Sacta started life while I was working as an art and drama teacher at a high school. When the pandemic hit, I started work on a script with a central idea: A play about a play. When it became clear almost all of the yearly activities of the school had to be cancelled, I set up a meeting with the school director to turn this script into a movie. She decided to trust me with €10.000 and I started working on building the sets, sketching story boards, arranging light and sound, training the actors and in april of 2021, we had a 7-day shooting schedule. Time was short since we had to deal with a COVID-curfew and most of the actors doing their final exams but miraculously, all the scenes were shot even though we usually had about 45 minutes per scène to film. 

Vision

I wanted Sacta to be a light-hearted comedy with some sharp edges around the corners. Focusing on a doomed play saved by a single member of the dysfunctional team. I love stories of projects falling apart and being saved by the people that care. I filmed it handheld and zoomed in to make it feel more like a documentary but most of the shots are carefully lit and put together to try and give it a cinematic quality (hence, the 2.35:1 aspect ratio) . Four months, I practiced with the actors as if it was going to be a play so they knew the lines by heart and that saved a lot of time during shooting. In editing I tried to make it as fast paced as possible, only the first shot being longer than a few seconds. My biggest regret is the script not being focused. It tries to balance the plot of the main actress and her dad, the co-director saving the play and an evil corporation ruining the play. It turned out tto be very confusing. I also regret communicating too much with the costume and set designers and not enough with light and sound. A lot of shots could have been improved if I would have shared my ideas with them beforehand. 

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