The Journey of Merrill (Short Film): Director's Cut

Description YT

This is the Director's Cut of my Senior film project in College.

The Journey of Merrill was written by Kevin Lieber as a side-project to be filmed during breaks in his senior capstone drama class in 2006. However, after realizing their drama project was a failure and Director of Photography Keith Carlson having been fired -- Kevin walked off the set and never returned.

Keith contacted Kevin after having a meeting with their professor and the two decided to make Merrill an official school project.

Kevin and Keith then brought in Casey Siegel who had been outcast from a different drama group to work on the audio and edit the project. The ragtag team complete -- work began on storyboarding and location scouting.

When the props, costumes, and actors were gathered -- the shooting began. The scenes that took place in Merrill's house were shot in four days. The grocery store scenes and all of the exterior shots took a little over a week.

With only about a month and a half to do the entire project, things were a bit hectic. Most fixes and re-shoots were done in front of a blue screen. They spent three straight days editing roughly 12 hours of footage with only about four hours of sleep between them.

After finally getting the project edited with only an hour before the deadline they turned it into their professor to be played at the Communication Department Showcase. It was the first comedy of its kind to be produced by the department.

In 2007, The Journey of Merrill was given a gold award from the Aurora Awards.

Writer/Director -- Kevin Lieber
Director of Photography/Producer -- Keith Carlson
Editor/Sound Designer -- Casey Siegel