A question lingers in Kelsey’s mind. She can’t seem to fall back asleep until she gets an answer.

Director’s Vision for ‘Over Early’

Initially, I thought we were going to shoot this short on 16mm film. I mention this first because that was a detail I kept in mind while writing this short film. I met Jacob (DP) a couple of months prior to filming. We were working together on a different project that had unfortunately wound up falling through.

However, Jacob told me he had one roll of black and white film left over from an old shoot and was looking to use it. So, I attempted to write a short film that could be shot on that one roll of film. “Over Early” is what I came up with.

As we moved toward production, Jacob and I realized that color suited the project better, so we scrapped the 16mm idea (though we still want to shoot that roll at some point!). I loved writing something with the restraints that come with shooting film in mind. The process of thinking how we’d shoot a project on film was stimulating and forced me to think about production in a different way than I was used to.

I was fortunate to work with two incredible actors for this project along with a small but stellar crew. Even though the parameters of the project changed with the switch to digital, I think we all wanted to achieve something that showed a contained insight into a couple’s lives – something that was strained, but ultimately not broken. It was a pleasure to make this short.