Five outcasts seek refuge from their everyday lives at an unconventional late night diner.
Midnight Diner (2009) meets The Breakfast Club in After Hours, an ambitious Vermont-produced student short.
A tortured artist fighting for fleeing inspiration, a larger-than-life commercial pilot on the fringes of familial life, a young overworked hairdresser acting as a sole provider, a closeted blue-collar trans-women, and a high schooler stuck in a vacuum, all walk into a diner...
"This diner, a speakeasy of sorts from midnight to the early light, is a sanctuary for those who feel they live on the outskirts of their own lives. We harbor them and their secrets, the dying dreams they never dare to speak. It's not quite home."
-The Bartender
STYLE
A lot of students produce films. What will make After Hours different?
The diner is more than just a location.
The diner is a world of its own. Beyond the diner's walled in tolerance, the world is muted and monochromatic. Within and without the diner will be represented thematically by the film's cinematography and color.
The film has theatrical roots.
By tailoring elements of the dialogue in theater, we can communicate monologues and ideas that would otherwise be inappropriate in a traditional neo-realist film. Rest assured the film will remain grounded, at least, outside the diner it will.
Time is an illusion that helps things make sense.
The characters are rarely all together. For them, the end of each double-shift, gig, or school day blends together to create a timeless space. After Hours will be structured nonlinearly with an emphasis on important story beats.
WHO IS THIS STORY FOR?
In a world of increasing polarization, we want to write a story where nobody feels like a caricature.
We're appealing to anybody whose ever been the quiestest person in the break room, whose been afraid of confiding in others, people with secrets, shames, and dreams. Regardless of who you are, identify as, voted for, or believe in, the diner doesn't discriminate. We're writing characters we hope you, the audience, will resonate with.
ABOUT THE TEAM
As student filmmakers at Vermont's Champlain College, After Hours represents the penultimate test of the skills and techniques we've learned so far in our education, one final hurdle before receiving our BFAs. We need your help to make it happen.
Charlie Connelly - Writer, Director
Most people think that growing up in a small town means having a tighter sense of community. This, in my experience, has not been the case. As an anxious only child living on the outskirts of town, I had few opportunities to integrate myself into my town's culture -- and the town provided even fewer. After years of being involved with a Girl Scout troop, I found myself the unwanted member, and the LGBTQ Youth group I attended at my local library was disbanded permanently when the people of my hometown harassed our organiser out of town. After Hours -- though not a story of my personal woes -- is deeply personal to me as someone who has felt like an outcast all my life. By blending film with what finally broke me out of my shell after eighteen years (theater), I hope After Hours will have the power to make anyone feel seen and know it gets better, even when it gets worse.
Rem Valatka - Director of Photography
Finding your crowd is huge. I think prior to college, it was pretty difficult to find people I could connect with and come to trust. But when I did find people who I not only cared about, but cared about me in turn, it made a world of difference. It allowed me to grow in a way I would not have otherwise. In a similar way, the characters of After Hours are tethered to this community they built because they had nowhere else to turn. And in doing so, they find comfort and safety that allows them to evolve as people. To bring the feeling of togetherness to the screen and make the audience part of this community is my goal, to stun those who watch this film and truly tug on those heartstrings.
Adam Chow - Producer, Editor
As an enduring familial tradition, me and my two brothers would always go to a specific Denny's diner in San Jose, California to eat, laugh, and sometimes even cry about everything from college, identity, and especially how much we hated our dad sometimes. Though After Hours isn't a story about me and my brothers, the film encapsulates some of the most authentic parts of my life, and I'm ready to take the film to the next level in post-production. Using a nonlinear timeline with a heavy emphasis on some theatrical aspects, After Hours will be my most challenging project yet.
OUR BUDGET
As student filmmakers at a small college, we're often asked to make the impossible happen for practically nothing. Every contribution will go into the following budget breakdown:
