25 Things I Learned by Making a Film in Secret

Art Heist: our first — and hopefully worst — film

On December 26-28, 2025 Emily and Nathan and I made a short film in secret during “office holiday shut down,” then two months later, screened it in a theatre in Beverly Hills to 50 of our friends. I wanted to write down some thoughts and feelings on the process before I forgot and moved on to the next thing.

we sent this out to friends, without explanation

1. “You can just do things”

Dec 26, completely ignorant of the difficulty of the next 3 days

During every part of this project we kept repeating “wow, we really can just do things,” because it was shocking what we could get away with:

• Shooting in an office the day after Christmas while everyone was away.

• Setting up lights and cameras in the middle of a street while sitting outside a row of dumpsters.

• Running around outside an office park at night wearing all black with bolt cutters.

• Asking my aunt Marianne on Christmas day to fly in that night from Denver to help… and she says yes!

• Filming in the middle of a parking garage for 2 hours and hoping the security guards aren’t actually looking at the cameras.

• Deciding at 44 that you’re going to make your first film … and, embarrassingly, act in it.

• Putting iPhones on suction cups outside the car and driving around.

• Making a film on nights and weekends while having a demanding job.

• Doing your first screening in Beverly Hills.

• … and getting people to actually show up for it!

the official poster

2. You don’t have to know anything to do anything

a still from the movie when i knew absolutely nothing

One of my favorite things in life is doing things I have no idea how to do.

At 18 I started a pet supply company when I didn’t know anything about pet supplies. I started a viral media company in my 30’s and didn’t know anything about making things go viral. I started a jigsaw puzzle company and had never done a puzzle.

So it’s no surprise that I didn’t know anything about making a film or acting when I made a film… but I seem to like that.

some stickers we designed knowing nothing about designing stickers

3. Permission is for suckers

us not asking for permission

I mean… we probably should have gotten permission, but we didn’t.

It was a risk, but the risk of someone saying “no” seemed worse.

• We didn’t ask to shoot in the office.

• We didn’t ask to shoot in the parking garage.

• We didn’t ask to shoot in the alley with the dumpsters or get a permit.

• We didn’t ask to shoot at FedEx Office.

Things are hard enough to accomplish without asking permission. Sometimes it’s required, but mostly… it’s not.

step four: breaking and entering

4. The shotlist is everything

the shotlist for the living room scene

I’ve always been confused at how films could actually be made. There’s so many people! So much coordination! So many egos! What do producers do, throw magic dust over everything? It still seems impossible even after I’ve done a small version of that, but I definitely learned an important part of the potion: the shot list.

Even though we only spent like two days on the script, it got turned into a shot list when it was in an even more embarrassing stage. Nathan broke it into locations, shots, timing of day, and how much time for set up and shooting. It really made things work — it gave us a thing to follow. I feel like this is a lesson for me in any big coordination, not just film.

using the shotlist on set was essential

5. Filmmaking is communal

aaannnnnndddd that’s a wrap!!

I’ve always preferred working alone.

When I used to have an office, I enjoyed closing the door and not talking to anyone.

But over the last few years I’ve found that I really enjoy partnering with people (like Kristoffer on Naive Yearly), which feels completely different from managing people.

Film went further — there’s a communal nature when you’re on set that I had never quite experienced. It’s almost like church, or, I don’t know, sports?

There’s something about sitting down having lunch (it’s always called lunch no matter what time I’m told) with everyone and talking and laughing after a ridiculously hard and long day… it’s a beautiful and sacred thing.

“lunch” at 8pm

6. People making films helping people making films

I was surprised at how helpful everyone in the industry is (at least, so far!).

Matt brought a $20k tripod head for us to use on set. Alex (who I’ll talk more about in a minute) brought lavs and an H6. I love how nerdy everyone is and how much they want to talk about gear and tips and trading time on each other’s projects.

It’s great to work with people who care about their craft. Many of them move to LA to pursue their lifelong dream of making movies. It feels like a breath of fresh air.

Matt: “guess what this retails for at B&H”

7. I’ve accidentally prepared for this for 10 years

I’ve never been a film buff.

Probably because I grew up not being allowed to watch movies unless they were rated G and even then only if they had positive moral framework. Slim pickings.

My Uncle Steven once gave me Jurassic Park as a Christmas gift and I was forbidden to watch it. I remember seeing it on the shelf and wondering what was so wrong with it?

So I didn’t have real artistic context for films until my 30s and I’m still catching up.

What I didn’t realize was preparing me was my fascination with Hayao Miyazaki. When I first saw Spirited Away I was completely mindboggled at how this movie was even possible. Who could create such a thing? I watched all the documentaries I could find on him and read all his translated interviews. The NHK camcorder series gave me glimpses into what it was like to be a filmmaker and the artistic commitment that went into it.

I honestly never even thought that I’d want to do it myself — it wasn’t even a question to ask myself — I was just fascinated with him and how he did things.

8. Ambition vs schedule: the real war

Ughhhhh this is so hard to balance.

In normal business, I’m an extremely practical person. I love analyzing if something is worth the effort (usually it’s not). I have a matrix for tasks based on complexity versus impact. I don’t see the point in doing 99% of things.

But when I’m feeling more idealistic… when I want to accomplish an artistic vision that isn’t very practical, how do I balance that with actually getting it done?

This is why people sometimes spend years on films (even short ones!).

I wanted to get our film done in two months — max. Like, done done. That means we needed to reduce our ambition in all of the long complex ways, and find realistic ways that fit in our schedule.

We left out a lot of cool stuff because of this. For instance, we had a scene of Abraham painting a huge mural in his studio, loading it up in a U-Haul, and driving it to LA. That would’ve added another week and a lot of expense (and a trip to Minneapolis), so we rewrote it so that all we needed was an hour of Abraham on set using FaceTime.

the phone gods blessed this scene: it’s 100% in-camera with on-phone footage from facetime, no VFX

Another: I wanted us to record the 3 of us singing a choir version of Reel Big Fish’s “Nothing” (which is featured in the movie — ska is BACK!) but that would’ve added at least a couple days… not worth the 5 second impact.

We ended up cutting like 50 things like that.

9. Starting with small stakes

small stakes and with what we have … even our trash

I have a very clear north star:

making a series or film about our time in the clickbait business.

But that is so high stakes! I have no idea how to do it, and know that I’m not yet ready to tackle this.

And so, we need to practice with small stakes. This was our first swing. I’d like to do a couple more to learn… then maybe the big stakes won’t seem so big.

(Emily cheerfully disagrees: “This was NOT small and we knocked it out of the park.”)

10. The equipment NEVER ENDS

[██████░░░░] equipment loading…

When this was first conceived I thought we’d use an iPhone and maybe a light.

Nathan pulled up to the office the day after Christmas with a hollowed-out van, put cones down, and started unloading … and ever since, the equipment never ended.

This changed my entire world and I’m ruined forever.

After hauling everything to the 5th floor we put everything together — lights and stands and even “built the camera.” We filled the entire town hall area. Then for each scene the equipment had to be moved over and built again.

It was crazy, and amazing, and overwhelming, and… addictive.

11. Memorializing a place in time

(checkmark) living room memorialized

I’m only going to be 44 once. I rent my place; I won’t be here forever.

This face, these friends, these spaces are only guaranteed to be here now.

I’m happy we were able to memorialize some of these things in a way that is beautiful and entertaining.

12. Art is still operations

The shotlist was essential on set, but that was only 3 days out of 60. The rest came down to good ‘ol fashioned ops work. We made a spreadsheet and it was fun to watch all of us control freaks have opinions on the layout. We’d airplay it to the TV and make sure everything was on track.

13. I will never watch a movie the same way again

^ a voice message I left Nathan about this

Moviemaking is a paradigm shift. Being on set was time-compressed learning at a scale I don’t think I’ve ever experienced, and now when I’m watching a movie — especially an average movie — my mind is wondering how they lit the scene or noticing ADR or … ugh.

It’s sort of like going from not knowing how to play music to learning an instrument. After that, music is just … different. It’s no longer one cohesive wall of sound. It’s individual instruments that you can’t help but pick out, wonder how they did it, hear that one offnote. It chills out eventually and your tastes change because of this, but it takes time.

I’m already a bit nostalgic for experiencing a movie as just a movie, before I took a bite of the forbidden fruit.

when blue light was gone, we wrapped up the dumpster scene

14. It’s a rollercoaster… and that’s why it’s fun

“Prepare for one day to think it looks amazing,
and then the next day for it to be the worst thing you’ve ever seen.”
—Nathan Colby

"why are we like this?”

The ups and downs were intense.

There were days I felt on top of the world, like I had created something truly magical and unique.

The next day I'd be wondering who am I to even attempt this — I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, no taste, no skills, and that this was a complete waste of time and money and I might as well go back to coding or whatever.

But the truth is … I like rollercoasters.

It took me a while to admit this to myself. I thought I hated the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial life. The truth is, though, it makes me feel alive.

I’m not a victim of a cosmic joke; I saw a rollercoaster, sat down in it, and pressed GO!

15. Film people work harder than startup people

me: “films are sort of like little startups”

nathan: “yeah, the stupider version”

I guess that makes sense since short films lose money and startups turn people into kajillionaires.

late night in the ADR hut

Maybe this is a controversial take — and it’s definitely not true true — but when I was on set, I felt like film people be out there working harder than startup people.

I say this as a startup person!

At the end of our three day shoot I had never felt more tired in my life. Legs ached, voice raw, brain fried.

But I also had a spark of joy when I woke up and realized what we had pulled off. A miracle. And so even though I had never worked harder, I had also never felt so fulfilled.

tired n grumpy at midnight n about to have a snori cam strapped to my chest

16. Light is magic

light: how it looks vs reality

Is filmmaking just playing with light?

To watch Nathan work on lighting is what it must’ve been like to watch the Old Masters paint. Like… what? Where did he get all this equipment? How did he learn how it all works and know how to set it up? How can he imagine how this will look before he even turns on the camera? What kind of insane detailed maniac am I working with here?

I’ll never forget when we were in my living room shooting a scene and, as he surveyed his work, his eye glimpsed the window on the back door and he said… hang on a minute. And he put a light outside that made moonlight shine through the window. Dude literally hung the moon outside!

nathan’s sunlight emulator

17. You gotta shoot your shot

I found Nathan on Youtube.

His video “Your Journey into Analog Glitch Art” popped up on my feed; the algorithm gods thought I’d be interested.

Oh, they were right.

My first watch I hardly even took in the content, I just felt like I found a new friend — a friend with incredible editing pacing, who loves to go deep on things, and was gonna be mega famous someday.

I sent it to Emily:

sorry nathan i swear i meant “small-time” in a very positive way

I dm’d him. No response.

Emily dm’d him. No response.

Emily emailed him. NO RESPONSE.

Yeah, this was our kind of guy.

sorry gawx maybe next time

Emily tells the rest:

Month’s went by… crickets. No response. For a while. Too long. As quickly as I’d had hope, it disappeared. Looking at the calendar showed that this would not happen in 2025, there was no way.

I followed Nathan on Instagram and decided to modern day DDoS attack him in the only way I know how. He posted a video and i liked it + a bunch of others in a desperate attempt to get some attention. I sent a DM at the same time. TRY TO IGNORE ME NOW, SIR.

It worked!! He responded!!! He kindly addressed the left-on-read email and the 3 of us swiftly met for coffee a couple days later (the second week of December). It was the beginning of the 3 person wolf pack love story started. The calendar subject read “Meet with Nathan (cool director guy)”.

Nathan was perfect from the jump, and both Josh and I knew it within minutes. Our nerdolatry immediately activated: the passion, the detail, the up-for-whatever approach we seek in people we build stuff with.

We were planning on going to the office the very next day, and invited him to come along. Why not.

Our boss saw us with him, cocked his head and stuck out his hand to shake while saying “I don’t think we’ve met?” (incredible behavior, considering there are 800 people at the office) and when he asked Josh what Nathan was working on, Josh responded “It’s TOP SECRET, JOHN!” and shockingly, this worked – John laughed and shrugged, went about his day, and never asked again.

Classic “found a guy on the internet and stalked him and now I work with him” story.

18. Editing is magic

back when the Premiere timeline looked sane

If lighting is the magic during production, editing is the magic in post-production.

Audio issue or someone flub a word in an otherwise good take? Just merge in audio from a different take or cut to a reaction shot, or speed-ramp … or if you were really smart and got a shot from outside a window then you can lose the dialogue completely and replace it with the fake sounds of outside.

Editing showed me how miscalibrated my gut was about which scenes would work and wouldn’t. For instance, the carpet scene during filming was a complete disaster — unrecoverable, I thought. I expected a re-shoot. But we spent a few hours editing it and after some split comps and subtle morph edits and digital push-ins it worked better than other scenes that I thought we had in the bag.

editing = VERY TIME CONSUMING magic

19. I’ve never been more nervous…

…than when we did our screening to friends and family.

Speaking in front of people? Hardly moves me anymore. But speaking in front of people after putting my “art” out there? Absolutely terrifying.

I was especially nervous to show Abraham. Originally, I didn’t want to show him until we had finished. He didn’t know what to expect, and I wanted it to be a complete shock. But Emily and Haley convinced me to show him the day before the screening. I was surprised at how nervous I felt… I sat where I looked like I was watching the TV, but mostly I was looking at Abraham, seeing if he laughed at the right places, or if he looked concerned. My hands were actually shaking before we hit play. I’m so thankful I can still experience something like that. I’m glad I care enough, and am inexperienced enough.

20. Sometimes improv is the best part

Alex was so fun as Greg, who didn’t even exist until this scene

The show’s most beloved character ended up being Greg, who wasn’t even in the script!

Alex Nussbaum was helping out on set and I don’t even know what happened and suddenly he was Greg and “everybody hates Greg” and it was an instant classic from the start. Oh, Greg.

we used an actual camcorder for these scenes

21. “Things that can be finished”

“finished”-ish

I’m excited to make more “things that can be finished.”

Most of my life has been spent on hamster wheel projects. I don’t mean to insult my entire history of work, but there’s no end to it. I’ve created over a dozen businesses in my life and most of them had no Lasting Outputs, no “check out this cool thing I made” or “people really love this” and it’s been grating on me for years.

I want to focus more on things that have tangible outputs, that are completed, and can continue to live a life of their own after I’m done.

22. Creative differences are HARD

we had no idea what we were getting into

I’ve been spoiled working on projects where we hardly even have to argue — we just do all the things and “have the data decide.”

But when we’re talking about aesthetic things with artistic outputs, that isn’t the right approach. I don’t even CARE what the data says. I want it to look a certain way, sound a certain way, feel a certain way.

At first I had this sort of rosy view that we were just going to decide on everything together, but after our first screenwriting session I was losing hope. Emily had strong opinions one way (“more! longer!”); Abraham was the opposite (“less! shorter!”); Nathan had completely different ideas (“do we need to wordsmith so much?”); and I… well, I kinda wanted to be the one to decide.

This was honestly a complete mess. Abraham wrote a whole new branch of the script; Emily was upset that I didn’t tell her I was doing that. Abraham was getting frustrated we weren’t using more of his ideas. Nathan was moving things over to the shotlist so we could start shooting, and I was annoying everyone by insisting the script was still absolutely terrible.

TLDR: we got through it, we’re all still friends.

post-screening rolling eyes selfie

23. Submit things… even when you’re not allowed

We missed a major film festival deadline by two days. UGHGHGHhhHHHH

But… what else to do but use the skills you have?

Nathan and I spent a couple hours digging into the website, deconstructing code and using javascript to enable features they disabled, then selecting categories that weren’t even right (hoping they would think it was a mistake vs that we found a backdoor to submit) and finally… submitting successfully!

It’s kinda the only way I want to do anything: when it shouldn’t even be done.

24. Even boring things are fun with the right people

preparing our empanada + cookie station pre-show

We decided on empanadas for the screening (they’re handheld, no utensils needed, easy variations) so a couple weeks before we ordered a bunch from five different places for lunch, did a blind taste test, and Nathan ranked them using something he called “homeschool math.” Lord Empanada was a unanimous favorite, and we went back to editing with laughter and fullness.

“homeschool math”

25. A final nudge to myself:
accept that you’ll never get the validation you crave

i will never be happy

I didn’t do this short film for validation.

But also, who am I kidding… I did, kinda sorta?

No one wants to put out something into the world to keep it secret, otherwise they wouldn’t put it out there.

But I don’t want to rely on validation to keep me moving forward — it’s a monster that is endless and ever-increasing and the validation-sized hole inside my heart will never be full. Some might even say that’s what this movie is about.

So I’m reminding myself that I’m doing this for me, and even though I want encouragement to keep going, it’s okay if I don’t get it or if it’s not enough to satisfy the monster.

My mom didn’t ask about the film screening until two weeks after. People I thought would love or hate it didn’t mention it after the screening. Life moved on.

---

Anyway, the film is done … but it’s also just begun.

Josh

PS: The film is still under wraps while we submit to festivals, but if you want to join a virtual screening we’re doing, let me know!

PPS: If you enjoyed this and want to read a different perspective, check out Emily’s “Turns out you can just do things... like make a movie. (Part 1)”