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SH - Chapter 26: Second short film: Paperman
🕑 Added 2025-09-18 15:32:41 +0000 UTCJune 15, 2022
A little over a month had passed since Palm Springs accepted Paranormal Activity.
The short film titled The Black Hole, which Owen had uploaded as the very first video on his newly created YouTube channel, had been online for about six weeks.
To the surprise of Owen and everyone else, the video had surpassed 300,000 views.
An enormous number considering the channel had no prior subscribers, no advertising support, and it was his first published content.
Matt had shared it on his socials, proud of his direction, and circulated it among his film school classmates.
Sophie also promoted it on her social media, and the crew members had helped in the same way.
But the real boost came from a viral tweet posted by a popular film-content account:
🎬 @FilmPulseNet:
This short film under 3 minutes has more tension, humor, and better visual rhythm than many movies today.
No dialogue. A single actor. An office, a printer, a safe… and a brilliant idea.
👉 The Black Hole
Directed by Matt R. / Starring and written by Owen A.
Give it 3 minutes. You won’t regret it.
📽️ #ShortFilm #FilmTwitter #IndieFilm
The tweet racked up more than 8,000 retweets and 15,000 likes within days, and the video link was shared on various Reddit forums, film student Discords, and short film curation pages.
[Highlighted Tweet Comments]
@justfilmguy:
3 minutes. Zero dialogue. And still better narrative tension than many Netflix movies.
@ItsCineSD:
That actor and writer… Owen A. Who is he? Never seen him. He has presence, I want to see him in something longer NOW.
@elena_SHD:
As an editor, I have to say: the use of sound here is spectacular. Subtle but effective.
@DirectorsNotes:
This should be on Short of the Week. Did they submit it already?
@Speedy48:
Moral of the story: don’t buy cheap tape
@MarkStone:
The symbolism of the paper with the black hole getting bigger until he could fit through it is perfect. His greed grew until it literally swallowed him whole.
@tonyy23:
I like how he discovers the black hole and knows instantly what to do, like he’d been waiting for that moment his entire life.
…
These were just a few of the highlighted Twitter comments. On the YouTube video there were many more.
And not only that, each day brought new analyses, jokes, and theories. Many people began to look Owen up directly on social media, intrigued by his performance, his gaze into the camera, and the fact that he was listed as both the protagonist and writer of the short.
Owen wasn’t especially active online, but he had a personal Twitter account and a half-abandoned Instagram.
The previous Owen did have plenty of party stories and things like that, but Owen had made sure to delete them all.
Now both accounts were starting to fill with followers, mentions, and direct messages.
One of the retweets he read made him frown, the one from @justfilmguy saying the short should be on Short of the Week.
Short of the Week.
It sounded familiar, but only vaguely. He didn’t really know how important it was.
So he started looking into it.
Short of the Week is a short film platform that curates, highlights, and promotes the best independent shorts in the world. It is highly respected in the indie film scene and among emerging filmmakers.
It publishes and recommends short films selected by an editorial team. The site doesn’t host the videos directly; instead, it links to YouTube, Vimeo, or similar platforms where the films are uploaded.
Each accepted short is published with a professional review, details about the creative team, and production context.
Appearing on their site is like a seal of quality within the indie world. Many shorts that have been featured there went on to be selected at international festivals, win awards, or even serve as calling cards that helped their creators land work on series, films, or commercials.
So, after learning this, Owen went through the process of submitting the short film to Short of the Week.
He filled out the form with the YouTube link, synopsis, technical sheet (crew, genre, country), etc. He paid a $29 fee and only had to wait.
When he told Matt, the latter wanted to slap himself for forgetting something so important.
Both were confident that the short would be accepted within a few weeks, since it already had strong YouTube numbers, positive comments, and an original idea.
In this month or so that had passed, Owen hadn’t just sat around waiting for the Palm Springs Festival or for A24 to buy his script outright.
Thanks to the $15,000 he had received from selling the option on his script to A24, plus his personal savings, he now had some financial freedom.
Instead of continuing to chase low-paying auditions on Backstage, student shorts that brought no money, and scripts that left much to be desired, he decided to focus on creating his second short film to upload to his channel: Second Take Films.
This time, however, he wanted something more ambitious and professional than The Black Hole. Thanks to A24, he had the budget.
He already knew exactly what it would be: a live-action adaptation of Paperman, the celebrated Disney animated short that, in his past life, had won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.
Paperman told the story of an office worker who meets the girl of his dreams at a train station but fails to speak to her.
Later, from his office window, he sees her again in the building across the street and begins throwing paper airplanes to catch her attention.
The whole story unfolds without a single spoken word, in a unique visual style: almost entirely black and white, with just one splash of color, the red lipstick mark the woman leaves on a piece of paper, symbolizing connection and destiny.
Owen set a budget of $8,000, knowing that for the kind of visual, romantic, and wordless story he wanted to tell, he needed quality in every department.
For five days, he and Matt worked on preproduction: Owen wrote the script (even though he remembered every shot from the original, he needed to translate it into technical language for live-action shooting), they designed the storyboards, scouted locations, and hired supporting actors.
Owen himself would star as the main office worker, and Sophie would play the female lead.
Everything needed to feel like a timeless love story, with a slightly retro aesthetic, something evoking the 1940s or 1950s, but not too overt. Just enough to conjure nostalgia and romance without distracting with historical details.
Sophie accepted the lead role without hesitation, excited about the project and about working with Owen and Matt again. At first, she didn’t want to be paid. She said it didn’t feel right to accept money from her boyfriend, that they were in this together.
But Owen insisted. To him, work was work, and those two days of filming were Sophie’s professional time and commitment.
Besides, he knew that if her mother found out she had worked for him for free, it would only worsen her already limited opinion of him, something Owen preferred to avoid.
In the end, Sophie reluctantly agreed to let Owen pay her.
They rented an old office in the downtown area, with cubicles and large windows, perfect for recreating the classic, timeless style of the original.
He also rented retro formal wardrobe: suits, white shirts, thin ties, red lipsticks, and pencil skirts. Everything was measured down to the last detail to convey that romantic black-and-white atmosphere.
Preproduction and filming took exactly one week. But the real work, the most delicate, slow, and meticulous, began afterward.
The short film had already been in post-production for three weeks, and every single day of that stage was being used to its fullest.
Since the post-production of Paranormal Activity had wrapped on May 27, Owen was able to dedicate himself entirely to this new project.
With no other commitments, he could work 100% alongside the technical team he had assembled: the editor in charge of cutting and color, the sound designer, the visual effects crew, and of course, the composer for the soundtrack.
He knew this short depended entirely on the details.
There were no dialogues, no big action scenes, no dramatic twists. Just gestures, glances, silence, paper, and music.
He hired a professional composer, specialized in shorts and instrumental pieces for independent cinema, and worked with him remotely.
He explained everything: the concept, the tone, the rhythm, the references.
With all of this, he ended up spending a little more than expected on the short film, around $8,500. Even though he had spent over 50% of the $15,000 he had earned, he wasn’t worried about his financial situation.
Partly because he had calculated his expenses in advance, but mostly because the signs regarding the future of the script that A24 had optioned were more than positive.
Since the option agreement had been signed, more than a month had passed, and during that time Owen had stayed in touch with the A24 team. Not constantly, but enough to receive updates, specific questions, and, at times, to participate as a supporting writer in online meetings with the development team.
The rewrites that were made were minimal, which was unusual in the industry. And most importantly, the feedback he received was very positive.
Owen didn’t know exactly how long it would take for A24 to move forward with the full purchase of the script rights, but he could feel it coming.
At that moment, only eight days remained until the Palm Springs Festival began, and one week until the short film Paperman would be ready. Owen was in his apartment.
The curtains were open, letting in the warm glow of sunset. Owen sat in front of his monitor, where the YouTube tab was open. The trailer for Paperman was about to go live, the thumbnail and description were already set.
He placed the cursor over the red button and whispered, “Done. Trailer uploaded successfully.”
Sophie and Matt watched from behind him.
“Great! Here we go, short film festivals!” Matt exclaimed enthusiastically, raising a fist in the air.
Sophie smiled, stretched, and picked up her phone from the backrest of the couch. “Now to promote it on our socials,” she said, almost like a disguised command.
Within seconds, each of them was on their own device, in silence, typing, editing, picking emojis and hashtags.
From the Twitter account he had created for Second Take Films, Owen wrote a new tweet with the trailer link.
[📢 Twitter Post (from @SecondTakeFilms):
🎥 Official Trailer
Our new short film now has a release date.
Inspired by the magic of silent cinema, black and white, and improbable encounters.
💌 Paperman
Directed by Matt R.
Starring Owen A. and Sophie T.
🗓️ Premiere: June 22 at 5:00 PM
🔗 Watch the full trailer: youtu.be/xxxxxx
#Paperman #ShortFilm #IndieFilm #VisualRomance #Retro #SecondTakeFilms]
Comments
Rivalty
Paper man is a banger
Calvin Ellis
❤️Thank you for this moment.❤️
