Haiku

Haiku started out as a writing experiment. All I had was a title, Haiku, and one writing rule: All of the dialogue had to be one long haiku. So no matter what, the syllables of the dialogue would be in the pattern of 5,7,5. The challenge was to hide this so that the dialogue still felt real and not read like a poem. I knew I only wanted two people talking, but at first they weren't talking about anything and it was too mysterious. I didn't know where anything was going. At some point I figured out what the actual story was and I knew my ending. I think it actually may have just came to me in a dream. This was the first time I had ever really worked with professional actors. I reached out to the actors, Dano and Sherill, with the expectation that they would say no. I had little experience as a director and zero budget. But I sent them the script and they were on board. After filming I found out that they were just as nervous as I was. This film was meant to be filmed months earlier with a larger crew, but everything was stopped due to Covid-19. We all had to wait in quarantine with uncertainty about the project. Once the state started to open up we all talked about the idea of continuing where we left off. Unfortunately not everyone was comfortable or available to film, but we really wanted to tell this story as soon as possible. So we were incredibly limited in crew but did our best while following Covid safety guidelines. Like the writing process the production process was an experiment. We were unsure about a lot of things and did not know how things would go. But this ended up being a special project for us and hopefully it will be a special experience for viewers.