Award-Winning Student Filmmaker Sam VerMerris Crafting "Evening Broadcast", Scripting, Shooting, Scoring & More

What if a childhood TV hero could shape your future career aspirations? Meet Sam VerMerris, a budding filmmaker from Rockford, Michigan, who turned his fascination with "MacGyver" into a passionate journey through the world of filmmaking. Sam recounts his evolution from creating simple skits with friends to crafting more intricate films like "Evening Broadcast." Listen as Sam shares amusing behind-the-scenes stories, including the time a car got stuck in the snow during production. He provides a window into the meticulous process of planning, scriptwriting, and managing the myriad challenges that come with making a student film.

In our conversation, Sam offers valuable insights into the importance of perseverance and leadership, particularly when coordinating scenes and managing actors' schedules. We also discuss the recognition his film received at the Michigan Student Film Festival and how it has impacted his journey. As Sam looks to the future, he's actively seeking internships and PA positions to gain more hands-on experience in the film industry. Tune in to hear about his upcoming projects and learn how you can connect with this promising young filmmaker, eager to make his mark in the cinematic world.

FIND SAM HERE: https://samvermerris.my.canva.site/about

5 Takeaways
Perseverance is Key: Sam emphasizes the importance of pushing through challenges, whether it's coordinating schedules, dealing with weather issues, or motivating a team to complete a project.

Creative Problem-Solving: Filmmaking often requires on-the-spot solutions, like using a blanket to free a stuck car or adapting lighting setups to achieve the desired visual effects.

Importance of Experience: Hands-on experience is invaluable. Sam highlights that practical learning, even through trial and error, provides insights that theoretical knowledge can't match.

Collaboration and Leadership: Successfully completing a film project often involves leading and motivating a team, coordinating various roles, and ensuring everyone is aligned with the project's vision.

Evolving Vision: The final product can significantly differ from the initial concept due to practical constraints. Flexibility and adaptation are essential in the filmmaking process.

You can also learn more at https://thepalmer.group/   

Whether moving to Michigan or another state,, we can help and we would love to chat with you over a coffee or your favorite beverage on us!
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Transcript

Eldon Palmer: 0:02

Hey, welcome back. Today we have Sam VerMerris

Eldon Palmer: 0:04

, a student filmmaker, here in Rockford, Michigan. We're going to talk a little bit about a short film that he recently made and the process on how that gets put together. So welcome, Sam.

Sam VerMerris: 0:14

Thanks for joining us. Thank you, yeah, it's nice to be on here.

Eldon Palmer: 0:17

Yeah, usually Sam works behind the scenes quite a bit helping out on the podcast, so it's kind of nice to be in front and get to talk about, um, what you're passionate about. Yeah, for sure, I'm excited so you know, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you became interested in filmmaking so, oh man, go back to like fifth grade, ish.

Sam VerMerris: 0:38

Uh, me and my friends were like. I watched this show called mcgyver. Yeah, so I feel like you probably watched.

Eldon Palmer: 0:44

That's my time period, like when I was a kid. I really liked that show. I watched this show called mcgyver, yeah, so I feel like you probably watched. That's my time period, like when I was a kid I really liked that show.

Sam VerMerris: 0:48

I watched like first three seasons in like a couple weeks but I like, loved like the spy, like he was like using these random objects to like get things done I was like let's make a little movie about mcdiver. You know, yeah was not trying that hard to like be different, be different. Yeah, I was like this is what it's inspired from. So we did all that. You know, we filmed it in probably like two days.

Sam VerMerris: 1:13

We edited it on like a little ipod yeah and then we just posted it and we were like cool, we did that. It was just in the summer and then a year later or two, um, we kind of started like, oh wait, we have this youtube channel with like this thing on it. All right, let's keep making more, yeah, um, so we just made a bunch of little short films. They're mostly like war. My friend had a bunch of like uniforms and like toy guns and stuff, um, and then we kind of started making like funny skits and stuff. So just a lot of making videos, like probably I think there's over a hundred that we like made.

Eldon Palmer: 1:49

Man, I didn't even know that. I didn't dig around there that much.

Sam VerMerris: 1:51

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff out there. I started like getting into other like school programs where I was actually had access to like nicer equipment other than like an iphone or something like that. We had audio recording and stuff. I decided like, okay, if I'm gonna like do this, like it'd become a passion of mine at that point um, let's just make something. And I was free in the winter, you know, after the busyness of the fall that I usually have I was like, all right, let's, let's do this. And that's how we came to evening broadcast awesome.

Eldon Palmer: 2:24

So you're in the you know tv studio and film production at rockford schools. So you're using some of that equipment as possible, but use some of mine, use whatever you can gather. So it's kind of neat. You, when we first met I was looking for somebody to help out um with making youtube videos and you had shared with me one of your um short films that I thought was pretty cool. You know, you and friends running through a field and get some special effects in there and stuff and a little bit of storyline. That was cool. So I was kind of impressed. So that brings us today. So you know your short film that you made called evening broadcast, right, and it's roughly 20 minutes, about 20 minutes, yeah, 20 minutes. Tell us about you know why you that you made called evening broadcast right, and it's roughly what 20 minutes, about 20 minutes, yeah, 20 minutes.

Sam VerMerris: 3:07

Tell us about you know why you decided to do that and a little bit about the planning process and filming okay, well, obviously I decided to do it so I could actually start doing things rather than thinking about it, because I can think about it as much as I want, but I actually have something to show.

Sam VerMerris: 3:23

I don't have anything right. So the planning process kind of just came about. I was just like we were taking pictures, um, after filming a music video for an assignment in my tv studio class, and it was just from the back seat, um, it was like some moody, like driving pictures of two people in a car and I was like I'm, this could be like a short film, like we could film it, like the whole thing, like this, um, and so I just started writing in my notes app like the general idea, and then it kept expanding, expanding and I soon I had like a, like a whole story Right, um, now, that is what I had in the beginning, and like November, december is nothing like how it actually turned out because of like weather and like limitations on what, where we could shoot and what we could shoot, stuff like that. Um, so, but once I had the actual story, I was able to get like a script writing software a free one and I started writing down the characters.

Eldon Palmer: 4:24

All I've got a 10-14 suspicious vehicle that stopped at a closed restaurant. Looks like they saw that there was no traffic in the area. Then they left. Flight number Ida Sam Adam 331.

Sam VerMerris: 4:36

Registered in Michigan.

Eldon Palmer: 4:39

Looks like two occupants in a red Ford Explorer 10-4,.

Speaker 3: 4:44

stand by patrol 1. Standing by Dispatched to patrol 1, the vehicle is not recorded stolen. 10-5. Thank you.

Sam VerMerris: 5:20

Have a nice day. The problem with that scene which might have actually made it better, because when I, when I, first got to the shooting location, it wasn't snowing, um, but when my friend showed up, he went through the back lot and was covered in snow like three feet deep. Oh wow, and he has a two-wheel drive car. He got stuck and everyone starts showing up, everyone else. We're like he's stuck, like how do we get him out of here? We need his car for this scene. So what we do is we grab a blanket out of the back of my car, put it in between my friend's jeep and his car and we just keep ramming him oh, no way over and over out of the parking lot till he gets free tell us a little bit about some of the filmmaking techniques and what's going on in the scene right and kind of why you did some things so we started off with like a dolly shot to kind of reveal the location we were at and it was that abandoned police department I was talking about.

Sam VerMerris: 6:16

I knew about earlier that I wanted to put in there, um, so what we used for that was a dolly and it just started there and it came in to reveal who was there, the car, who was there and who was in the car, which is important, um, for the upcoming scene, because you need to know who's in what car to kind of follow what's going on. Um, most of the other techniques, uh, we attach like gopros inside the cars while we're driving. Just, you know, they're more durable if they fall off, especially in the cold weather. It was hard to stick them actually onto like metal, uh cars rather than like a heavier, like dslr camera, which would be worse if it fell and is heavier, expensive, more prone to falling you have some music going right in the background.

Eldon Palmer: 7:00

Yes, that's another thing. Like you know, you did all the music production on this, I believe yeah, so I mean the music was I don't know.

Sam VerMerris: 7:09

It's really fun for me, especially when I like get it finished and it's like that. That piece especially was like very short and like easy to make. Um, some other pieces were much more like drawn out and I actually brought in like a violin player to play some of the parts.

Eldon Palmer: 7:24

Oh, no way that's crazy Cool, yeah. So parts. And oh, no way that's crazy cool, yeah. So, um, let's uh ready to go into the next one. Yeah, for sure, let's check out the next scene, I'm sorry. Thank you. So, yeah, that one's kind of um kind of moves the story along a little bit trying to figure out what in the heck is going on here.

Sam VerMerris: 9:27

You know why is this guy pulling over, and you know driving erratically yeah so tell us so the challenge with that scene was the amount of takes we had to do, especially when you're like got three cars to manage. So basically, if you were watching that while we were filming, it would have been we pull off into the side road, catch a bunch of gopros to one person's car and we all drive out, run the whole scene again, like I probably probably did 10 times. Oh wow, I like just like slide all over the place. We have to like and we're on this like phone call and all of our cars like doing it the whole time and then, even after the gopros, now I'm getting in each car with the camera putting it behind people. I'm like telling my friends right now, get in my car in the back seat and like they were setting up the cameras. We're out there for probably like three or four hours just running this over and over again and it's cold and like the suction cups don't want to work and um.

Eldon Palmer: 10:28

But in the end I have all this coverage of the scene that I can use any which way I want in the edit yeah, and so you know, because you don't want the cameras to show up in the other shot, so you have to shoot them from different cars, different times. So, uh, yeah, a lot of repetitive stuff. You start off a nice drone shot. They're kind of establishing yeah, now that you're out in a real road, definitely suspenseful there. I'd love the music on that part, just trying to figure out what's going on, kind of building it. And then you had some quicker cuts in your pacing, you know, with people looking around, right, yeah, yeah, cool, so you froze your toes off yeah, it was cold and in three hours of doing that, yeah, so want to get into third one, yeah oh yeah for a party.

Sam VerMerris: 11:16

There's not much partying going on. Yeah, man, I don't know what's going on Maybe the guy's just not here, yet we might just be early Go look for some drinks at the garage.

Speaker 3: 11:25

Alright, hey, where are you? I got the guy in the garage. This isn't funny. This is what we planned. This is not with the plan.

Eldon Palmer: 13:01

I'll grab him when you guys get here. Wow, there's a lot going on that one, so yeah, so it looks like they've kind of gotten to maybe the party or something, but they're at the party.

Sam VerMerris: 13:05

Yeah, that's what the title of the music is called on spotify. Oh, no way.

Eldon Palmer: 13:09

So yeah, I had that same idea so it looks like you did a little acting here as well yeah, so that's that's where I really had to get involved there.

Sam VerMerris: 13:17

Pretend like I kidnapped it. It was hard, it was pretty awkward in that garage. Just go with it. I'm like screaming. It's like it's not actually in that situation. I realized how hard acting was in that moment.

Eldon Palmer: 13:28

You have any neighbors come over wondering what was going on?

Sam VerMerris: 13:31

No, we, we kept it pretty low key, I think.

Eldon Palmer: 13:34

Yeah, so break that open, like. So break that open. Like you know, it looks like they're walking through a garage. The lighting is very dramatic in there. Yeah, maybe that's. Did you have to use anything additional, or yeah?

Sam VerMerris: 13:45

So we had to take, just like a regular stand lamp and my buddies had to stand up on top of the Jeep on the other side of where the actor was walking yeah, because the garage lamp was not bright enough, yeah, so if you got a behind the scenes, look, you've got a guy with the gimbal, a guy with the boom mic and you got a guy with a light and we're all he has to keep a straight face while he's walking around pretending like where's the drinks and it. I thought it was funny that I put in he finds the empty coca-cola.

Sam VerMerris: 14:15

He does find the drinks yeah, but surrounded by all this tires, motor oil you're right and he's not is not kind of the situation he thought he was walking into and then I wanted to intercut that with the other guy, his passenger, um, kind of like giving the audience like, oh, this is the bad guy, um, which comes into play later, yeah, um, but he's kind of just talking about like where are you, like we were supposed to do this thing, um. And then when the music kicks in, which I also was inspired from tenet with the um, that's a scary part in that movie too um, everything kind of coincides where the action happens at the same time for both people.

Eldon Palmer: 15:04

Yeah, yeah, I found that pretty interesting. I liked the cutting back and forth.

Sam VerMerris: 15:08

Yeah.

Eldon Palmer: 15:08

So it kind of builds that suspense and all it's coming to a head at the same time. So anything interesting in particular, any other challenges in that particular scene, or go ahead interesting in particular, any other challenges in that particular scene or um go ahead.

Sam VerMerris: 15:24

It took probably a month for that whole thing because we filmed the one garage scene and then we had to wait because people were either busy or it was like we were trying to film other things, or I had to rewrite that whole ending, okay, because, like I said, it was going to be in like a church back lot, yeah. So I rewrote it to be in my house and then I had to rewrite it again for us to actually like be in the hallway, which that leads to at the end. So it's just like with rewrites and weather and people's availability. It took like a month, um, but you know we also filmed most of that in the daytime okay even though it looks dark, looks dark and it feels dark.

Sam VerMerris: 16:10

So it was just a long process of getting everybody together, the materials and all that right, yeah, always always a lot going on there.

Eldon Palmer: 16:19

Yeah, it's a pretty ambitious project, like really for a short film, and 20 minutes is fairly long for a short. Yeah, um, and you have so many, you know, multiple different scene locations, um, weather issues, exactly, yeah actors you got to pull together that are, you know, part-time friends.

Sam VerMerris: 16:34

Yeah, like that, probably work side jobs, work jobs in school and yeah and that's like I mean I went big for the first one and now for these, like upcoming things, I'm dialing it back to like one scene, but I feel like I have all this experience that I can actually like you know, like it's it's a weird feeling to describe where you you feel like you have all the experience. But now I'm gonna dial it back and if I wanted to try that again, I would like because I'm focusing on these small things, in these littler films then this that would be like it could even be like a feature film yeah, yeah, add your scenes together and, yeah, um, stack them on top of each other.

Eldon Palmer: 17:17

So, like, what are some of the takeaways that you learned from this project, from the struggles and just going through it?

Sam VerMerris: 17:25

The most important one is just perseverance.

Sam VerMerris: 17:28

Yeah, a lot of times that one scene you were talking about from the little movie I showed you when we first met we never finished that project because it was like a continuation almost of the mcdiver that we started.

Sam VerMerris: 17:43

Okay, it was going to be like a longer form and we started shooting that whole thing twice and we got to like a midpoint and then we just never finished it, sure, and it was with that same group of guys. So I was like we're gonna finish this. And it was hard because you know people are busy in the weather. It's like at some point we're not gonna have snow anymore, and then how it's gonna be weird to finish it like are we gonna come back next winter? And like I don't think that's gonna happen. So just like pushing everybody to like do it, and like galvanizing people to be motivated to do it, especially when it's like a snow day, it's like I don't want to go out and like freeze my toes off, just so being a like a people person and leading people to do that um was a very important skill that I still have yet to develop.

Eldon Palmer: 18:29

Yeah, it's a great lesson. Um, I think there's probably a lot of things that you, you know, might not even articulate. That'll pop back in later. Because, oh yeah, it's just experiential now. Yeah, so, as you do the next one, it's like oh yeah, you know we can do it this way, yeah.

Sam VerMerris: 18:42

And it's just all those little things. You know, all those techniques and like, oh, I can do it this way, I can do it this way, if I do it this way, it'll come out like this in the final product.

Eldon Palmer: 18:57

But if product, but if I do it like this, it'll come out. You know just how I want to tell. The story is right, so it'll help you planning. Probably for sure you'll be able to plan more efficiently. Um, on the next one, because you can now see, foresee potential issues that might come up and you can handle them before they become issues yeah, some things that I didn't think would be issues definitely became issues and I now know how to handle those in the future yeah, awesome, so did you.

Eldon Palmer: 19:17

You know, send us to any film festivals or any contests or anything like that um, I sent it to a couple film festivals.

Sam VerMerris: 19:24

The one I'm most glad it got accepted into was the just the michigan student film festival where I earned an excellence award. Um, due to some of its natures it doesn't sure couldn't go further um into the, but that is the highest award below, like winning the whole thing yeah, man, it sort of has some adult content, I guess, in terms of not sexual adult yeah but from uh you know r-rated Violence and also maybe like confusing nature which is part of the story's fault.

Sam VerMerris: 19:58

But as a story writer and then as a like on the technical side, I've grown a lot from this yeah.

Eldon Palmer: 20:06

Awesome. So what's next for you?

Sam VerMerris: 20:09

Right now it's a lot of shorter, like five minute things. I recently did one with my friend about a guy who is asking a girl to prom, but he's very he overthinks everything. So he kind of goes through all these different, um like scenarios in his head and it's, it's like a musical montage, almost intercut by like story okay it's just like five minutes long.

Sam VerMerris: 20:32

It's just a little fun thing to put out for prom. And then this next one that I'm currently in the editing process of and filming more on Thursday is called Sonder. It's like a dialogue set but has a little twist with the abilities that one character has.

Eldon Palmer: 20:53

Okay, cool, exciting, looking forward to seeing those. One character has okay, cool, exciting, looking forward to seeing those. Um, so you know, I think one thing we talked about earlier, you're helping me out but, um, you got any projects this summer or looking for any internships, or? Um, I know you mentioned looking for maybe like a pa position or something like that I mean, I would love a pa position.

Sam VerMerris: 21:12

I would love to work with people who are like they do it for their job Cause I would love to do this, you know, as a career, um, and learn things that maybe I don't have resources to actually learn, Like there's things I don't have access to that I can't learn about If I don't have access to them. I can only if I can watch a video about it.

Eldon Palmer: 21:34

but learning comes from experience yeah, so if anybody out there is looking for um, an adventuresome, um upcoming promising pa or intern or something, somebody who wants to just help out, you know probably a good person worth uh reaching out to, you can always reach out through the video and we can connect you with sam, so awesome. Look forward to seeing um your next short film projects and and thanks for thanks for watching. Thanks for coming.