Samantha Gets Back Out There

They say creativity flourishes under restrictions - in making "Samantha" I wanted to create a simple production scenario to serve as my first turn in the director's chair, while challenging myself as a writer to tell an emotionally-compelling, cinematic story with the most minimal elements - a single actor, single location, single camera setup.

Samantha is the sort of character I love to tell stories about - a woman who has not sought out drama in her life, who is thrust into a situation where there is no easy solution, no emotional harbor in a culture of quick-fix advice. She does the best she can, and her struggles aren't over when our brief glimpse of her is ended. Lives are filled with drama like this, and I was eager to explore it in a cinematic form, breaking her monologue into a disjointed chronology that suggests the non-linear workings of memory, and plays more compellingly in the edit than it would have worked on a stage.

A minuscule budget and tiny crew was balanced by fierce dedication on both sides of the camera. With only five hours total on location and just over two hours shooting, it was a mammoth task for actress Jill Cary Martin to perform over six pages of wordy material with a wild emotional trajectory. Our past collaborations on stage gave me total confidence she would have the discipline and daring necessary to tell Samantha's story with poignancy, respect, and heart. My producing partner Barney Crow, a diligent actor in his own right and very talented still photographer, made his debut as a DP and composed a rich, deep frame, then worked tirelessly to process the image into a beautiful monochrome inspired by Gordon Willis's black-and-white Woody Allen films.

We were right up against the limits of our schedule, with cooks literally waiting outside on the sidewalk to start preparing the day's lunch for the restaurant's customers, but we got out on time with no part of the script unexplored.

At first I was uncertain whether I would take "Samantha" out to festivals or simply use it as an educational experience, but the quality of work delivered by Jill, Barney, and all-around sound wizard Darren Lodwick persuaded me that we could proudly share this with festival audiences.