05 Director's Statement
You Were Just Here is a love letter to my father, whom I lost to pancreatic cancer in 2019 and is loosely based on our real-life relationship.
Upon finding my father's handwritten itinerary for a cross-country train trip to a lighthouse, I began to wonder what that trip would have looked like if I took it with his urn.
Those constant thoughts became the basis for the screenplay and I allowed my creativity, nostalgia and love of storytelling to do the rest.
This story is also an homage to the beauty of riding the rails and seeing the country from the viewpoint of a train car. My father was a major "railfan" and I know this film will have mass appeal to the hundreds of thousands of train enthusiasts in the US. This movie is also dedicated to them and their passion for keeping this vital part of our country's history alive.
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This is a film that people from all walks of life can fall in love with.
My goal is to raise the funds needed to produce You Were Just Here via my production company, Runaway Mill Productions, in order to remain as writer, director, and editor.
I also plan to reprise my role as Vanessa (as shown in the film trailer) and ensure the other cast are able to do so as well.
The goal is to secure funding in stages/rounds in order to properly plan for preproduction, production and edit scenes in real-time to ensure quality and efficiency by minimizing the need for reshoots.
We can effectively watch this film come together in real-time, as opposed to waiting several years for the story to materialize into a living, breathing work.