Private Project

The Treadmill Switcher

A woman who—like everyone else at her gym—walks on the same treadmill every day is fascinated by a person with a unique workout routine. When that person switches treadmills and runs directly next to the woman, she begins questioning their destiny in her life and the monotony of her own routine.

  • LeeAnne Lowry
    Director
  • LeeAnne Lowry
    Writer
  • Josh Boyer
    Producer
  • LeeAnne Lowry
    Producer
  • Dakota Hommes
    Key Cast
    "Woman"
  • Kay Beesley
    Key Cast
    "Child/Lesbian"
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    LGBTQ, Comedy, Female Director, Nonbinary Director, Weird, Trans, Transgender, Midwest
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 56 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2023
  • 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
Director Biography - LeeAnne Lowry

LeeAnne Lowry (31, extremely midwestern) is a nonbinary AFAB writer residing in Columbia, Missouri. LeeAnne’s stories center on relationships between people of different sexualities and gender identities.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

The Treadmill Switcher originated as an expansion of personal experience. I was walking at the gym and noticed someone—indistinguishably a child or a lesbian—who jumped on a treadmill, ran at 6.7 miles per hour for 30 minutes, and then promptly left. The next day, they were back but this time… they were right next to me. Was this on purpose? If they were a lesbian, were they into me? If they were a child, did they find me comforting? I then wrote a short story examining my neurotic nosiness, and expanding the scenario beyond those few moments.

Of course, nonbinary people exist and I am one of them, but for the sake of humor I left the character’s perspective narrow and the line of thinking as child vs lesbian. As I developed the story into a screenplay, I turned it into an allegory around the male gaze. “Good” women on screen have historically been given three roles: the mother, the lover, or the victim. The woman, fascinated with this person who breaks routine by switching treadmills, can’t contextualize herself next to them because she doesn’t know if she’s the mother or the lover to them. Using a very active camera, my female DP worked to embody the male gaze, objectifying our protagonist in the beginning of the film. As the woman loses her sense of identity the camera begins to lose interest and even starts looking for other women to focus on. By the end of the movie, it’s no longer interested in her as a protagonist and has moved on to the closest young women, who happen to be on the crew. But, the woman manages to save her own protagonism by declaring herself the victim.