NEXUS

After receiving a vision of his missing brother, Cody traverses deep into the woods to discover the cult that lies waiting for him.

Cast and Crew

Awards

Production Notes

          Nexus is a short film that I created for the 2024 Highlander Film Festival and the Woodlands High School. We had a month to conceptualize and bring the story to fruition and I mean it when I say that I worked on it every day. The idea for this one was floating around in my head for a while as I always imagined what a continuation to my first film “Toby” would look like. I played around with the ideas of continuing the story in my film “CODI” but only vague hints of the connected characters made it to that project. That led to a bit of reworking as Codi would stay in her own universe as I created the Cody that we see in Nexus. My cast really toughed it out for this one as we spent most of our shooting days in the deep woods. This gave us plenty of challenges like bugs, humidity, zero electricity, and the chance of running into wild boars (yes there are herds of them in the area) Not having access to wall sockets was the biggest challenge for me as the director because I had to be on my A-game when it came to battery charging and making sure that all the equipment worked. There were multiple occasions where a certain light wouldn’t turn on or a camera wouldn’t take an SD card and I would have to find a way to improvise to make sure that day of production wouldn't go to waste. The matter of transporting the equipment was also a process within itself. With a camera bag, gimbal, lights/stands, and any props we were using compounded to having to carry a heavy load back and forth every day. I was lucky to have such dedicated crew members such as my best friend Dario who was the biggest help during the entirety of the production.
          Another obstacle we had to get over was the daylight and weather. Most of the scenes were filmed during the night so we had no problem fighting the sun for the most part, but the weather was another story entirely. There were multiple occasions where we were fighting an impending storm trying to cram in one last scene before we’d get rained out. There were also multiple scenes that took place at a beach in the forest so we had to be cautious of sand as well. As stressful as this was, it made this production the most memorable I’ve ever been a part of. This film was a major leap for my camera abilities as I tried to push myself to the limit of what I was comfortable doing in my skill set. The best and most challenging scene of the entire film is definitely the fight at the beach after Cody escapes from the cult’s compound. The camera tracking, shot composition, and editing were some of my favorite and most proud of work I’ve ever produced. It also pushed my audio design to its limit as I had never filmed a true fight scene before. The most challenging part from a story perspective was trying to fit everything from my script into the final cut of the film. I had written a 26 page script and was originally aiming for a 20 minute run time. The final cut came down to 32 minutes, but the flow and pacing of the story is some of my best work. Another challenge I faced with this project was that there were multiple chunks of heavy dialogue scenes that I made my personal goal of making as interesting as possible. Something I constantly try to tell myself is how even though I’m excited about the story I’m telling, it's my job to make the viewer just as excited as I am. And dialogue can't do that job by itself. It requires creating the perfect atmosphere to compliment the conversation. The shots can convey the intentions of the characters and their dynamic. For example, in the scene where Cody and Toby are having their final standoff there are a lot of moving shots that pan between both characters. This was intentional to show the anticipation of Toby reaching Cody across the table and a physical fight breaking out. Also most of these moving shots start on Toby to show that he has the control in this moment and that it’s Cody who’s weary of him by constantly walking away from him as Toby approaches. For the look of the film I tried to dial back my usual habit of extreme colors to light a scene. I still have them present throughout the movie but I tried to use them more purposefully and incorporated them into the environment they're being used in. Whenever the characters are outside I try to stick to “moonlight” as being the source of the lights illuminating the characters. On the other hand I also tried to incorporate color association to certain recurring characters and supernatural moments. Anytime an obvious use of blue appeared in the film it also meant the involvement of Toby (the main antagonist). From the natural light simulating through the windows around him to the lights used in the compound scenes I created that association for iconography as well as to serve the character. For Cody, red is his dominant color in most scenes. Whenever he activates his power to rewind time red also fills the screen as his spirit starts to pull in different directions. I tried to use the special effects during these scenes sparingly throughout the scene in order to add greater emphasis to their use. I’m happy to say that all the details from my script made it into the final version of the film and that I wouldn’t change anything else about it. I edited the bulk of this film in three days by working from 6am to midnight every day in order to get the entire thing edited and balanced before its due date.

MURPHY PAGE