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 Googled him before our first phone interview. I couldn’t believe the results. I discovered articles he wrote for 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.
How It Started
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 Theatre in Hollywood are currently on sale. Choose BLOCK 11 at 5:30 PM.
Finding the Story
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.
Production
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.
We had access to AKASHA on their full day closures on Mondays, which was an incredible opportunity—but it came with real constraints. Because we were shooting in Culver City, permitting and insurance limitations made it difficult to move freely or adjust our schedule. While we streamlined the script as much as possible, we still needed three days worth of production. Spreading that across multiple Mondays would have been inefficient, so we looked for ways to consolidate.
An insurance and permit delay ultimately forced the decision I likely would’ve preferred anyway: shoot 11 7/8 pages over one very long day. By eliminating one of our days, we could cover everyone’s overtime and rent a second ARRI Alexa 35 to maximize our coverage. Our amazing Steadicam operator, Remi Tournois, agreed to work the full day on B camera, which gave us the flexibility we needed to move quickly without sacrificing performance.
Once we committed to that approach, everything became about efficiency. Shooting so much dialogue with four characters—primarily seated—at a dinner table required a very specific plan. Ari, Bretta Lichtenwalner (our incredible 1st AD), and I spent many hours designing coverage that would feel dynamic without slowing us down. By making Gracie’s out-of-body kitchen sequence a night scene and moving it to our second day, we drastically helped our schedule and gained wonderful visual contrast.
A lot of our crew from Richard’s Roast returned for Gracie, including my gaffer Valentine Salembier. We rigged overhead units above each of our two primary tables using menace arms. The main table was lit with an Aputure 1200D through a skirted Lantern 90, while the secondary table used an Aputure 600C. On day two, we swapped in the 600C over the main table to create a warmer, more stylized look for the night work.
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).
Post & Reflection
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 they shoot.
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 final deliverables shortly after.
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
Production
Kylie Kozar — Producer
Dustin Pearlman — Producer
Ben Wasserstrom — Associate Producer
Nasr Abuljadayel — Creative Consultant
Justin Winick — Creative Consultant
Camera
Dustin Pearlman — Cinematographer / A-Camera Operator
Remi Tournois — Steadicam / B-Camera Operator
Matias Wajner — 1st AC (A-Cam)
Trevor Taylor — 1st AC (B-Cam)
Yang Liu — 2nd AC
Ethan Gomez-Zahnley — Media Manager
Ging Chen — BTS Photographer
Grip & Electric
Valentin Salembier — Gaffer
Dushene “Eezy” Foster — Key Grip
Ben Holland — Grip
Juan Manzo — Grip
Lucas Frazier — Grip
Production Design
Steffanie Klepper — Production Designer
Jeremy Baker — Art Director
Dylan Levine — Graphic Art / Poster Design
Wardrobe & Makeup
Brianna Ames — Makeup / SFX Artist
Alexa Cantarini — Makeup / SFX Artist
Layla Damian — Makeup / SFX Artist
Sound
Jon Peter Lewis — Production Sound Mixer / Re-Recording Mixer
Alejandro Flores — Boom Operator
Post
Ryan Vaughan — Sound Designer
Color by Primary
Ale Amato — Colorist
Christina Roldan — Executive Producer (Color)
Alex Zhao — Color Producer
David Oh & Matthew Stepanek — Color Assist
Visual Effects
Lou Cannizzo — VFX Artist
Music
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
Natalie Gustafson — Gracie
Regan Floria — Debby
Scott Kuza — Mike
Steven Hemminger — Max
Francesca Xuereb — Cameron
Savannah Grace — Perfect Daughter
Dan Wicksman — Fish Chef #1 / Normal Human Chef
Ray Buffer — Fish Chef #2
Lemor Warzman — Perfect Mom
Garvin Funches — Perfect Dad
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