My short film journey. I have been writing screenplays for years, along with two novels. I started back when I was in the military. Once I got married and had children my life naturally changed and my devotion to my family is unending. Once my girls got into college I was able to focus back on my screenplays. I am particularly dedicated to Jingle Bell Rock, which is a family drama about a single mother caring for a terminally ill child with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB)…the worst disease you never heard of. After I had written the script I came across a video of a child named Jonathan Pitre who had EB. I was totally blown away because he was exactly the character in my screenplay…he was my Tyler. The screenplay is dedicated to the memory of Jonathan, who passed on at the age of 17 from complications from a stem cell transplant. I am so dedicated to getting this story out to the world, these children are mature way beyond their years. For those of you who want to see Jonathan and learn more about EB please click on the image of Jonathan and his amazing mother…
I have entered my scripts in many screenplay competitions and I have promoted my work on many platforms to include Stage32, Intip, FilmFreeway, ISA and the Black List. In attempting to find a producer and agents to promote Jingle Bell Rock I had learned that some people have been successful with short films as a way to receive attention and gain credibility in the industry…but it has to be good. The idea for a medical drama came to me and I wrote Forgiving Retribution in virtually a day. The script ended up being only 10 pages, but I was very happy with the short. I entered it into some screenplay competitions, winning some awards, when it dawned on me that I should just produce it. I was off. I gathered the talent over the next few months, started purchasing tons of camera equipment to include Sony FX3 cameras, anamorphic lenses, booms, stands, lighting equipment, flags…a ton of stuff. I was hoping my son could use the equipment when I was done, but needless to say I was dedicated.
We started filming in July 2024. I flew home to Minnesota and filmed the first scene in Jake Nordby’s, my nephew’s, back yard. My nephew Tyler Nordby had a lot of theatrical and filming experience and he was a tremendous aid in getting the film produced. It took a number of months afterward to set up and film the various scenes but by January of 2025 I believe we were pretty much done. Then came all of the editing, sound tracks, audio fixes…and I had to teach myself how to do this on Adobe Premiere along with many other software packages. It is truly amazing what is out there and “YouTube University” is and incredible tool…you can be taught by experts in the areas of almost anything to figure out how to create. I highly recommend it…
I finished editing Forgiving Retribution by April, 2025 and immediately entered the film through FilmFreeway into numerous competitions. The first film festival I won an award in was The Next Step Film Festival in Cannes, France where it won a Finalist award. I was awarded food and hotel expenses for the festival, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it, but that was the first festival that the film was shown and it was warmly received. Over the subsequent months we have won over 50 awards and played throughout the world to include England, Rome, Germany, Canada, Australia… There were many in the United States to include California, New York, Austin and Miami. We decided to release the film to the world on YouTube so everybody could see it on January 11th, 2026. If you would like to watch our film simply click on the link below. Please leave a comment. We appreciate all of you…and I hope we can finally produce Jingle Bell Rock.
