Quick To The Cut

Ready with my reporter’s notebook in hand, I rehearsed my line in my head as the camera cut to me. 

“What are you doing here?” asked Kristian Wingo, an actor playing a director in a short film he was, in fact, also directing.

“I’m the reporter,” I said.

We were behind the scenes of what would become, by the very next day, a fully edited five-minute fictional comedy short about the trials and tribulations of making a movie.

It was all part of the fun of ​“Hang Out and Film Day,” a community filming event run by local filmmaker Josh Stasko, held on Saturday at the Arts Council’s multipurpose space The Sandbox. It was the first open-to-the-public version of an activity Stasko regularly holds with friends. And it seemed destined to be the first of many — Stasko said he will try to do it every few months.

“This feels like a practical education,” said Woubalem Tezeta, also known as Abi Mariam. ​“I lack the patience and the money to go to film school,” so learning like this is perfect. 

Tezeta participated in Hang Out and Film Day once before, directing a silent film called Thrifting Frenemies. This time she was an actor playing a scriptwriter. The roles, though, were pretty loose. ​“Just because there’s one director doesn’t mean others don’t have creative vision,” Tezeta noted, an observation both about the community event itself and what it taught her about filmmaking.

Kristian Wingo, director of one of Hang Out and Film Day’s two film projects Saturday, said he came up with his movie concept earlier this week. The group voted among participants’ pitches and ended up with two favorites. Then they split into teams to bring the ideas to life.

This was Wingo’s first time directing, but he had been an avid movie-watcher for a while. He meets with friends from all over the country on Zoom every week to watch films together. Like Wingo, many of the day’s participants were movie lovers who wanted to see how it felt on the other side.

Throughout the day, members of our team kept mistaking fake problems for real ones, not realizing the camera was rolling. We played airheaded versions of ourselves, so the problems were silly ones. It was a welcome way to make fun of the struggles that can seem so serious in creating art — writer’s block, time crunch, getting everyone on the same page.

Hang Out and Film Day was a space where you could play with who you were. You could be a movie director without ever having worked behind the scenes before. You could be an actor who helps direct. Or, like me, you could report on a moviemaking event and get swept into an acting role.

Viewers of our team’s resulting movie, Where’s Abi?, might wonder what kind of article the reporter character came up with. If it were a regular film, they would just have to keep wondering. But because the comedy short was part of this odd, wonderful Hang Out and Film Day, where everyone could be both themselves and something new, there really is an article. And here it is.

Stasko will hold a Hang Out Film Fest on Tuesday, April 15th at 7pm at Spruce Coffee (952 State St. in New Haven), premiering some films from Hang Out and Film Day as well as submissions from the community.