Bananas For You
The Muppets meet Hallmark. When her parents don't approve of her new boyfriend, Gracie is left at a crossroads. Can her relationship with Brad survive, or are old habits harder to kick than she thought?
During my sophomore year of college, I was presented the opportunity to take two upper-level classes. I’d be a fool to pass on this, so I gladly accepted. For our final project we each had to pitch an original story to the class; I was at a total loss, so I looked for inspiration. In my Snapchat memories I came across a video of my friend playing with this monkey puppet I’d owned since I was a kid. Realizing none of us had worked with puppets before, I realized this was a golden opportunity to step outside of our comfort zones as filmmakers.
In developing Bananas For You, I handled each aspect of the production process with utmost care and professionalism. My past films were hastily shot, not nearly enough preparation went into them. Therefore our preproduction was thorough and expansive, the shot list would be enhanced by my overheads, and storyboard blocking. These efforts paid off as we were able to wrap well in advance of our deadline. When entering the postproduction phase, I lead our team of editors in creating the best final cut we could. My entire philosophy while leading this film was: “If we can do it, why not?” I plan to perpetuate this work ethic into future projects.
A core of our cast pose during our first day of shooting. Konrad, who came to help PA, joins in the fun.
An impromptu Wednesday shoot. We learned that we wouldn't have been able to complete production on schedule, due to various conflicts with some of our actors. Therefore, we scrambled together and pulled off the most impressive turnaround of shots in our run.
Overhead prep for the Wednesday shoot.
Charlie and Harsha practice some blocking during rehearsal.
Our cinematographer, Tan, preps our puppet while our producer, Sophy, is picking up our cast.
One of the many storyboards I designed to better convey my image to the team.
Posing with Tan and Dan. Surprisingly my name doesn't rhyme with them.
That's a wrap! The cast pose for one last shoot.