SHORTS
LET’S KEEP THE PARTY GOING (2024) 16m
New/Next Film Festival, , NoBudge, Vimeo Staff Pick
A struggling actor claims to have a celebrity father to get ahead in Hollywood.
Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Ariel Gardner
starring Nick Hurley, Blu Hunt, Chase Fein, Karin Nord, Bobby McCoy
Late one night early on during the pandemic, Nick messaged me saying he’d just cracked open a beer and muttered to himself, “Let’s keep the party going.” I laughed and promised I’d write a movie with that scene in it. I had some prior inklings of exploring my feelings surrounding nepotism in the industry and we came up with this premise pretty soon after.
Nick and I would often commiserate on how we felt overlooked by the industry, so the story was rooted in this idea of how much having a strong personal narrative comes into play as an artist. I mostly just wanted to walk the audience through a little journey that juxtaposes the seemingly arbitrarily-decided distinction between life feeling easy and life feeling hard. I remember writing out the ending monologue scene first, as a way to tap into the feelings I wanted to explore, and then worked my way backwards from there.
The outline sat dormant for a few years while I focused on Racer Trash, because it felt like the story I had so far was missing a backbone. In 2023, as I was looking to get back into shooting films, I got the idea for the Suzi Coppola character which brought it all together for me. The result to me is a sort of swan song for the ego. And although Nick’s character is deservedly punished for his dishonesty, ultimately I find it to be a story of liberation from our sense of entitlement and the pressure that we put on ourselves.
LOOKING FOR GOD IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD (2024)
A celebrity couple is taken for a ride.
Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Ariel Gardner
starring Shelly Rose, Bobby McCoy & Hugo Desouza
Made for the 2024 Taco Bell Film Festival.
We were running low on submissions for the 2024 Taco Bell Film Festival, so I wrote this one up pretty quickly and shot it within the week. I had a small idea of wanting to write a role for Bobby as a degenerate musician in a toxic relationship, and that carried over into this little suspense comedy that’s mostly an exercise in subverting expectations. Toying with the audience at the TBFF brought me great joy.
I also credited this film as directed by a fictional “Connor Coppola” because I thought it was funny.
TIME REALTOR (2024) 12m
(completed)
An aging man decides to sell the time he has left in an attempt to make amends to his estranged daughter.
Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Ariel Gardner
starring Carl Ezold, Chase Fein, Dana Swanson, Rosvita Rauch
This short was originally made for a larger project I ideated and produced for Dream Video Division called “The Human Experience.” The concept was that 15 filmmakers would each get a different segment that would embody an age range from birth to death.
One day, I drove past a real estate office called “Time Realty” in Tujunga, and in trying to comprehend why someone would name their business that, I came up with this concept of an agency that buys and sells time. There was originally a lot of explanation surrounding the dystopian government policies that would create this market system, but I ended up cutting most of it and focusing on the characters.
When I came up with the idea for “The Human Experience,” I decided to assign myself the autumn years and force myself to flesh out this story. It ended up being a real pleasure to write something where I was able to draw on a deeper well of backstory than I usually allow myself to do. It was satisfying to figure out funny, simple ways to reveal somewhat complex relationship dynamics.
When I was working on set as an extra for Kati Skelton’s short “The Arbiter,” I was struck by another extra on the set, Carl. I found myself drawn to writing a part for him and ended up casting him in this. It was fantastic working with him and was super impressed by his performance.
It’s a funny, sad, bitter little movie about self sacrifice as a way to seek a narrative resolve in our life as the abyss draws near, but ultimately clinging onto our innate desire to feel alive while we’re still here.
BIG TUJUNGA CANYON RD. (2023) 14m
After her date flakes on her, an emotionally confused dog-sitter takes shrooms and faces a few surprises.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Marisa DeMarini
edited by Ariel Gardner, music by NEW USERNAME
starring Kati Skelton, Jordan Michael Blake
During the Racer Trash days we would stream movies for each other, and one night we watched the movie Laurel Canyon. We all joked about how we could do a better job writing a movie with little Hollywood vignettes, and I ended up writing a dozen or so loglines of what the storylines could be for a movie called “Laurel Canyon 2”. At some point I ended up sending those pitches to Marisa and she liked the one about the dogsitter taking mushrooms and losing the dog. I told her she could take the idea and run with it.
She went off to write a first draft and we tinkered with the script for a good while. After seeing Kati’s performance in the Babbling Brook Taco Bell short, we decided we should cast her and move forward with shooting it with all our friends. Around that time, I moved into a new place in the canyons of Tujunga and decided to make that our location.
I love Kati and Jordan’s performances in this. Overall, it was a fun way to get back into shooting films after the long weekend that was the pandemic, and it was just a nice little bonding experience for everyone who worked on it.
Very grateful that [REDACTED] EMOTIONS released this for us on their platform.
MOLLY’S SINGLE (2019) 24m
After a devastating break-up, an amateur singer goes on a series of dates with prospective partners.
written, directed, edited, produced, camera & sound by Ariel Gardner
starring Orin Calcagne, Robby Massey, Aaron Alberstein, Brodie Reed, Tara McGorry, Margot Bateman
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS - SLAMDANCE, LONDON SHORTS, CHAMPS ELYSEES, SAN DIEGO UNDERGROUND
AWARDS - BEST NARRATIVE SHORT MAMMOTH LAKES FILM FESTIVAL, BEST OF NOBUDGE
In 2018, I was struggling to cope with severe grief, guilt, and depression in the wake of more or less self-destructing and dismantling all of the most important relationships in my life.
Late one night, I caught myself watching Judy Garland sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow on my phone. It was objectively funny to me. Maybe it was the levity, but in that moment, I was able to finally feel some compassion for myself.
Prior to this, I had wanted to cast Orin in a Kaurismaki-style movie about a series of bad dates. After bringing in some of my own personal feelings & experiences to the story, I wrote an outline for the movie that night and almost immediately set out to make it.
After making a documentary as a one-man crew, I decided I could try using the same methods to make an intimate narrative. So following in the stylistic footsteps Rohmer, Von Trier, Solondz, I set out to make something brutally honest entirely on my own without any polish.
With its hefty runtime and lo-fi aesthetic, I was caught completely off-guard from the positive reception at film festivals. I have to say that it was extremely gratifying to feel validated for something so personal.
Here is an excerpt from Brian Shaer of FilmThreat’s touching review:
“[…] Molly’s Single packs more honesty and heartache into just under 25 minutes than most mainstream movies do with longer lengths and bigger budgets. […]
The acting, not only by Calcagne but from everyone involved in this short film, is astounding: it feels improvisational and real. Gardner has an extremely astute ear for naturalistic dialogue, full of the pauses and stumbling and humor found in everyday interactions. Shooting the film on miniDV allows for a cinema verite feel about the film that makes Molly’s internal struggle register in a more visceral way than something more polished might have. […]
This film is a revelation. Brilliantly shot, emotionally gut-wrenching, and anchored by a galvanizing performance from Calcagne, Molly’s Single is a short to look out for.”
HOUSES (2020) 5m
A series of narrators imagine what goes on inside of people’s houses.
written, directed, edited by Ariel Gardner
Narration by Chase Fein, Demorge Brown, Brielle Brilliant
Houses was made early on in the pandemic. Quarantine sent me down a deeply introspective path, and I used to go on walks at night feeling disconnected from everyone else in the world. The alienation felt strange to me in that all the people were very much around, they just happened to be behind the walls of their homes. I was able to translate those feelings into this experimental short film.
Reflecting on the simple tragedies of the human experience, the musings were partly invented, partly inspired by people I’d known growing up in Los Angeles.
I was very impressed by the analog glitch aesthetic that my buddy Paul Cornett was working on, so I asked him to collaborate with me to create the imagery for this film. (Its experimental nature paved the way for the same impulses I’d end up utilizing in Racer Trash.)
IAN SWEET composed a beautiful score, and I was lucky to get Chase, Demorge and Brielle (Pavli) to record the narrations.
It’s deeply cynical, but oddly comforting.
Here is my contribution the 2022 Taco Bell Film Festival. What’s the Taco Bell Film Festival? Just another thing that started as a group chat bit that turned into a whole thing.
At the time, I had just completed a standard training module for my own work and it contained these brilliant dramatic re-enactments of workplace behavior.
The first half of the video was just a slightly re-edited version of the real training videos they give to employees, and then the back-half was an animation I worked on with my buddy Austin Stock.
With the emergence of A.I. nearing on the horizon, I was compelled to take the training module to a HAL-9000 direction. Beyond that, I was drawing on my own feelings of alienation in the corporate environment.
TACO BELL TRAINING MODULE (2022) 5m
Please enjoy this 100% authentic employee training video for new Taco Bell employees.
written, directed, produced, edited by Ariel Gardner
animation by Austin Stock
starring Chase Fein (voice)
This was my first time making a fully realized short film on my own.
Inspired by Casavettes, I decided I wanted to pull some actors and shoot something naturalistic with fully improvised dialogue as sort of just a workshop / creative exercise. I came up with this concept as a backbone and cast Spencer, Sarah, and my high school tennis buddy Ethan.
It certainly seems like most of my movies are about bad dates in some way or another. Well, this was the first one.
SPENCER’S BIG DATE (2014) 7m
Spencer’s blind date becomes increasingly unstable.
written, directed, produced, edited by Ariel Gardner
starring Spencer Strauss, Sarah Rodenbaugh, Ethan Waldman
Here is the one that kicked off our furious churn of shorts in 2016.
After Kill The Baby and On The Rocks in 2015, we were booked to produce a sketch for a show in LA. We had made a bunch of silly but increasingly cinematic stuff for their past shows (Morals & Ethics, Grumblepigskin, The Hole The Devil Put There, Cereal.) But we were growing as filmmakers and wanted to aim higher.
Around that time we were talking about wanting to cast our friend Paul Isakson in a good, subtle role after seeing a similar looking actor in an Eric Rohmer movie. We were discussing a pitch I had written about a guy dating a robot. I don't remember the concept, but it was focused on the tragic male tendency to sexualize and objectify women. We added some comedy to it and it eventually became this rollercoaster.
We worked hard on the production design with our limited resources and it really made all the difference. We cast Kate, who brought her A-game with wardrobe and performance. When she showed up, the short really come to life.
When we were shooting, everything just felt like it was working. We were all smiling the whole time. The scenes were clicking, the shots looked great, everyone was having fun. There was such a positive glow on set that I hadn’t felt before in that way.
The film played really well at the screening. During the final shot, a woman shouted out "What is this???" which was a career highlight for me.
After the show, a friend told us we should consider submitting it to Fantastic Fest. We did, and we got in! It was our first big fest experience and it really opened our eyes to the film world outside of Los Angeles. It was an incredible time.
With renewed confidence and enthusiasm, we started our own live show at Nerdmelt to showcase our work, Alex & Ariel’s Six Flags Magic Mountain. Each show, we would write and produce a short film, and then come up with a theme and commission shorts/performances from folks we admired. All the shorts we made in 2016 were made for those events.
Crazy year in terms of creative output, not just from us, but from the whole community.
But yeah, JUDY was the starting point of a lot for us, led to a lot of general meetings, we worked hard to develop a dark comedy Black Mirror out of it that didn't go, learned a lot of life lessons in the process. I think that show would’ve been good though. We wrote some really good pitches. Ask me about Chill World.
JUDY (2016) 10m
A man receives a mysterious package containing a fully functional robot.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Paul Isakson, Kate Freund, Brady Novak
OFFICIAL SELECTION - FANTASTIC FEST, FLORIDA
This was our very long, very thinly veiled semi-autographical coming of age movie about the work we did for AwesomenessTV.
It would turn out to be our last short together. It’s fitting in that it was really a love letter to each other more than anything else. It was a sincere, well-meaning reflection on our journey and the purity of our creative voice in the face of feeling very cynical about the coldness of the industry and our place in it. Very grateful for all the actors & crew members for indulging us on this epic and doing such a great job with it.
A lot of the themes in this are revisited in Let’s Keep The Party Going (2024), which feels almost like a spiritual sequel.
AWESOMEFUNTV (2017) 33m
Amateur teenage filmmakers are hired by a web conglomerate to make sketch comedy content for tweens.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Bobby McCoy, Lia Marie Johnson, Vincent Moran, Eddie Beck, Kate Freund, Zach Cregger
I don’t believe I’ve watched this one since our premiere of it in 2016.
It’s a comedy with an all comedian cast, but it’s also a long, intense, tragic, brutal melodrama that deals with some really heavy subject matter that hits close to home.
Nick is so perfect in this as the despicable director, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Anna’s performance just breaks my heart. Both are not only my favorite actors I’ve worked with, but among my favorite actors, period.
I stand by every choice we made with this movie, despite the anxious feeling in my stomach when I think of it.
A RIPPLE OF NOTHING SIGNIFICANT (2016) 33m
A cruel theater director casts his girlfriend in the lead role of his latest play.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Nick Corirossi, Anna Seregina
SOUND SPEEDS (2016) 17m
An invisible and disrespected sound guy commits a deadly crime.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Clay Tatum, Emily Green, Erin McGathy, Spencer Strauss, Charles Ingram
Sound Speeds holds a special place in my heart. I remember the brainstorm of ideas on the whiteboard and this was by far the most appealing to explore. We rented a nice long zoom lens for it and set out to make something entirely cinematic like The Conversation. Though I don’t feel it ever reached a level of traditional success that I felt it deserved, I’ve heard many times that it gets passed around amongst the sound mixers and crew members in the industry. It warms my heart to know this.
NANCY (2016) 12m
An aging mother commits a crime.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Nancy Cronig, Sam Brown, Zach Cregger, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aaron Kee
Our penultimate short of 2016. We premiered this to a despairing crowd on the night Trump was elected and it still seems to carry the dark energy from that unfortunate night when I think of it.
This was the first time I took the lead on writing the first draft with one of my own concepts. I was anxious about doing it, but when I finished it, it was a huge boost to my confidence. I distinctly remember how rewarding it felt when the plumber scene got a laugh at the screening.
This story was based on a personal experience I had when a poor kid's birthday card ended up in my mailbox and I pocketed the money like a real asshole. With this story, I just wanted to focus on an entirely good person doing one thing morally wrong and then really keying in on their anxieties like a murder had been committed. Wanted feelings of suspense & dread to overtake the entire movie and then absolve her at the end. I't’s not without irony, but maybe the only movie we’ve made that had an unquestionably warm ending. Perhaps needed to feel something uplifting after the sorrows of Ripple.
Somehow our least appreciated yet most successful short.
It played to a a small timid crowd at our screening and received the most tepid, uncomfortable reaction. Whenever i talk about it with anyone who’s seen it, it feels almost like a bad sexual encounter that we shared together once. But it makes sense, we set out to make a movie that pushes boundaries on comfort levels.
And yet, I get an email nearly every day that some new anonymous account watched it and liked it. I can't imagine for any other reason than someone was looking for porn or a topless maid service and stumbled onto it.
To me, there's nothing funnier to me than someone:
a) searching for porn in such broad terms on google.
b) clicking on this Vimeo link
c) watching some of the most awkward and least sexy 17 minutes ever made
d) loving it so much they are compelled to click like at the end and subscribe to the channel
e) forgetting what they sat down to do to begin with!
Anyway, this was one of my concepts. I used to drive by this van all the time on Barham that said Topless Maid on it. It was puzzling & intriguing to me what would occur in that dynamic. My thought was that it would be funny to explore the most uncomfortable version of it.
After shooting the first take of the first scene in a wide, I realized I didn't want to get coverage. I thought the whole take was perfect and I decided I wanted to commit to letting each scene play out in the wide shot. (Also it would mean we would be able to shoot the long script faster.)
The end result is pretty limit-testing from what I've heard, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Maybe i just couldn’t bear the idea of getting close-ups of their faces and really engaging with these characters and these scenes. i almost didn't want to point the camera at them at all.
It’s an uncomfortable movie, but that discomfort I think helped incubate some priceless moments. I am most pleased with the mundane aspects of their conversation, (Starbucks vs Coffee Bean etc.)
Where previous works like Ripple and Sound Speeds were bombastic in the storytelling, it felt liberating to make something that was coming entirely from a place of restraint stylistically.
It was fun to be in a rhythm of making so many things, because each new project was a reaction to the previous one.
I think that’s the best place to be creatively, where everything you make is the product of this ongoing chain reaction of ideas.
TOPLESS MAID (2016) 17m
A strange, awkward man hires a nude cleaning service.
written, directed & produced by Ariel Gardner & Alex Kavutskiy
starring Denver Smith, Nicole Guibord
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