Chunk by Chunk: A 'Human Theories' Production Diary

On her new film, Jess Zeidman wanted to shake up the filmmaking process. Here's how it's going.

by Jess Zeidman

At the end of 2022, I told myself that in 2025 I would direct a feature I had written. Up until that point, I had written things that others directed (Tahara) and directed things that others wrote (shorts I made with an ex, a few animations) and produced a bunch of projects where I did neither (Noah Schamus’ Summer Solstice, Cole Escola’s Our Home Out West, Ethan Fuirst’s Rumpelstiltskin, etc). And because I’m incapable of doing things Normal Style, I knew my movie would have to be made in an unconventional way that prioritized what I love most about filmmaking (community and creativity) and eliminated all things I disliked (making people sleep in freaky airbnb fake rooms, buying Dunkin Box of Joes that no one drinks, not having the flexibility to make changes because of things out of human control, etc).

So I started working on a script that could be shot in NYC with a small crew, a manageable schedule (no overnights), locations where I knew we could film, parts for actors that I knew, and room to adjust days, times, and cast without derailing the project. I wanted it to have three key ingredients:

1. It would be enjoyable to make!

   • Enjoyable meaning that it would be sustainable for the lives of those who were making it. People could have other jobs, other projects, other life happening while making this movie.

2. We would take as much time as we wanted AND benefit (creatively and practically) from said time.

   • Creatively: Small movies rarely get to have seasons because it’s like, We’ve got 15 days and those days should look like one day (see: Tahara), so I thought it would be fun to break that mold and shoot a little in all seasons.

   • Practically: We would grow and implement what we learned as we went. We could adjust working dynamics, edit footage, and have meetings to reflect between shoots since we would have the time and space to do so.

3. We would work with what we got!

   • Because the style of the film is realistic, we would embrace the circumstances of the locations we were filming in, make a concerted effort to minimize waste by having actors wear their own clothes, and prioritize borrowing or buying secondhand set decoration instead of ordering and returning a million things on Amazon.

The script came from a long running list of scenes I’d written down in an iPhone note — things that had happened to me or my friends; alternate histories of things I wish I had done or said but didn’t because it would be rude/weird; and overheard moments that I’d expand on in my freak mind. I strung those scenes together, interconnected the characters like a relay race, and called the end result Human Theories, a comedy about attempted intimacy, humorous loneliness, and the general wackiness of city life as told through 44 vignettes (number may change).

Once I felt the script was ready, I started making moves to make the movie happen even earlier in 2024 than I planned. Full transparency, this project is self-funded. The budget for this film will land somewhere near $300,000 (SAG ULB maximum) with a majority of that money going to what matters most: people. I have that money because of generational wealth. There are no outside investors or production companies. That’s why this all came about in such a streamlined way. I’m sharing this because it bothers me how rarely anyone talks about film financing in an upfront way. I understand that many are opaque because of sales negotiations, general perception, contracts that prevent them from disclosing their budgets and their funding sources, and so on. But I am not in that position. I hope my honesty encourages others to consider being more open when it comes to the money side of things. If there’s one thing I really want, it’s to throw open the gates and shout, “Rich kids, redistribute your wealth, make your art, pay your peers, and fund their art too! The future is now!”

Process

The Core Team was locked in at the end of May 2024, then we met to talk about how the hell we were going to do this thing, and we decided we would break the process into “chunks” (sorry, I wish another word stuck better, but it didn’t).

CHUNK 0: June - September, 2024

This was the pre-production for the whole process. I broke down the script into a million kinds of spreadsheets to figure out how best to organize the year-long shoot and we had lots of scheduling and ideating meetings at my house that were fun but also a ton of work balancing so many hypotheticals. I made a deck that included a watchlist and playlist. You can look at that here.

On August 17th, we went on an awesome long day of location scouting that culminated in some of us going to the Rockaway Film Festival opening night screening of Alice in the Cities, which I loved and didn’t want to sleep through, but ultimately did.

CHUNK 1: October - December, 2024

Day 0

Our first day, October 8th, was a test day. We shot B-Roll in the morning and a scene in the afternoon where the whole joke is that these two buskers in Grand Army Plaza keep getting interrupted by all the sirens going off. If you can believe it, not a single siren went off while we were filming. It was so funny that everyone got so stressed that nothing loud and bad was happening around us, but the footage is awesome and we will fix it in post.

Day 1

Our first legit scene featured three actors walking a bit aimlessly across Manhattan. Shooting it was thrilling and exhausting. I was very nervous when we started. I quickly learned that people not involved in our project (strangers on the street) had a lot more power than I realized. There were a few times when someone walked by and looked directly into the camera and ruined a perfectly good take. Also, we had two end of day problems that were truly silly:

1) There was a sample sale next to our final setup and someone had left their golden retriever tied up outside but the dog could see the owner through the shop window and would not stop barking.

2) We wanted to film outside this blue building before the final set up, but when we arrived there was a van and we were like, “Huh, maybe we can ask someone to move?” and then when we looked at the car, and we realized the car belonged to the Feds. Luckily, before we packed up, we went back around the corner and the Feds had moved! Yay! And then another guy came because he had to pick up a million orchids from the flower shop next door, ugh! But we still got it! Yay! I don’t think it will make the film! Neutral noise.

Day 2

We filmed a scene around the Saturday Fort Greene Farmers Market. Our incredible Art Director Camille Casmier set up a fake stoop sale that people would not stop trying to buy things from. We learned that you are NOT allowed to have a tripod down in any GrowNYC Market (but you can on the weird ledge park!). And, in the final hour, we discovered that if you are shooting a scene with a stupid screaming match in a bougie neighborhood, a white woman will come out and tell everyone that she “feels in her body that she needs to call the police” and then her upstairs neighbor will say that “we need a fucking permit for all the fucking cursing.” Thankfully, my incredible producers Yoko Kohmoto and Arno Mokros handled our adversaries with their typical professionalism and bravery, we got the shot, and peace was restored to the land!

Day 3

This was a relative breeze! We shot something on the soon to be extinct orange subway seats with no issues. And then we moved to Crown Heights to eat lunch at the 5th Floor Productions Apartment (Paula Andrea Gonzalez-Nasser & Ryan Martin Brown are working on this film as well), talked a lot about Gladiator, and then shot the second scene of the day in Brower Park. The weather was so great that while we were filming a bunch of Friends of the Set stopped by on their way to another hang out, we ended a little early, and it was an overall great day.

Day 4

The next shoot was on Veteran’s Day (Nov 11), and that is where things got… harder. The scene was about two friends having an inappropriate conversation without realizing that there’s a kid nearby. We had a child actor and she was great. But when we got to our first location, a bus stop near the Brooklyn Wegmans, I realized that my blocking and dialogue and the realities of space and time did not match up. I wasn’t confident in the shot, and found myself feeling more overwhelmed and less capable, which was a bummer to me and I bet not a great vibe for others (sorry team!).

Then we made our way to East Williamsburg, gearing up to shoot what is likely to be the first scene of the movie: a following sequence that ends in a silly scream. After the Fort Greene police-calling debacle, I wanted to move the location for this sequence to a less residential neighborhood and we had to do a pickup scout right before to find the abandoned YMCA of our dreams. It ended up being a great spot. There were stairs and interesting angles, but we decided to shoot the scene in reverse order, which was an additional challenge in finding the right tone. I wanted it to be creepy, but not SCARY and also land the joke. This day continued to kick my ass. It was way colder than I realized and I didn’t bring myself an extra sweatshirt and I got a headache because I was so stressed I didn’t drink enough water.

Back home after the shoot, I was having intense doubts about the project, the process, and myself. This all made celebrating Thanksgiving and preparing for the last two shoot days daunting. But, when I came back to Brooklyn on Dec 1 for a follow up scout at the home of this newsletter’s EIC (Thank you, Max, a million times over and more), I decided the only way out was through and got back to it.

Day 5

We woke up at the crack of dawn to shoot an exterior shot in Prospect Park. After Day 4, I learned my lesson and threw myself into major prep. For the park, it’s a one shot, one set-up scene, so the Wednesday before I went to the park, reexamined the parking situation, and then took a million iPhone videos testing out different places for the camera to land so that when we got there I would know exactly what I wanted and why I wanted it. Thank god I did that because it was so cold and early it was hard to think.

From there, we moved to my friend Kathy’s apartment, which we turned into a therapist’s office. It was our first time filming inside a place we could control, which did feel way different. No strangers staring into the lens this time! That’s not to say no problems. The building super didn’t love us. And the original funky coverage shot I had intended, where the camera would ping pong between the therapist and patient, did not work, so we struck it and did some traditional coverage, and I realized the scene was maybe a little too short, which honestly made it harder to direct. The actors were smart, though, and it was all ok. The scene went well and we ended with a little extra time to clear out the apartment, which made us all feel good. I even got to watch The Life Aquatic with my producer Tam Sackman, who had flown in from LA! That movie is not like our movie at all, so it worked for an after-set watch.

Day 6

This was our biggest day yet. We were shooting a multi-part scene, with a ton of production design, lots of lights, intimacy, and prop food. I don’t want to spoil the scene because it is too special to me, but I will say this: It was the hardest day by far and also the most rewarding. I am so grateful to have prepared for, crewed, and cast this scene the way we did because otherwise it would have been a disaster. Instead, we flirted a lot with disaster and persevered. There were timing/shot listing/scheduling issues, miscommunications, a few safety hazards, and lots of emotions, but the most remarkable thing was that we communicated and learned through it all. I’m especially grateful to my DP Leo Gallagher, who handled our biggest, weirdest day yet with good energy & quick thinking (Leo had been the gaffer on Tahara and I wanted to shoot this feature with him because I knew that when the going gets tough, Leo is reliable and silly in the best way).

Despite how insanely difficult this day was, I didn’t get dragged down into self-hating insecurity. I didn’t call the whole thing off, move back to Rochester, and start going by middle name (Amy, if you’re curious). Somehow, I didn’t shut the whole show down because my sustainable filmmaking experiment was a failure and how dare I think that I would be able to solve the problems of independent filmmaking with my movie that I self-deprecatingly describe to people as “What if Slacker was really cute?” No, the project and I survived, and in fact? We were better for it. Because what this first chunk (sorry!) forced me to admit was that I was never going to make filmmaking easier. I could fiddle with the formula and eliminate the things that had been difficult in the past, but there is no getting around the fact that making a movie takes a ton of emotional, physical, and mental effort. It’s hard work! Duh! And though I am determined to work in a way that prioritizes the people involved — equitable pay, manageable hours, respectful communication, an overall Good Vibe — things will always go wrong in some way, shape or form.

But what matters isn’t preventing every possible mistake or hardship. What matters is trying for the best and working through the worst. So that next time, whether it be in the next chunk (sorry!) for this movie or another project or in another realm of life that has nothing to do with cinema, we know that we can try and fail and try and fail and try again.

Listings

• Life World is looking for a new location in NYC. Must be min. of 2000 sq feet, max of $10K/month, first floor access, min. 12 foot ceilings, non-residential area. DM on IG with leads.

• A feature film shooting in Tampa, FL, in late Feb through late March is looking for affordable catering options and crew/cast accommodations. Email maxwell.cea@gmail.com.

  • I’d also love to hear from producers who have made a concerted effort to make their sets environmentally sustainable. What measures did you take? And were they costly?

• No Film School recently published a massive list of winter film grants, labs, and fellowships. Check it out here.

• Future of Film Is Female is fundraising and has a lot of great rewards for different contributions.

• Black Film Space and entertainment are offering a $2500 Short Film Grant to one talented filmmaker. Apply here. Applications close Jan 16.

• SAGindie and Helix Collective are now accepting short film and composer reel submissions for the Film Music Connect Shorts Competition. 3 short films and 3 composers will be selected as winners, and will collaborate to create original scores for the winning films. It is FREE to apply, and the final submission deadline is 1/6/25. Learn more and apply at sagindie.org/FilmMusicConnect.

• If you would like to list in a future issue, either A) post in the Nothing Bogus chat thread, or B) email nothingbogus1@gmail.com with the subject “Listing.” (It’s FREE!) Include your email and all relevant details (price, dates, etc.).

Also of note…

• NoBudge recently named its 2024 Short Films of the Year. This is always a great look at some special work happening in the scene. Check that out here.

• I recently interviewed director Rachel Morrison about her new film, The Fire Inside for Esquire. This was Morrison’s first feature as a director. Previously, she has been a cinematographer for films such as The Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, and Mudbound. I liked the film a lot, and we had a great chat.

• This week, Roxy Cinema has a cool screening happening on 1/11 at 7:30p. Showing Corey Hughes’s Your Final Meditation, Philip Tompson’s Living Reality, and Theresa Tomi Faison’s Application To Be Lars Von Trier’s “Female Girlfriend/Muse.” Plus, Q&A with filmmakers moderated by Zia Anger. Tix here.