Movies You Made: “Exit Survey”
Here is a terrific short film from co-writer/director Thom Harp called Exit Survey:
Background on the movie from Thom:
I’m so glad you liked EXIT SURVEY — it was the result of two writers being incredibly frustrated about our scripts NOT GETTING MADE. I moved to LA from Seattle in 2012 after I had a script hit the town in 2011 and wasn’t able to go do the “water bottle tour” of people who wanted to do generals. I kept writing, got an agent (Gersh), and had 2 scripts go into active development, only to see one suffer from the Sony hack meltdown and one indie languish in offer after offer to actors who took 6 weeks to get back with their polite “no.”
My co-writer Kris Carey (at the time a writer’s assistant on Chicago Fire) had been through a bunch of bad breakups and I said I never REALLY knew why people broke up with me before I got married and we both landed on “I wish we could do one of those customer satisfaction surveys after getting dumped” and it just … clicked. Since then (we wrote it in 2014), she got married and had a kid. Happy Endings!
Production notes:
One thing I’m proud of is that the cast/crew was 50% women including DP and Editor. And I met the lead actress at a script reading for one of my features (I do it for every feature). My co-writer Kris Carey read the narration and we kept looking at each other every time Kim killed it in a scene. We walked out of the reading and literally the first thing we said was “THAT’S our actress.” We brought her in and she helped shape the character. Truly a collaboration.
Cast: Kim Shaw (She’s Out of My League, “Saving Hope”), Blake Cooper Griffin (Love is All You Need?)
Producer: Dave Holton
Writers: Kris Carey & Thom Harp
Cinematographer: Alyssa Brocato
Editor: Sara Gustafson
Director: Thom Harp
We shot on literally the coldest night in LA this past winter, and you can see their breath.
Sites:
If you have a short film you’d like to submit for consideration for the “Movies You Made” series, email me.