Hey friends and lovers! I’m psyched to share a little bit from our recent shoot for the second ep of I LIKE U WHY R U SO DUMB, the web series I’m working on with the lovely Jessica Rotondi. This is just part of an outtake from what fancy film peeps called the “master shot.” We only use part of master shots in films, but they’re fun to shoot because you tend to run the whole scene in them–and when you do that, actors get looooooopy.

I was a little nervous shooting a comedy because most of my work is on the dramatic side. (It’s not usually a Kat Asharya film unless it ends with a moment of quiet emotional devastation.) But my venture into Judd Apatow territory was super-fun! Get good actors, give them some direction and freedom, and sit back and let some major hilarity happen.

Some context: Max is an aspiring writer whose latest magnum opus is composing an epic poem on Twitter (Yes, you read that right. Epic poem. On Twitter.) He’s feeling the pressure because he just made a valuable contact with someone who could help him hit the next level in terms of his career. His next Tweets have to be brilliant! Here, he’s hanging with his bros, Christian and Ethan, who offer a little help composing his next few lines:

Max is played by Haskell King, Christian by Christian Magalhaes and Ethan, our super-gamer, is played by Doug Roland. All great guys, all hilarious together. Got loads of footage of the magic trio–we’ll have to do an outtakes reel to show y’all all the goodness!

Also: did you also enjoy my “fake video game” sound design? I made it up in, like, fifteen minutes–with sound files of some weird beveling drill, a Civil War reenactment cannon, a standard machine gun file, and a sound file mysteriously named “Mexican megaphone.”

(Mucho thanks also to Raeshem Nijhon, who operated camera for this footage, as well as Tobey List for doing sound!)

Some great news! Today we shot the first episode of a webisode series that I’ve been cooking up with my classmate and friend Jessica Rotondi. It was a gorgeous day in Riverside Park and we spent the afternoon shooting and pretty much wrapped it up…one down, two more to go! The series is called I LIKE YOU, WHY ARE YOU SO DUMB? (Pretty obvious what it’s about, right?) and it’s the first ep of a three-part “teaser season.” I’ll be directing the next ep, and Jess and I will be co-directing the last one. The thinking is that if we’re pleased with the results of our little experiment, we’ll fundraise for a full season. Can’t wait to show off some of the actual footage we shot, but here’s a little bit of the “behind the scenes”: