We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Robert Short. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Robert below.

Robert, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

One of the most meaningful projects I have worked on is the project we call “When The Apple Falls”. This project was meaningful because the music that was created to go along with the visual was written years ago. My wife heard the song when we first met and vowed that she wanted to write a short film based around the music, which sounds like it was from the late 1960’s early 1970’s. The film is about an artist who has a successful music career, but struggles with addiction to drugs in which she thinks helps with her performance when in all actuality it’s her God given talent that makes her stand to be the star that she is. I wanted to direct a film with substance to help pull the audience into the character’s world and make you feel her pain, happiness and her redemption. I have friends and family members who struggle with addiction and look to substances as a way to escape their problems. The reality is, no matter how much you try to escape any problems, bad situation, trauma, etc, you still have to face it and talk about it in order for you to heal from it and move forward in life. The ultimate goal for this project is to say it is okay to no be okay, seek the help, receive your healing, and become a living testimony for someone else going through similar circumstances and rid families of generational curses.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started out doing a little bit of acting when I got involved with a music video for a mime dancer called 1Purpose Mime, aka Dwayne Terry, back in 2015. From there, he knew a local playwright, Kennis Reaves, who hired me to play a role in his original stage play. That’s where I pretty much got bit by the acting bug. Theatre is one of the most creative & hardest things that I’ve ever done. Still, I loved every minute of it because it taught me how to be disciplined to learn lines and how to breathe life into a character. After my short stint with doing Theatre, I wanted to expand and crossover to film. I never went to school for it. I just picked up a camera, started learning about the equipment, and studied hours and hours of YouTube videos, and got pretty good if I do say so myself LOL.

Later on, I would get my first editing gig for the production Blackwell, a spin-off for the plays written by Kennis Reaves. The edit came out pretty good, which lead me to want to shoot the type of content I wanted to edit, not something someone else shot. That’s what lead me to start my own Film/Theatre production company along with my wife. Shout out to Shashone Lambert Short. I also can’t forget to mention my music partner, Travis Garrett of Art Music Ink. We’ve been writing and producing music since 2001. We are currently writing & producing for other film projects so look out for our music in your next favorite film.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Here at Shawt Films our goal is to inspire the audience with creative visuals and strong messages. We want to leave the audience wanting more of our films and also inspire the next future filmmakers.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My advice for managing a team and maintaining a high morale is to show up with positive energy on whatever job you are doing. We all have problems in our lives, but when you are tasked to do a job, try to focus and put your differences to the side and use the good vibes to catapult you into being excellent in everything you do. If you are an actor or actress, sometimes you can use the problems in your life to bring out character choices in the work if it is warranted for the character to be in a certain state of mind. Sometimes this turns into magic!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.weareshawtfilms.com
• Instagram: @shawtfilmsandtheatre
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShawtFilms
• Twitter: @shawt_films

Image Credits
Shawt Films Trinicklearro Dupree Damon Jackson