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SALT!

When flavor meets faux pas expect drama a' la carte.

  • Shay Thurmon
    Director
  • Jonathan Schwartz
    Writer
  • Jonathan Schwartz
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 14, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Shay Thurmon

Shay Thurmon is a screenwriter, army brat and living organ donor. She began writing comedy in high school when she penned the underground newspapers at two different schools on two different continents. As an adult she fell in love with Atlanta where she began writing comedy bits for variety performers and jokes for stand-up comedians. She also wrote and produced comedic murder mysteries for fifteen years, winning awards and the gratitude of actors for the highest pay, and providing meals at nearly all performances.

As a screenwriter, Shay has written action/adventures that have been finalists, quarterfinalists and second rounders at the Nicholl Fellowship, Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, Scriptapalooza and numerous other festivals. As a Director and Producer, she has be nominated for awards, won awards and had her short screened at several in person festivals.

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Director Statement

When writer and producer Jonathan Schwartz asked me to direct SALT!, I was more than happy to accept. On paper, it sounded simple enough: a short film, a couple of meetings, one day of shooting. Easy. Right?

Jon had secured a beautiful restaurant in north Georgia and an exceptional chef to create the elegant courses essential to selling the film’s fine-dining world. But Jon—being a chef himself—was meticulous. Each course had its perfectly paired wine, and each wine required its proper glass - you most certainly couldn’t serve a Pinot Grigio in a Bordeaux glass! That would be as unthinkable as asking for, well, salt, in a fine dining restaurant!

To keep everything straight, every bottle and glass was carefully labeled and staged on a dedicated prop table. Precision was the plan. Control was the goal. But then there was the roof…

You see, many buildings in north Georgia have metal roofs, but we were confident this restaurant didn’t—at least not visible in our photos of the front of the restaurant. But what we hadn’t realized was that the room we were shooting in had once been an enclosed back porch, complete with a metal roof not visible in our reference photos.

As luck would have it, moments before rolling on our first shot of the day, a violent thunderstorm rolled in turning that roof into a deafening percussion instrument. Dialogue was now impossible and waiting it out wasn’t an option as we had the location for one twelve-hour day, from load-in to load-out. So, we pivoted!

While the storm wreaked havoc outside, the chef prepared the courses, and we shot the elegant montage of exquisite food with a parade of wines (in appropriate glasses) through a lens of serenity, as if our eardrums weren’t being pummeled by the relentless pounding of rain on the metal roof!

But, by the grace of God and some skilled post-production work, SALT! became not just a fun relationship film to watch, but an impressive exercise in flexibility and resourcefulness by a team of cast and crew that joyfully rose to the challenge.

SALT! is a project I am so grateful to have been a part of, and I think audiences will enjoy the humor and beauty of the film, while those in the culinary arts will appreciate the authenticity and attention to detail.