watch it again, which is probably what the writer and director wanted? I thought it was clever misdirection. Sure, some of it could be fleshed out more but it’s a short film, a concept, and was well executed imo.
This was a really awesome short film. Great production values. That house is amazing. I'd be interested in what your budget breakdown would be to get it to $8000. Above line, below line costs. Seeing as how this is roughly 15 minutes. If you made a feature you'd be at $65K. Not bad. haha Hopefully we will be seeing a feature out of you soon.
This is simply awesome. I almost let go my dream of becoming a film maker due to some issues. Seeing you doing such an amazing work at indie level just motivates me to not give up on my dream of becoming a film maker.
Dear brother, just watched this short film i love it .. what a colour grading and some camera angles are super, total output is amazing 😍🙌 love from India ❤️
For me there is a no: why they wanted to stop her, why the necessity to mask, to many why not explaned. It was much better longer with some explanetion. I belive in self-defence, no matter what and who.
I agree with her on most issues, and what happened to her is truly both Kafkaesque and Orwellian. I do however believe that all discussions of religion and faith should be kept off campus. Gender identity is also a form of religion, based only on belief, and has no place in classrooms or in teacher/student interactions. I'm am for keeping all religious and ideological indoctrination off school grounds.
I will just repeat the others; super inspiring and beautifully made! Congrats to everyone involved in this production. It makes me wanna grab my camera and follow your footsteps. I'd love to see some "making of" or behind-the-scenes footage if you have it. And BTW: the house is amazing too!
I did not get the story. Why there were lackouts, why the parents were dressed in masks, why theypursued her, who had drowned in the pool, who was the person in the mask who was getting up from the pool?
I am afraid the plot remained completely opaque to me. Was there ever a daughter? What happened to father? Why was there mother's blood? Whose body is in the pool?
Some of the plot points are to create a discussion for a longer feature film. The father was one of the other Travelers who we see dead at the pool. The daughter goes haywire and attacked the parents before the film begins. Afraid, they left the home and re-enter in hopes of fixing their robot daughter with an update.
@@ZachRamelan Zach, thank you for confirming most of my understandings. I was able to piece together that she was probably a robot and that dead body/2nd traveller was her dad. The bit about the blood of her mother on the broken glass - this I couldn't figure out what it meant. Didn't she address the "voice of the house" as Clementine? And she herself is revealed as Clementine? That still doesn't quite sit well in my head. Also the event when the house computer goes crazy and stops responding to her and starts showing typical computer junk on the screen (I'm a programmer btw, the computer junk looks perfect) - what would that mean? When I think of the film now after watching it doesn't quite make sense - is the daughter and the house two different pieces of software? Is it one piece of software? Why does the house stop responding to her and stop locking the doors but she herself continues to function as normal? For some background I have an interest in amateur level film-making and editing, so I watched eagerly your behind the scenes videos and then was eager to watch the finished product. I came to it with high expectations :) Visually I have been rewarded in full, the props are superb, the overall mood / look is superb, though I hate to admit the plot left me somewhat perplexed.. P.S. Was it intended btw that the daughter so very noticeably calms down when she takes out the family photos? She almost goes into Nirvana there. The mood changes so much. Me as a viewer perceives this as an important event in the film - the daughter has calmed down, relaxed. I dare say the film might be making too much of an event of it, focusion viewer's attention on it too much - because this is an important info to convey to the viewer - that she loves her family dearly - but then her mood swing is just a singular switch. If the point was to show her as a sort of suffering from a bipolar disorder there could have been several switches there and back, some more dithering there and back? More change of tempo? More swings to notice? Then we the viewers would have pieced it together - hey, she's bipolar, her psych is all over the place. Maybe the mom could run over that broken blood-stained glass again? To help us viewers make the connection? It'd be a pick up shot, but possibly not an impossible one to shoot. Btw I have no clue how to make broken glass props that are safe to run over :] P.P.S. Not really a suggestion for this short film but if it ever goes into a bigger picture - could perhpas the mother say something more revealing to dumb viewers like me, e.g. not just "when I brought you home was the happiest day of my life" - becuase that sounds totally consistent with the daughter being properly human - but she could say something like "the day when I brought you home and took you out of your box was the happiest day of my life". Or "they day I took you home and switched you on was the happiest day in my life". Not necessarily literally that but something that would truly reveal even to the slowest thinkers in the audience that the girl is a robot
@@ZachRamelan Do they wear the masks so to protect themselves from her possible aggression or this is post-apocalyptic setting? Why the masked one is seen to come from the pool?
Sorry to hear that, I'm not stoned and I still didn't get it either. I had to watch it six times. This was a very great flick. I have questions to ask but I don't want no spoiler alerts.
Oh. My. God. 😳🫣 My Whoop strap thinks I just did a high-intensity workout while watching this. Still waiting for my heart rate to drop 😬😀. Loved every second. My only disappointment is that *it’s a SHORT*. Maybe if those homeowners take a loooong holiday, you can film a whole miniseries of Clementine or a feature film 🙏💁♀️ - In addition to all the BTS you can bear to show us, I’m super interested in how you came up with the idea, your creative process *before* you get to the filmmaking stage…
HAHAH LOVE IT! You're the best! Would love to get them to leave for about a month so we can make some more magic. They were terrific, and we could not have done the film without their support. I want to print this comment and put it in my wallet haha
This was incredible bro, great balance of dialogue to the silent moments throughout, i was completely into this story, and the twist was so perfect. Loved the camera angles, the choice of day to shoot on, the beats were like boom, boom, boom... it's inspiring stuff! I'm taking a break from writing my story, and after watching your Batman short film, I figured I'd see what else ya got, man am I glad to have come back! Let's see what else to watch!!!!
Wow! This is superb. Way beyond the quality of many big budget films. I can hardly wait to see what you get up to in the future. Zach, people like you are why I am so optimistic about the human race.
Well, that's about the most intense thing I've experienced since I woke up in the middle of my extraterrestrial anal probing. Now that its over, I'm all questions like, "Why'd Clementine's owners have to go about the whole update process in such a secretive manner? and, "If Clementine is only a sort of android avatar for a wireless at-home lifestyle automation system, how'd she come to have school-going buddies to game with?" and "What was with the gas masks and all that? Is this some kind of post-apocalyptic better-case scenario involving humanity's recovery and adaptation to the new chemically-poisoned planet's atmosphere taking place with the aid of such systems?" and oh, the list goes on and on. I suppose that means you could fairly easily be sitting on the bare bones of a manuscript for a feature-length movie here, huh? I'd watch that! If you somehow managed to weave the same kind of tricksiness into the plot of that, I'd probably watch it more than once. Here's to you having studios throw large sums of money at you for your forthcoming blockbuster!
WOW, what a comment! Mark, thanks for watching with a detailed lens. You caught every detail we intentionally put in. Most of your questions are to spur a conversation about the film and build excitement for a larger world. This comment is incredible. Thank you.
@@ZachRamelan I had the same series of questions. OK, I get it. They're to be answered at a later date. What we saw was a preamble for something much longer. I've written scripts for a series where I did the same thing: drop in clues and foreshadowing that I still haven't figured out. I think David Lynch wanted to do something like this for the original "Twin Peaks": keep the murder unresolved and let it drive the series from one season to the next.
I did not get the story. Why there were lackouts, why the parents were dressed in masks, why they pursued her, who had drowned in the pool, who was the person in the mask who was getting up from the pool?
@@TimothyMayer13 unfortunately such shorts usually do not ger a continuation. The gas masks (and well-sealed house) probably can be well explained by that the scenario is indeed post-apocalyptic (maybe a dead bird as well), but I did not get the other things, for instance, who got drowned in the pool.
A real twist at the end. Didn't see that coming. Even when it crossed my mind the two chasing her might be her parents, I still didn't expect she was herself the AI, a robot. From the early part, she didn't seem to know she wasn't a real person. A very well done film and a great story. Enjoyed watching.
Zach, man, this is really really good. Cinematography is immersive and supports the mood. Editing is on point. Sound design is aces. Hope you've submitted this to some festivals. You're on you way, man! (Oh, and that drone shot was perfect ... motivated, unique, and masterful.)
@@ZachRamelan That is great to hear, Zach. I should add that Jacquie was superb as well. Filmmakers often do their films a disservice by casting a significant other, but Jacquie's performance elevated the film. She's got that ineffable quality that great actors have. I hope you two collaborate again.
just my openion the camera work editing and vfx are awsome acting was good unique attempt but just very bad story no negetivity intended bro just being honest luv
Wow!! Amazing short film! Loved it! Feels like it’s a shorter version that could easily be an episode of Black Mirror. Jacquie was awesome too! Bravo!👏👏👏👏
