Voicebox

All the way back in 2012, I finished my senior thesis film entitled Voicebox as part of an independent studies class at Towson University. Even now, almost ten years later, this is still one of my favorite projects I was ever able to work on.

How this film even became what it did resulted from many “happy accidents,” as the late Bob Ross would fittingly put it. The original concept for the film was that it would have a main male and female in the lead roles. As casting progressed, though, there simply wasn’t a male actor that materialized in time for the production to stay on track. Through a friend of a friend, we were recommended an actress and so it became that this film would star two young women in the leads.

On the first day of filming there would have to be small prosthetics on everyone’s neck that was featured in the film as a hint as to why no one can talk but after a few attempts at applying the material and it quickly falling off, this was scrapped.

Then the last bit of bad news from the shoot was losing our main actress after the first full day of filming. We moved through much of the story in a single day and had to reshoot almost everything because of this, but the actress we found as a replacement was even better for the part, so it worked out well.

Through all of this, the film that was created was able to make it into a few festivals, including the Annapolis Film Festival, and even played in Greece that same year. We received a featured on a well-known LGBT blog site, which lead to the original upload of the video getting views in the thousands and even as recent as 2016, the film was being screened at a few places in Baltimore.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but this is a project that I wish I would have had the insight I have now with, as I feel like things could have progressed much quicker in the career trajectory, but life is a journey and there is nothing truly to regret is there?

If you haven’t seen the short yet, please check it out and would love to know what you think, looking at it now through the lens of 2021 eyes.

Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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