Emily Goss is a Los Angeles-based actor, producer, writer, and director dedicated to stories that move the needle forward. Her work as an actor spans film, TV, theater, and voiceover. Her first short as a writer/director, “A Little House In Aberdeen” was a 7-minute single-take film about a woman streaming-of-consciousness to her abortion provider — during the procedure. Her latest, “Break Room,” is an explosive 45-second short that has played Cinequest, Dances With Films, and Indy Shorts, with more coming soon.
If the trend right now is bells and whistles, tentpoles, AI, and Big IP… Break Room flies a small, unembellished flag for simplicity. Break Room is about censored and uncensored pain. It’s about how you never know what someone is going through… and that’s it. And that’s enough.
There’s a freedom in short-film-making that I love. There’s no set structure, no box office pressure, and no need (usually) to return on investment. There’s not far to fall. So why not give yourself the space to find out what the thing you want to make is… and make it?
Specifically, on the festival circuit with Break Room, I’ve heard a lot of conversations about finding the right container for your idea. Can you make your pilot into a feature? Is it a short or a proof of concept for a series? I think a 45-second micro short is the right container for the story I’m telling, and here’s how I got there.
I was hit with an extreme depression in 2021 after I got a new IUD put in. The hormones, in all fairness, didn’t invent anything that wasn’t there, but they turned it up to eleven. (I got that sucker yanked out a year later). I bet you know what it feels like to be fully going through something and simultaneously watching yourself go through it. While I felt trapped in this new-to-me depression, I was also fascinated by it. I couldn’t exorcise my emotions. I understood what it was to want to destroy… It could be a movie set in one of those rage rooms.
As many people with mental health issues will tell you, there was an unsettling dissonance between my private reality and the public perception of myself. That feeling, that phenomenon, felt like a story, a movie… but was it enough? What did I have so far? This woman is sad. Pretty much everything I’d ever seen told me there had to be more… but what if there didn’t?
If my goal is to make a film that leaves an audience a little more human than they were before, I think it can be that simple. A micro short can still bring an audience into contact with the human experience, and the intense brevity of the film can impart an even more powerful impression. My favorite movies are the ones that don’t fill in all the gaps, that feel like a conversation the movie and I are having together. A micro short can encourage a high level of audience engagement by handing a lot of decision-making/interpreting power over to the audience. And a minute-long movie might not outstay its welcome.
Emily Goss on the One-Page Script for Her 45-Second Powerhouse, ‘Break Room’
I sat down and wrote the script. It was one page. It was liberating, empowering, manageable, affordable. Break Room is still a story in three parts but it’s not so much a Beginning, Middle, and End as a Setup, Punchline, and Question. I’m so satisfied with those three chapters that it’s baffling to remember it wasn’t always that way.
The thing about this 45-second film is that it was originally a 60-second film. There was a final scene in which the character leaves the rage room and encounters another woman (played by the wonderful actress Kwana Martinez), on her way in. The women exchanged a meaningful moment, they saw and were seen, and then they went on with their lives. Not healed, but with a little hope.
When my producer, editor, friend, and all-around-genius Shayan Ebrahim and I shared our first cut with a test audience, we were met with universal confusion. Like universally, everyone was confused by the final scene. Who was this woman? What was their relationship? It had nothing to do with Kwana’s performance. It just didn’t work. That final scene had been the original message of the movie: we save each other by seeing each other. But I wanted a film that worked more than I wanted the film I set out to make. We cut the scene. Now I’m convinced our 45-second cut is the strongest version of the story we could have made.
The biggest benefit of a 45-second film is that people watch it! It’s not a big ask on your part or a big commitment on theirs. I’m finding that people are intrigued and will ask to see it even before I offer to send a link. I’ve been able to share Break Room with showrunners, producers, festival directors… and they’re digging it. People are open to short form storytelling. Vertical series are taking off and this is essentially a vertical movie. Along those lines, our distribution plan is to release on social media, with the simple hope that it will get seen.
One last thing. The idea that working with SAG is too difficult, and going SAG will break your budget, is out of date. My first short A Little House In Aberdeen used the Short Project Agreement and I used the Micro Budget Agreement for Break Room. The Micro Budget Agreement was created in 2020. You submit your project on sagaftra.org and then you get an email granting approval. That’s it.
A key difference between the SPA and Micro Budget Agreement is that a producer does not have to make pension and health contributions with the Micro Budget. It’s really, really important for producers to make those contributions if they can. The recommended minimum SPA day rate is $249 and the P&H contribution is 21%. So if the cost of an actor is about $300 per day, odds are that’s still less than you’re paying a good chunk of your crew.
However, if a production cannot swing it (like Break Room) the Micro Budget Agreement is there for you. The bottom line: there is no reason not to use a SAG-AFTRA contract.
So experiment away. Stretch (or shrink) the medium. Trust your audience to fill in gaps. Exposition is not always necessary and closure is not always yours to give.
Main image: Emily Goss in “Break Room.” Courtesy of the filmmaker.