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What Once Was
Synopsis: Off the sudden news that his Father is moving out of the family home, Tristan Rogers, a young college kid living life in the city, struggles to confront a past life at a place he left behind.
dir. Zakary Hori (2024) | 13 minutes
As my first directorial and writing debut, the project is a short, narrative drama about a family navigating the experience of packing up a life-long home.
One recent, yet powerful memory that influenced this story was my grandmother's move from her large home to a smaller senior-style apartment, an event that brought together various generations of my family. While such an event was so simple and undramatic, sharing this experience with people I grew up with was a stark reminder of how often we take these moments for granted. Grappling with the realization that a physical home no longer offers that same refuge of safety and security can be profoundly disorienting. Coupled together with my feelings upon graduating college, the emotional intensity of this inner-turmoil was something I wanted to capture in the film. From the writing to the directing and editing, my main goal was for the story to resonate with others navigating similar stages of life. |
October 15, 2024
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Screenings
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SICCA Fellowship Event (San Diego, October 2024)
[more festivals TBD?]
Additional Filmmaking Insights
Zak's reflections into the creative process along with various behind-the-scenes photography
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What was the most rewarding part about making the film?Definitely the ending.. When I saw Tommy's (the lead actor) face on-set, I instantly knew that was where we would cut. And later on, when I was feeling emotions in the editing room, that was the moment I knew all of this was going to work.
And that’s the scary thing, during the entire process, sometimes you have no clue if all the preparation will work and that’s something that’s still so intimidating about filmmaking. It’s not like drawing or sculpting or painting. It’s very collaborative. You have all these people counting on you and your vision and sometimes it doesn’t work out, even with all the money and time you’ve spent. But that’s the true magic of film, that in the end, all these talented people believed in this vision and showed up to do their parts (especially during the last few weeks of the school year). Specifically, for the ending scene, seeing my crew and family's reactions makes me realize that these themes are so universal. I love that I'm able to start these conversations with them that I otherwise would've been embarrassed to dive into. It's certainly not easy admitting these feelings in a story like this, especially one that gets screened in front of larger audiences, but I think that's what makes us all human, in the end. Our connection to these kinds of stories. Any special moments on set?
That dinner scene.
It was so, so fun to be able to sit back and watch the actors just bring the words to life off the page. Lucas (Director of Photography) did an amazing job with the shots. Tay (Sound Engineer) also got the best quality possible, I heard all the nuances to the performances in the editing room. |
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Were there any moments when you felt like giving up and what did you do to push through?
The writing process— holy shit. Like twenty times over.
Writing never really clicked for me until I went through countless rewrites. It’s something that I constantly was working on all day either in my notebook or my laptop. I was reading MANY books from Geisel Library, following along with script analysis videos on Youtube, compiling professor feedback and tracking full movies with their screenplays multiple days of the week. I remember waking up every day feeling like I had to dive back into the script. February and March were the toughest—whether I was in the shower, at dinner, or hanging with friends, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the writing wasn’t done. My Google Docs for the script ended up being like eighteen pages long with charts and tables. I certaintly learned so much in such a short amount of time, but it totally burned me out. Perhaps the intense pressure I put on myself was simply because the story mattered so much to me and I wanted the writing quality to match that passion. I'm incredibly grateful to two talented writers, Rida Qadeer and Jen Valencia, for their invaluable contributions to the writing process. Their insightful feedback on which lines to cut and how to make certain sections more concise was essential as the final product would have turned out very differently without their input. Of course, there's still visible flaws in the finished script, but my creative writing will improve as I continue creating. Looking back at my first draft of the script.. wow, that was complete garbage. All the hard work paid off, and in the end, the story gave the actors strong characters to work with. But to all my friends who knew me while I was in the writing phase— I was not a fun person to be around at all haha. I remember this camping roadtrip back in March with some good friends and was consistently distracted by the script's problems. Man, I wish I could do that trip over again. |
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Here's some of the various media material I referred back to during the writing process for sources of inspiration. Doubt anyone is really interested, but I thought it might be fun to share some incredible TV, short films, and features for your next watchlist haha..
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What was your approach to directing?
I think a lot of directing is just planning extensively beforehand, so if things go wrong, you have various backup plans. The extra batteries I brought, well, we needed those when the Mix-Pre (the audio recorder) almost died during our first shoot day. That extra extension cord? We needed that one for wrapping a cable around a corner. The extra lens I brought? We needed that too. I brought little foot socks for the chairs during the dinner scene so the actors wouldn’t be making any noise with the chairs. I brought a step-stool to set up lighting rigs, additional boxes for props, and additional lighting grip for variable sun conditions.
Being over-prepared never hurts. Especially with our location constraints, it was an absolute priority to start and end exactly on time. There were no excuses that I could say to the owner of the house if we went overtime. What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?
Believe in yourself and go for it. After going through all that, I have so so so much respect for fellow filmmakers and directors. Writing this right after the Fellowship Event, I know everyone here has probably gone through similar struggles like me— and I’m just going to be hyping and cheering people on.
Because if you asked me four to five months ago if I would be on that stage, I would’ve said no. I was really that close to putting this aside and focusing on having fun in the final months of my senior year at UC San Diego. |
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Big thanks to the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts for supporting this film and my fearless aunt, Carolyn, who gave me the confidence to follow where this story led me.
- Zak Hori |