Going Once, Going Twice

When a depressed and burn-out auctioneer meets an interdimensional time-traveling gummy bear, she must face the
ghosts of her lost passions over various timelines in order to
admit to herself that it's okay to not be the auctioneer everyone thought she’d be.

A small plastic hammer hits down on a cardboard box as six-year-old Morgan auctions off her toys to her family members. Her dad films the moment on a camcorder and asks Morgan what she wants to be when she grows up. She responds with “Auctioneer.”
Flashforward fifteen years and Morgan is sitting at her kitchen table, facing her birthday cake alone. Or so she thought. One of the gummy bears, Gary, comes to life. Gary urges Morgan to eat him in order to travel to her past and present in other timelines to see what could have been if she had never become an auctioneer.
When none of the timelines end in her favor, Morgan realizes that maybe the only way to go from here is forward.

  • Joni Brummett
    Director
  • Joni Brummett
    Writer
  • Gabe Manry
    Producer
  • Gea Rose Henry
    Key Cast
    "Morgan"
  • Rosalie Pocock
    Key Cast
    "Young Morgan"
  • Tom Von Dohlen
    Key Cast
    "Gary"
  • Laura Mayes
    Editor
  • Matthew Macasieb
    Director of Photography
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    comedy, science fiction, dark comedy
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 8 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    3,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    RED
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Savannah College of Art and Design
Director Biography - Joni Brummett

Joni Brummett is a senior Film and TV major at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia. She is originally from Indiana and found her passion for filmmaking in her high school’s broadcast class. She has been creating films ever since.
Over the course of her time at SCAD, she has been involved in several student films in various roles, including producing one
of SCAD Atlanta’s first films to be shot on an LED Volume. She loves creating whimsical, dark comedy styled films, puppets, and rock climbing. Joni can’t wait to tell everyone her story about a sad auctioneer and a magical gummy bear!

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

When I was in high school, I had a midlife crisis. I don’t know if this means I’m going to die at 32, but I entered my sixteenth year of life completely lost of any and all sense of identity I once had. Ever since I took my first steps, my mom had me in tap and ballet shoes. Years of fun and games, competitions, and a hopeful dance career turned into watching the hands on the clock crawl through the hours of rehearsals and dreading the next class before this one could end. I felt my fiery passion for dance painfully burn out into just a few ashes of what it had been before. I feared letting down my parents, who sacrificed so much time and money for me to dance, and even more terrifying, if I removed “the Dancer” from “Joni the Dancer,” what was left? Was anything left?

Going Once, Going Twice is the story of lost passion, and with it, lost identity. It’s about the fear of letting down everyone that has carried you this far and not knowing where to go from here. I want to capture these existential questions of hindsight, identity, and passion with a lighthearted and nostalgic tone. The film is compiled of camcorder home videos, present day footage, and a loveable, omnipresent, stop-motion gummy bear. The film visually embodies the longing to go backwards- to be that excited child with a hopeful future and a loving home instead of having to wear the big kid pants of a burnt-out child prodigy going nowhere in your own apartment you can’t afford. This is the ode to all the lost twenty-somethings not sure where they’re going, but not afraid to wear those big kid pants day after day, hurtling towards a future they never saw coming. Here’s to us.