What Was

On "What Was," I served as both Director and Director of Photography, shot on location in Los Angeles. The film is a love story told in reverse — beginning at the divorce and moving backward through the wreckage of a relationship, past every small betrayal and quiet resentment, until we arrive at the moment two people first met, still whole, still hopeful, still capable of becoming anything other than what they became. It's a story about what used to be good, and about watching two people lose themselves in front of each other until neither one recognizes who they are anymore.

Shooting on the Alexa Mini LF with Arri Signature Prime lenses, I chased a filmic, textured look — something that felt lived-in rather than polished, closer to memory than to documentation. Our references were deliberately varied: the restless, handheld immediacy of Godard's Breathless; the intimate, painterly interiority of Spike Jonze's Her; and the raw emotional close-quarters of The Invite. Pulling from all three, we tried to build a visual language that could hold both tenderness and devastation in the same frame — sometimes within the same shot.

Because the story runs backward, every choice in blocking, lighting, and camera movement had to work in reverse as well as forward — degrading intimacy into distance as the timeline moved toward the end of the marriage, and slowly restoring warmth and closeness as it moved toward the beginning. It's the most personal and intimate project I've made to date, and one where the camera itself was asked to carry as much heartbreak as the performances.