I Made a Short Film. It’s Called Game Night. You Can Watch It Now.

Please give it a watch!

Sometimes in the sea of getting caught up in the industry, I have to remind myself that I indeed make films too haha. And maybe this will be the first time any of you have seen something I have actually put together (with a lot of help).

A little while back—during the blur of transitioning from Creative Development at Warner Bros. to a new role at Netflix—I set out to make a short film with my roommate. We didn’t have a big team or a big budget. Just a story we believed in and a desire to push ourselves creatively while juggling everything else in our lives.

At the time, I was still reading scripts full-time, trying to grow inside the company, attending events, taking meetings, and navigating my own career path. Somewhere in the middle of that grind, we carved out time to shoot this project. We spent the rest of the year editing it—nights, weekends, stolen hours between meetings. We eventually screened it at Netflix. It was exhausting. And it taught me more than I ever expected.

The film is called Game Night.
Logline: A budding young couple’s relationship gets put to the test during a game night amongst close friends.

At its core, Game Night is about relationships—the unspoken rules, the invisible lines, the expectations we place on ourselves and others. In this era of expanding definitions around gender and sexuality, one particular topic still seems to make people uneasy: open relationships. That’s what we wanted to explore. Not to provoke, but to humanize. To show that curiosity or desire outside of your relationship isn’t inherently shameful, and that not all couples look the same, nor should they have to.

Stills from the short!

Here’s the statement we wrote while developing the film:

My roommate and I set out to create a short that challenges the way we see normal societal relationships. Oftentimes in this day and age, our culture is exposed to more consensual relationships that fall outside the heteronormative nature of one man and one woman. While we’ve made strides in visibility around same-gender and nonbinary couples, open relationships still seem taboo. Enter: Game Night. Our goal—through what we hope is an unraveling and entertaining experience—is to show that couples who have wants or desires outside of their relationship shouldn’t be shunned as different or abnormal. Rather, they should be accepted as another way to live, right alongside traditional and evolving relationship models.

From a craft perspective, I learned a lot. First: you don’t finish writing the film when you finish the script. Some of our best discoveries came in post-production—emotional pivots, subtle tone shifts, even full re-interpretations of what scenes meant. Editing became an act of re-authoring. Second: invest on screen. Our cast was incredible, and they carried the film. In short-form storytelling, performance is everything.

But I also walked away with some real lessons about sustainability. The film got into Palm Springs Shorts (which I’m incredibly grateful for), but beyond that, it was tough. A lot of smaller festivals passed. In hindsight, the film may have been too polished, too long, or just hard to program. It wasn’t right-sized for the festival system. And while I’m proud of every dollar we spent, it was simply too expensive for a short. Not something I can repeat without burning out.

Going forward, I want to be more resourceful. I want to develop stories I can actually make—not just write. Films that still feel ambitious, but are also shootable and sustainable. I’ve got better work in me. I just want to be smarter about how I bring it to life.

That said, I’m proud of this one. It marked a turning point for me—professionally, creatively, and personally. It reminded me what I’m capable of. And now I’d love to share it with you.

🎬 Watch Game Night here:

Would love to hear your thoughts,
Ellis

P.S. I will have a follow up post for paid subscribers on the timeline process and other insights on the journey of the film. Paid subs, let me know what you would like to see in my post.