When Lyla Hersh began writing the script for her senior thesis film,“On the Nature of Dreams,” the only thing she knew for sure was that it would take place in the late 1990s. Hersh didn’t write her final scene until two days before the shooting date.
While shooting his senior thesis project, first-time filmmaker Mitchell Brown encountered a problem no screenwriting class could have prepared him for.Brown’s story — a psychological thriller about a father trying to reconnect with his family while coping with obsessive-compulsive disorder — relied heavily on windows. More specifically, the character’s compulsions to fiddle with and adjust the windows. However, when the team arrived to shoot at an Airbnb in Malden, the windows had been sealed shut by the owner.
