"Bookends" is a pretty silly short film that was, based on a prompt of.

"It's not what you think."

We were spitballing, and then this idea came of, you know, this, the trickiness of gift giving, and then, yeah, we just wanted the absurdity of, of what could fit in a box.

We have a nice, round, we have a a table that has the leaves in it, you know.

So we were able to have space underneath.

So we had a tablecloth we were able to cut.

And so we did all the shots with the box beforehand.

And then we were able to set up the box with the hole in it.

for the rest of the movie.

So we made sure we got all the shots we needed beforehand with the box off the table and the table as a table.

And then we had to set up for the kind of the effects, shots after that.

Yeah!

Classic- that's where the tripod comes in.

Not really crude.

Kind of- it's crude now, the kind of, special effects kind of within Premiere not After Effects, just kind of masking and two frames.

Don't move the shot.

Keep the tripod still, and just make sure we have- shoot it so that there's space for him in both both frames.

And then run the scene twice with him in both places so that our dialog matches and stuff too.

My family met this other family through church, and they started telling me about how they had to escape Nicaragua.

And it was a really powerful story.

I decided I wanted to make a documentary.

I interviewed the mom, dad and the older son.

The family doesn't really know English.

So in order for this to take place, we had three interpreters on set.

So we had two interpreters that were trilingual and then one interpreter who only would work between English and ASL.

So it was a crowded place, working with all of us in a small space.

But, you know, making sure that communication happened.

We needed that.

And so, you know, I can lip read Spanish, but it takes a lot more energy for me to understand what's being said.

So that's why I prefer to have an interpreter there.

That way I can focus on filming as opposed to focusing on the communication aspect.

So it allowed me to work on thinking about the questions and getting down to that with the people I'm interviewing.

So that was one of the challenges.