He Knows

Hello! I'm Cassie Keet, a writer living in Los Angeles, CA. On July 18th, I added "producer and director" to my resume when I filmed my first solo-directed short film, He Knows.

He Knows is based on a short story that I wrote during the pandemic for a weekly spooky story club over zoom (shout out to Flashlight Chats). I wrote the short story after I texted my friend Claire Dellamar requesting a prompt: what scares you? I assumed Claire would respond with something fun like "ghosts" or "chainsaw clowns" but her answer was honest: "scary men suddenly being in my apartment." I realized then that this was one of the biggest fears of every woman I knew. We all have stories of feeling unsafe, of not being sure, of walking in groups, of keeping our keys between our fingers. As I wrote the story for Claire, I found myself writing it for every woman I knew. Something important to know: Claire is not a fan of scary movies, and that fear extended to scary stories. (To be fair, I wrote a short story about her worst fear and then made her the main character. That was a truly insane decision.) However, when Claire did eventually read it (three months later during the day, read aloud by her roommate Mandie Cheung) she called me immediately. "We have to do this as a short film!" I felt two things simultaneously: extreme relief that Claire wanted to still be my friend and a thrill of excitement at the thought of bringing this story to life with her. Mandie and Claire offered to co-produce with me, and boom! Our tripod of lady producers was formed.

Next, we reached out to our friends at The Knights Young. These talented folks have created compelling features and short films that we've always been fans of. Claire, Mandie, and I teamed up with Brian Flaccus, Chadwick Hopson, and Benjamin Dunn -- with Brian graciously agreeing to play our lead male character. In our first production meeting, the question of who would direct the film came up. I had been too uncertain to throw my hat in the ring before, but with encouragement from Mandie and Claire, I made the decision and said I would do it. The TKY guys were incredibly supportive of the idea, and a production team was born. Our crew was incredible, and working with dynamic cinematographer Carissa Dorson was an absolute dream. Despite our tiny budget and Covid still being a thing, we were able to pull off exactly the story we wanted to tell in less than ten minutes of runtime.

Stepping into my power as a director was one of the most invigorating experiences of my 11 years in Los Angeles. I can't wait to continue to work behind the camera, growing into this new passion.