A Complete Guide to Producing a Short Film: A Case Study: A Case Study

By Jordan A Roman

A complete guide to producing a short film, using a case study of how I made my own short film as a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know from brainstorming and writing the script to completing post production, marketing and beyond into developing the feature film version.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jordan A. Roman
• Release date: May 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869390684

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Cuddle Buddies: A Short Film Case Study Part 1 - The Script

The First part in a series of articles on how I made my short film Cuddle Buddies as writer, director and producer, from the writing phase all the way through post- production and beyond.

The Short Film

Here’s a link to the completed film, which serves as a great reference and context for all of the posts and discussion to follow.

What is Cuddle Buddies?

Cuddle Buddies is a narrative dramatic short film that is independently produced and character driven. The logline is as follows: Cuddle Buddies tells the story of Lucy, a single mother who works as a professional cuddler in order to support her young daughter and to alleviate the loneliness not only in her clients, but also in herself.

I wrote, directed, edited, produced & colored this film and it very much was a labor of love in the truest sense of the word.

Why a Case Study?

The process of creating this film and seeing it through from the idea phase to the physical production and completion was an extremely difficult process and journey, and there were a slew of pitfalls I only wish I had known before embarking on the making of this film.

I fully realize that filmmaking is very much an art that requires you to learn and make mistakes as you do it, and the doing of it will always be the most essential ingredient and teacher. But if I can shed some light on some things I learned along the way, even if just to function as an educational tool and save any aspiring filmmakers working on upcoming projects, especially short films, the heartache of additional stress in the pre- production and production phases, then I have achieved my goal in documenting the entire production process through this case study.

OK so with that setup, let’s get into the first part, which is the creation and writing of the script!

Part 1: Creative Brainstorming & Finding the Script Idea

The headline above suggests a process that is completely individual to every creative who ever lived, and as any writer will attest; there are a thousand different ways to write a script. All that really matters is that you come away with a completed script.

My intention with this section is not to tell you how to come up with ideas or even how to find them, but merely to document how I go about finding my ideas and in particular, how I found the idea for what become Cuddle Buddies.

Creative Research

For me, the fastest way into landing an original film idea as a writer and director that interests me is to first start with the character. In particular, the main character or protagonist.

This sets off the process I call creative research; I.E. the early brainstorming and searching of images, articles, topics, etc. to get the creative juices flowing. Pretty much anything counts that can serve as the basis for inspiration or the seed that will eventually bloom into the larger tree that will be the completed film.

I often find the fastest way into locating the core of the story comes in the form of knowing who my protagonist is and what they do for a living. This helps me develop their heroes journey and further explore their character flaws, strengths, wants vs. needs and their narrative arc of how they progress from the beginning to the end. It also helps track how I might introduce them or specific scene ideas, knowing how they interact with their profession or feel about it.

During this specific period of creative research, (circa 2016) I filtered my research to be even more specific and found myself really drawn to the idea of a character with an extremely unique and esoteric job, that not many people in the public knew much about.

A conversation around that time with a fellow writer friend Frankie, about liking characters who do weird professions, further compelled me into wanting to create a short film to act as a character driven study of a person who does something odd for a living.

I’ve now come to refer to this type of film as an Indie Educational Drama within a narrative context. Although, I think you could absolutely have an Indie Educational Comedy or Thriller, Horror, etc. but the essential ingredient is that you have to teach the audience a new thing in some depth within the confines of the narrative and the film.

I still continue to be drawn to this type of film, as I conduct creative research for my subsequent projects.

As a side note, many people asked me if I was doing a documentary film about this topic when I pitched them the film, and I continuously told them it was narrative; which told me that this specific sub-genre was still an untapped fountain.

This objective of finding a character with an odd job served two purposes for me:

Beinapositiontoeducatepeopleaboutsaidinterestingjobwithinthefilmand hopefullybyproxymakeafilmthatiseducational,entertainingandemotionally resonantallinonepackage.Moreimportantly;makeafilmthattrulyfeels unique.

Togettoexercisetheempiricalpartofmybrainandallowthefilmtoserveasa chancetotakeonaresearchprojectandputmyselfintotheroleofaresearcher toscratchthecuriosityitch,butalsobecomemoreofanexpertonanentirely new topic.

In hindsight I can happily say that I achieved both of the objectives above, but it also served to produce even more than those two things, which I will detail in a later installment.

Character Study Research: Unique Professions

As with any good research, writing, creating etc. it tremendously helps to get über specific. Now that I had a clear point of research, I typed into the Google search bar: World’s Weirdest Jobs and I was off to the races!

The research gods were fortunate to me and as it so happens, the very first article I read ranked the Top 10 Weirdest Jobs that people do (according to the article).

As luck would have it, at the very top of the list at #1 was the job of Professional Cuddling. That’s right, you read that correctly. People can cuddle with other people and get paid to do it for a living! WOW! I was truly captivated after I read that this was a job and I was instantly hooked! Now, mind you this usually never happens this quickly,

but I knew right away that I NEEDED to write a film about a character who works as a professional cuddler for a living. The logline almost wrote itself.

I knew it was the right topic to pursue because a thousand questions popped into my head all at the same time:

Who does this for a living?

Who would pay for a cuddling session for a living?

Is it a front for something else?

How much do they make per session?

What does all of this say about our culture?

And on and on, the questions popped up and that was the indicator that I should take this on. I figured if I had this many questions about this, so would other people and in turn, people would HAVE to know more about this work, as I felt I needed to.

I’ll admit that at this point, there was a certain leap of faith I knew I needed to take to learn all about this, but also to be comfortable being labeled as the guy who made the film about professional cuddling and to this day, that is still how some people probably think of me or even refer to me. The best part is I am now so proud of that label, but for a time I admit that it scared me.

Once I decided this was the character’s profession and this film was going to explore her life and work as a professional cuddler, I was 100 percent all in and was committed and excited about conducting further research. In some way, some of the hard part of settling on the topic had been completed.

I should also note that as I continued to conceptualize who this cuddler would actually be in the story, the article I had first found described a single mother who worked as a cuddler in New York City and had a small daughter. DING! DING! DING!

Yet again, the creative bells were ringing and I knew right away that this character should be a single mother who also had a daughter of around 6 years old and was her whole world, aside from her work.

Those two cornerstones of the mother and the daughter never vacillated, from Draft #1 to Draft #19 that eventually went into production a few years later.

Writing the Script: The First Draft

Now that I had the key ingredients of the character, her job, her stakes and some very early ideas of what I thought would happen, I popped open my Final Draft document and started writing the first draft of the script in a Santa Monica Starbucks, just like every other screenwriter sitting in there that day too.

Interestingly, the title of the script was initially called Snuggle Buddies until Jean informed me that was also the name of a professional cuddling business that wasn’t paying their employees and being sketchy. So hence, the title Cuddle Buddies was born.

The other thing worth noting is that before I had really dived into further research and reading about this profession, I initially intended to write more of a comedy, that poked fun at the silliness of this job and was documenting it as more of a caricature of what I thought cuddling would look like in a session.

Looking back now, I can assure you the biggest takeaway I learned was not only how to do proper, thorough research, but also the critical role in doing it before and even as you write. Especially if it’s covering a real community or profession, it is essential to depict it accurately. At the time I was still learning the role research played in writing.

As of now, when I am developing a script idea or writing, my two pillars of research consist of:

Reading multiple articles, books or sources related to the topic or profession I am depicting to get a sense of the action that happens but also the dialogue that would be said in a given situation.

Conductingatleastoneinterviewwithaprofessionalandaskingiftheywouldbe abletoproofreadmyscriptforaccuracy.

Finishing the First Draft

This step is the most critical, so