This is a 40-second film titled “Call Your Mom.” It was an exercise in my first ever Video Production class where we took a prompt and went off in groups of 2-3 to make little movies. It was shot on an iPhone 13 Pro Max and was edited in about 15-20 minutes.

Upon reflection, there are definitely some things I would change about it retroactively, but I am very pleased with the feeling I was able to capture in 30 minutes!

Leitmotif was the first ever short film I ever made. It was shot on a Blackmagic Pocket 6K, which was so much fun. And I had a blast working with some more professional film equipment. It was a good first foray into professional filmmaking.

I plan to talk about the creative process of this film significantly more in a blog post that I will put up on my blog, but it was such a necessary experience. Writing this now, I am not as proud of the final product as I thought I was going to be. There were a lot of good and powerful moments, but some of the moments fell flat due to different issues that arose on set on the second day.

I recognize, however, that everyone needs a first film. And it is never good, at least to the person who made it. So for a first short film, knowing how ambitious of an undertaking it was, I am very happy with it for what it is.

So this is the first assignment that I turned in for a Cinematography & Theory class I took in Fall of 2025. The idea was to get different types of framing and angles. I shot this on my personal camera, a Canon Mark IV 5D. Narratively, I wanted to see how far I could allude to the character (who was one of my friends who was available that day) dyeing her hair, without actually putting product on her hair. There are some minor continuity errors since I had to pivot last minute with the purple shampoo, but I’m not too mad since I was dusting off the cobwebs.

Compositionally, this was a fun piece to film. Knowing what I know now, I probably would opt to not shoot this on a Zoom lens, but I worked with what I had and managed to assemble something passable in about two hours.

This assignment was a learning experience. Truly. This was my second assignment for my Cinematography and Theory class, and I was supposed to try and capture the essence of a place by compiling different kinds of footage and angles. I go to Georgia Tech, and I’m from Georgia, and there is one exit (84 on I-85 SB) where you get off on the exit and the entire city of Atlanta opens up to your left. And driving through the city at night is just another level, so I tried to capture that.

The feedback I got back from my Professor on this one was really funny. He really liked some of the ideas that I had, but he mentioned that he wished I would linger on shots longer. And I think that’s totally fair, a lot of the problems I ran into with this one was a lack of planning. I had maybe one or two shots in my mind when I set out to capture footage, and I just hoped and prayed that my editing would make it look cohesive and nice. It looks alright. Not groundbreaking, but not horrible.

His second piece of advice was to make sure my windshield was clean if I wanted to film through it, or to forego that entirely and stick my camera out of the window the same way I did in a few of the other shots. Which he’s right, they look so much better. I tend to prefer sticking the barrel of my camera out of the window, but privately I was very worried about some of the people in the bumper to bumper Atlanta traffic getting upset at me filming them. And my windshield was just gross, I was in desperate need of a windshield wiper replacement.

So now we are starting to get into group work for my Cinematography and Theory class. I in a group of 3 people, I was 1st AC, the Camera OP. We had a Cinematographer and a Production Designer who was also our Talent. I will also say that, at this point in the semester, these titles were a little looser because we really used a lot of the pre-existing stuff in my apartment to film this. And I have a showreel that is linked on here where I list myself as a production designer, which is why I say that the titles are a little looser.

For the assignment, we tried to emulate 3 different lighting styles in one space. In order, we lit the space Romantically, in the style of Film Noir, and Horror.

All of the lights were lights that I had on hand in my apartment, and it was really fun to see the space transform and use the lights in a way that wasn’t just to light a space, but to tell a story. Also this was a fun writing exercise because I remember making sure that it was the blandest script ever, not utilizing any adjectives, and I let the DP and Prod. Designer/Talent decide the look and feel just based on the words written. The vagueness also allowed us to experiment more with those different lighting styles, especially as it pertains to look and feel.

So this was the first assignment I was the Cinematographer for, and I’m going to be totally honest and say this was probably one of the most stressful undertakings of the entire semester. The combination of just me not being the greatest at delegation, plus all of the extra goings-on in my life made this so insanely stressful.

I remember writing the script for this so quickly too, but in general I feel like I was able to execute things pretty well, and it was nice to hold a Blackmagic Pocket 6K again. There are a lot of things I would change about how this went, like maybe picking a camera that could go on a steadier shoulder mount, or maybe not using the shoulder mount at all. I also remember not being able to see a whole lot because of where the camera was relative to my eyes.

I also am hoping to actually get the chance to edit this myself. The Production Designer (who did a really good job assembling this entire set) edited it and did a really good job, but he and I have completely different editing styles. When I get that updated I’ll upload it to YouTube and update this post.

I had genuinely such a blast with this assignment. I wrote and directed this commercial and coordinated with several group mates about the look and feel for this ad.

Originally we had wanted to rent a room for this, or borrow a space, but that didn’t pan out due to redecorating (if I recall correctly, could have been remodeling) efforts. We had to pivot super quickly in the weekend right before the shoot, so I remember someone had suggested we do a more “meta” style shoot. I found the Kraft Kid Commercial with Walker Schobell (by the way: while I was writing this I got an ad for the Disney+ Percy Jackson which was surreal) and the rest was history.

I got to edit this one, and it was really fun. Honestly, kind of rekindled my enjoyment of the editing process because that’s usually the part I like the least. But when I got to the part where talent was actually sipping the Coke I had a lightbulb moment and decided to emulate the feeling of drinking a Coke through color-grading.

The gaffer watched the edit and told me that this made them want to drink a Coke. So I consider that a win.

So I was the Production Designer for this assignment. And this is yet another thing that we just sort of filmed in my apartment (see 3 Looks 1 Location), but this one I feel like I actually put in a lot of effort into.

I was cleaning my entire apartment, specifically my room, because usually we aren’t filming in there so I can get away with a level of nonsense in there. I also had to set up a bunch of cinematic lighting which was stressful, but also fun (I discovered Intellytech lights and I have not been the same, they are awesome).

I also had to block out every single window in my apartment because, as you can see, it is the middle of the night in this video. But we actually filmed it at 9:30 in the morning. At the time of writing this, the leftovers of the window blocking are still up, and I can’t imagine what my neighbors are thinking considering the fact that one of my bedsheets and a random green screen are just up in my windows. I’m sure it’s fine.

We also got super creative with light diffusion. When I get the chance to upload some of the behind the scenes photos, you can see it, but not pictured are my white sleep shorts just draped over the light.

But this was a fun shoot, and more importantly, a really amazing group to work with as well. There were four of us total, and the other three group members are all people I would love to work with again.