Isobel Asks The Internet

X - The Short Film

My friends and I entered a short film contest and it was sabotaged! Do you think our enemies had anything to do with this?

Hey everyone!

So, recently I was at a local coffee shop with Heini and Katie and we saw a flyer pinned to a nearby bulletin board which was advertising a short film contest. I RIPPED the poster off of the board to allow us to inspect it from a closer vantage point. We saw that the contest had a grand prize of £575 in cash; although none of us had any experience with filmmaking, we knew that we would be perfect for this kind of enterprise! I threw the poster in the bin, and we began to discuss our ideas.

I went to the meeting with Heini and Katie; I did invite Nigella and Mallory to join us too, however they both had inescapable work commitments. Everyone there was already in a group, except for a single straggler who approached us to ask if she could join our power-team. I was concerned that allowing her into our group would dilute my creative vision, however due to my reputation in town, I knew that it would be SUCH a valuable opportunity for her to work with us and gain skills that she was (clearly) in want of. It would also reflect well on us that we were nurturing someone much less talented than we were. We said "yes" and she told us that her name was Olive.

We immediately had an idea. I came up with the (fictional) story of a hardworking, skilled and intelligent woman who is the manager of a department store (while studying for a degree in Chemistry). Although it seemed like this woman had everything going for her, she had many enemies through NO fault of her own who were trying to undermine her every move, and even threatened her life. I decided that it would be best if I were to portray this woman, and Heini and Katie said that they would portray her (fictional) friends. I cast Olive as one of the woman's (fictional) enemies.

Olive was INCOMPETENT.

I decided to use the supermarket that I'm the head manager of (while studying for a degree in physics) as the set for the main character's (fictional) department store. This meant that I could also use my employees as characters in the film as I already pay them! There wasn't really much for Olive to do, and I didn't want her to hover round and obstruct us with her presence, so I gave her a camera and asked her to shoot some b-roll of the comings and goings of the (exquisitely managed) supermarket. After she came back, I reviewed the footage and was APPALLED; the footage that she had captured did not represent the spirit of of my vision.

In the first set of footage, she had just filmed 50 seconds of Vix reading a magazine about automobile engineering on the customer services desk of the fashion department. I only employ the best people in my store, and I was disgusted that she had chosen to film Vix (who I HATE and had no choice in working with). Furthermore, she had captured some footage of customers shopping in the fruits and vegetables department, however she was interrupted by Nigella who screamed "what the FUCK are you doing with that camera" and threw Katie's mum's meat tenderiser at the screen. Olive didn't even stop filming so she captured Nigella's incandescent rage in full. As a result, the footage was completely unusable. 

I thought that perhaps if she couldn't be trusted to film, she might be take part in the editing process. There was a scene in the film where Heini's character has to ride a zip-line down mountainous terrain with fast flowing river rapids; we had to call in a deforestation team in order to install the zip-line, so it was very important to get this scene right. I had also paid SO much money for a professional opera singer to record backing vocals to play throughout the scene, as it was very dramatic. However, Olive thought that these were "distasteful" and removed them in the editing process, only to re-record them herself. They sounded SICKENING.

At this point, I could not handle any more of Olive's shit. At the end of the most recent team meeting, she had left her phone on a chair while she went to the bathroom. I saw it light up and was SHOCKED to see who's name appeared on the screen; she had received a text from Brindie! I didn't want to be intrusive, however given the severity of the situation, I knew that breaking on to her phone and reading ALL of her texts would be the right thing to do in this situation. However, I did not have time to do this, so I begun uploading her entire text history to her Google drive account for me to review later. 

When I had the opportunity to sit down and read Olive's entire conversation history, the gravity of the situation became clear to me. The barista who served us in the coffee shop was Brindie's cousin Pearl! I was in utter disbelief when I read this part of this message; we were lucky to have not been poisoned. Instead of lacing our flat whites with arsenic, Pearl had texted Brindie to say that we were entering the short-film competition. As soon as Brindie had received this text, she had texted Olive to ask her to infiltrate our project. It turns out that Olive had been friends with Mavis, and also blames us for her death. 

I sent this intelligence to Katie, who added Olive to our working list of enemies in town. We also agreed that Olive needed to be fired from our group, but it needed to be done in subtle way in order to not provoke suspicion. She couldn't find out that we had discovered her nefarious affiliation. I decided that the most sensitive way to EXPEL her from our group was to send her the following email: 

"Hey Olive hun!

I hope this email finds you well?

Unfortunately I've been reviewing the work that you've been doing up until this point and we have come to the conclusion that your creative vision doesn't quite align with ours, and we have made the difficult decision to consciously uncouple ourselves from you.

Your editing was DISGUSTING and your contributions to this project have been negligible at best. 

Ok anyway thanks for all your hard work on the project and best of luck for the future!

Isobel xxx"

I sent that email and blocked her email address, phone and fax number. I also reported her Linkedin account. 

We managed to finish the short film without Olive's help. When it came to the awards ceremony, I was SO nervous. I knew that we were the most accomplished team and that our creative vision was superior, but I wasn't sure if the awarding body would recognise that. We had invested so much into the project in order to win the money. It turned out that we WON and split the prize money three ways. Thankfully Olive's name was not mentioned at the ceremony.

Was the way I handled the situation correct? Should we be on the look out for more sabotage attempts from Brindie?