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MU grad says farewell to CoMO with film premiere

'Memory/Loss' was filmed this summer over the course of 21 days with an all-volunteer cast and crew.

By Lindsay Eanet

Published Aug. 19, 2008

Moviegoers of all ages, from elementary school kids to MU undergrads to senior citizens, flocked to the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts Monday night to see the film they and their loved ones had helped create. The film, "Memory/Loss," was written, directed, produced and edited by recent MU graduate Sarah Phillips and shot on location in Columbia.

“The movie was good, especially for not having a budget,” MU student John Wiehe says.

Like many audience members, Wiehe was a friend of writer and director Sarah Phillips and came to support the project. 

“I’m overwhelmed at how many people are here,” Phillips says. “I’m shocked. I thought that six people were going to come.”

And Phillips needed all the help she could get. With no budget set aside for her film, she sought volunteers to help make “Memory/Loss” a reality, eventually finding three daily crewmembers and holding open auditions for the cast.

“I’ve known Sarah for probably about a year now,” cast member Kyle Ayers says. “And so she told me she was making it and I went to her open auditions and pretty much auditioned for anything that she said she wanted me to do. I went over and helped all I could and actually got in the movie.”

“Memory/Loss” is an original drama that tells the story of Sydney and Mari, two women that meet at the age of nine and grow up together. When one of the women dies in a bicycle accident, the other must turn to memories of the two, presented in flashbacks, to cope with the devastating absence of her friend.

“All of the dialogue is pulled from reality,” Phillips says. “Like the Barbie scene. My sister and I used to play with Barbies. But it’s pulled from thoughts of what would happen. I have a best friend, we’ve been friends for a really long time, and basically, where the screenplay originally came from, the base idea was just me thinking—hypothetically, how it would feel if she had died. But it was important for me to show why that relationship was important.”

Phillips says she first knew she wanted to make a film during her junior year of college. After losing interest in journalism, she looked for different ways to get involved with theater on campus and wrote a screenplay for a romantic comedy. She realized she enjoyed directing and wrote “Memory/Loss” over the course of two weeks, with the hopes of starting pre-production after graduation. The film was shot for 21 days over the course of five weeks, with Phillips at the helm, directing a sizable cast of 44 actors and actresses.

“When we got to the shoot, she knew exactly what she wanted,” says actor Alex Trumble, who plays Finn, Sydney’s love interest. “Because of it, she could tell us what she wanted and it would only take maybe two or three shots. We’d have it in about three takes, max.”

Occasionally, Phillips would let the actors take over, allowing them to ad lib or, in one case, giving them a camera to film several scenes on their own at a local park.

 “Everything that came out of that was pretty natural and really showed some cast friendships we all had for each other,” Trumble says.

Phillips shot “Memory/Loss” at 17 local locations, including Rock Bridge High School, The Crossing Church and the Heidelberg, incorporating many of them directly into the script without masking their identities in an effort to make the film feel more realistic.

“I grew up in Columbia, so I knew those places intimately,” Phillips says. “So I could write the script without physically going to those places and exploring them because I lived in those places and I knew what the vibe was there. So I could write around the vibe and the idea that was the place.”

In addition to writing, directing and producing, Phillips also edited more than 100 hours of footage. Since she was new to the process, she had to learn a lot of things as she went.

“I made a lot of mistakes,” Phillips says. “I did a lot of stuff wrong. I read the Final Cut Pro manual and I would come across phrases like, ‘So obviously, don’t shoot in this kind of format with this kind of setup.’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh, obviously.’ So then I’d go look up on Google what that was.”

A few of the crewmembers were film students who saw the film as a way to get more involved with the filmmaking process. But for Josiah Bryan, it was a more novel experience.

“My favorite part was seeing how movies are made,” Bryan says. “I’m not studying film and I haven’t had any experience in the past so this was a chance for me to see the inner workings of a film and production. It was an education for me and it certainly kept me interested and would be something I would be interested in doing again in the future.”

Bryan says he also enjoyed the opportunity to write two songs for the soundtrack, which featured all Columbia artists, including Phylshawn Johnson and Ellie Come Home.

Monday night’s premiere is not the end of “Memory/Loss.” Phillips leaves this Wednesday for Los Angeles, where she plans to submit “Memory/Loss” to film festivals for the next year.