Short film · 2024
Farewell Christmas
- Role
- Grip
- Production
- Peppermint Films
Approach
One perfect night of make-believe: real snow falling, warm lights in the windows, and a family holding it together just long enough for their daughter to believe it.
Farewell Christmas follows a family coming apart during the holidays. The parents have decided to divorce, but their daughter doesn't know yet. So they give her one last good Christmas: for one night only, they live inside the perfect family she still believes in, before they all have to face what comes next.
As a grip, I built the world the camera saw: the snow machine, lighting fixtures and C-stands, and a giant tarp rigged over a car for the night driving scenes. When we didn't have the right bars to hold the tarp up, we built our own rig on the spot, and it held. For some shots, I held the snow machine up by hand to get the snowfall exactly where the frame needed it.
That car scene is my favorite thing I helped build. Everything was practical: real falling snow, real light, a real car under a tarp we rigged ourselves. On screen it looks fully cinematic, and nothing was added afterward.
We shot over four nights at a single location, a crew member's house, with a crew of about eleven. Shooting entirely at night meant no racing the sun, so we could take the time each setup needed.
The video
