In October of 2021, I stumbled upon a Facebook post where Writer/Director Ari Somerfield sought a Cinematographer for a four day Western short film. I love a great genre piece, so I wisely Google’d him before our first phone interview. I couldn’t believe the results. I discovered articles he wrote from VegOut magazine and an interview where he shares his success in maximizing credit card rewards—two things I’ve been deeply invested in for years: reviewing restaurants (I use Yelp!) and scoring free flights from banks.
That first phone call was several hours long without any mention of the short film. It’s rare to meet a fellow vegan Jewish filmmaker who knows the Chase 5/24 rule. In July 2022, we shot a different script at a coffee shop called Richard’s Roast. That experience established a great working relationship and officially started our friendship. Only a few people have seen that first collaboration, but our second film, Gracie Turns 15, already has a different fate.
Tickets for our World premiere screening on Thursday, April 3rd at the historic TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood are currently on sale . Choose BLOCK 11 at 5:30 PM.
Just months after we met, Ari got accepted to the MFA program at USC’S prestigious School of Cinematic Arts for directing. With school starting in January 2023, the soonest opportunity to make something again would be that summer. Unfortunately, his massive workload prevented us from considering what the next project would be until he sent me this text on June 20: “I have free access to an insane restaurant on Mondays.”
I replied, “That’s a start. Everything begins with a great location.” I then suggested, “We should do a vegan allegory.” Ari shot back, “A kid is at a family lunch or something and he orders a fish. that could be a good vegan allegory setting in a restaurant.”
I loved this path as I immediately recalled the countless times my parents insisted my sister and I order meat with every meal in order for it to be “complete.” Two days later, we found inspiration at the Keith Haring exhibit at the Broad and over a delicious vegan dinner at Âu Lạc brainstormed possible paths forward. It quickly became evident that he would have to sacrifice his upcoming vacation with his sister to Thailand to make this a reality.
My fascination centered around that moment where one decides to go plant based, while Ari wanted to make a story about a kid’s parents who are getting divorced. I admittedly felt less connection to that idea, but liked the concept of keeping the pro-vegan elements subtle. We thought it would be funny if the kid accidentally takes a parent’s edible, which would cause a trippy sequence where we could visually scare him into not wanting meat.
My most satisfying contribution came when I suggested the lead orders branzino since it’s one of the only popular dishes where American restaurants serve a whole fish. In a nod to my old pescatarian days, I wanted the Dad to say that the cheek is the best part. However, I find that the final line, “the butts the best part” is hilarious because it’s wrong and silly.
While Ari did the actual scriptwriting, another vegan friend of his, Dylan Levine, joined us in developing the story. As we all grew happier with the direction of the film, the logistics of the shoot became more complicated. We all preferred a young kid, but it took a lot of convincing and a large search to find an 18-year-old who had the acting chops and didn’t look too mature to play the lead. Our vegan Producer, Kylie Kozar, sifted through over 5,000 submissions on Actors Access to assemble our great cast. We had over 2,000 options just for the role of Gracie!
In order to take advantage of AKASHA’s full day closures on Mondays, we would have a week in between our two biggest days. While we streamlined the script as much as possible, we still needed 3 days worth of production in total. To prevent spreading the shoot across three weeks, I insisted we find a different kitchen to get the fantasy sequence on its own, but that also proved problematic. If Gracie weren’t a minor, then we could simply return to AKASHA’s perfect kitchen 24 hours or so after wrap and shoot overnight Tuesday for free.
After finally locking the script, we returned to AKASHA on July 31 for a super long prep day. I rearranged the tables to optimize our camera angles to avoid staring out the bright south-facing windows and maximize the visually rich bar area. The location fit the script perfectly with one small exception: I wish the opening Steadicam shot could have ended on Gracie, but we had to make that compromise for the benefit of the rest of the film.
An insurance/film permit delay forced us down the path I would’ve voted for if it weren’t such a tough ask: shoot 11 7/8 pages over one super long day. By eliminating one of our days, we could cover everyone’s OT and rent a second ARRI Alexa 35 to double our coverage. Our amazing Steadicam operator, Remi Tournois, agreed to work the full day on B camera.
Our good fortune continued when our dates changed to August 14/15 as it enabled us to book our first choice for Gracie’s mom, Regan Floria. One fringe benefit in filming during the historic SAG/AFTRA/WGA strikes: access to a stronger cast and crew.
Shooting so much dialogue in an interesting manner with four characters–primarily seated–at a dinner table presented its challenges. To optimize the quality and efficiency of our coverage, Ari, Bretta Lichtenwalner (our wonderful 1st AD) and I spent many hours devising a game plan. During prep, we decided to shoot Gracie’s out of body experience night-for-night on day two. This removed half of a page from our mammoth first day and added visual contrast that enhances the story. Placing it on the calmer day also allowed us to take our time and get better coverage.
Our 5AM crew call along with unseasonably heavy clouds kept the ambient light levels too low to start with the big opening Steadicam shot as initially planned. Thankfully we likely burnt less time getting the “perfect” take since it happened in the middle of the day. Everyone was eager to get back into the flow of the primary scene.
A lot of our crew from Richard’s Roast returned for Gracie, including my trusty gaffer, Valentine Salembier. We set lights above each of our two main tables with menace arms. The primary table utilized an Aputure 1200D with a skirted Lantern 90, while the secondary table had an Aputure 600C with a matching Lantern. When we returned for the second day, we put the 600C over the main table to give us a nice warm light for the night scene.
The large bank of windows along the entire side of the restaurant created our biggest challenge. In the early morning, we boosted their ambient light. For the bulk of the day, we flagged and netted their direct light. In the evening, we boosted them once again. With a small crew and lighting package, I think we balanced the environmental changes from 5am to 10pm very well! Thankfully Ale Amato at Primary did a killer job in color correction and further refined those edges.
Day 2 with our smaller crew had a chill vibe. Facing a call sheet with only a 1 4/8 page account seemed too good to be true. We needed a light load after our previous 16.5 hour workday. While my lighting took longer than expected, the extra time also allowed the makeup SFX team more opportunities to perfect the fish people.
Old Fast Glass hooked us up with a couple Zeiss Standard Speed lenses to supplement my 5-lens Super Speed set. We rented the 10mm, 14mm, & 135mm. The kitchen nightmare benefited from the distortion and otherworldly feel of the ultra wide lenses drawing upon inspiration from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s classic Delicatessen (lusciously lensed by Darius Khondji). Thankfully I also brought my Schneider Xenon FF Primes in case of emergency, because they bailed us out a few times.
For those curious about that 2-second cauliflower steak insert: yes, it tasted as good as it looked. I spent a large chunk of September 23 selecting a serving dish from Goodwill, procuring produce from the Silver Lake Farmers Market, and then preparing, grilling, and shooting the insert at my house. To be sure the audience understood what they were looking at, I filmed numerous platings options. As delicious as it would be, I did not want to shoot it twice.
It had been a while since I took a narrative project all the way through post production. The experience of spending so many hours with one’s footage in the edit bay is invaluable. I encourage all cinematographers of every level to regularly edit something that they shoot. It gives such insight into your coverage, composition, and storytelling choices and their effects.
One of the final and most satisfying moments came when I visited Eric Huang and his large symphony as they recorded his beautiful score at EastWest Recording Studios (Studio 1) in Hollywood on October 22. For some reason the embed isn’t working, so here is a link. He also did a killer job on Richard’s Roast!
The abbreviated timeline of this project is pretty remarkable: principal photography began on August 14, just 55 days after Ari’s first text. We color corrected on October 5, and had our final deliverables soon after. It’s a shame that the festival process takes so long, but hopefully we’ll have more screenings soon!
I can’t wait for you to see the film and if you need any advice with your credit card points strategy, shoot me an email and we can discuss…
CREW
Ari Somerfield – Writer/Director/Editor/Producer
Kylie Kozar – Producer/Casting Director
Dustin Pearlman – Producer/Cinematographer/A-Camera Operator
Bretta Lichtenwalner – 1st Assistant Director
Ani Stein – 2nd Assistant Director
Ben Wasserstrom – Associate Producer
Remi Tournois – Steadicam/B-Camera Operator
Matias Wajner – A-Camera 1st AC
Trevor Taylor – B-Camera 1st AC
Yang Liu – 2nd AC
Ethan Gomez-Zahnley – Media Manager
Ging Chen – BTS Photographer
Valentine Salembier – Gaffer
Dushene “Eezy” Foster – Key Grip
Ben Holland – Grip
Juan Manzo – Grip
Lucas Frazier – Grip
Steffanie Klepper – Production Designer
Jeremy Baker – Art Director
Brianna Ames – Makeup/SFX Artist
Alexa Cantarini – Makeup/SFX Artist
Layla Damian – Makeup/SFX Artist
Jon Peter Lewis – Production Sound Mixer/Re-Recording Mixer
Alejandro Flores – Boom Operator
Patty Castellanos – Script Supervisor
Veronica Robles – Production Assistant
Sidney Chiang – Production Assistant
Noah Masliah – Production Assistant
Nasr Abuljadayel – Creative Consultant
Justin Winick – Creative Consultant
Dylan Levine – Graphic Art/Poster Design
Ryan Vaughan – Post Production Sound Designer
Color by Primary
Ale Amato – Colorist
Christina Roldan – Color Executive Producer
Alex Zhao – Color Producer
David Oh & Matthew Stepanek – Color Assists
Lou Cannizzo – Visual Effects Artist
Eric Huang – Composer
Jeremy Miller – Lead Engineer
Logan Taylor & Sam Gazarian – Assistant Engineers
Christian Amonson – Score Producer
Yi-Hsuan Liu, Dannian Shu, Ziyuan Yue, & Bruno Olivera – Booth Readers
Martinius Solum & Joseph Mohan – Music Editors
Christian Amonson – Music Producer
Vikrant Muthusamy – Score Proofreader
Christian Amonson & Eric Huang – Score Mixers
CAST
Gracie – Natalie Gustafson
Debby – Regan Floria
Mike – Scott Kuza
Max – Steven Hemminger
Cameron – Francesca Xuereb
Perfect Daughter – Savannah Grace
Fish Chef #1 / Normal Human Chef – Dan Wicksman
Fish Chef #2 – Ray Buffer
Perfect Mom – Lemor Warzman
Perfect Dad – Garvin Funches
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