The Story
Charlie Young and Daisy Palmer are two of four college actors competing in a theater production in hopes of being awarded a scholarship to NYU. Their director assigns Charlie and Daisy the roles of husband and wife and asks them to replicate their stage relationships outside of the theater before rehearsals. Before they know it, their stage and real relationship begin to become indistinguishable.
Charlie, who struggles with a past filled with loss, allows himself to be vulnerable with Daisy and talks about his history out loud for the first time. Daisy sees how open he is and, knowing that they have both fully fallen for each other, decides it is the perfect moment to end the relationship -- she hopes that it will strengthen his performance in the play and give him a chance to start a new life in a new city. It doesn't go as planned.
Playing Ourselves is powerful story of youth, heartbreak, vulnerability, looking to the future, and the love of theater. It is about the struggle of tearing down the walls we build around ourselves as well as how we can learn to come to terms with our past. Whether you’re an artist or not, the story is meant to explore how our passions can affect our decisions and those around us.
Our story begs the question: how much do we separate ourselves from our art?
Our Financial Goal
Over the course of 2 years, our team members have worked on over 50 short films and we usually cover the expenses from our own pockets. With our thesis project, we wanted to challenge ourselves - it's longer, more professional, and more costly than anything we've previously headed.
Our budget is $8,000 and it's geared towards paying actors, locations, costumes, props, music, transportation, and craft services for the entire team as well as extra costs such as hard drives, film festival submissions and press kits (see graph below).
As student filmmakers, we understand that everyone and their nephew is asking you to invest in their film. However, you can have no doubt that this crew is working around the clock to bring Playing Ourselves to the silver screen and is capable of making excellent work no matter how much we raise.
![]()
Other (free) Ways You Can Help
If it isn't in your personal budget to help us out with ours, we totally understand. Here's some free ways you can help us out!
Check out and share our social media pages and spread the word about the project -- at the end of the day we want to impact people with our film, so the more people can hear about it, the better. We feature our team's past work, post updates on the project, give some behind the scenes insights, share quotes about theater and acting, as well as spotlight some of the musicians that our main character has loaded on his old iPod.
https://facebook.com/playingourselvesshortfilm
https://www.instagram.com/playingourselvesshortfilm/
https://playingourselves.wixsite.com/playingourselvesfilm
Subscribe to your YouTube channel where we upload our promotional and BTS videos.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp0Qc6IM1r_CfZYCosyd8A
Share this page to get more people involved!
https://igg.me/at/playingourselves
Our Team
Nicolas Alayo (Director)
![]()
Nicolas was born in New York and was always growing up around museums, theater shows, and musical events. He moved to Miami, Florida and was home-schooled through middle and high school and was given the opportunity to spend almost four years at an acting conservatory. After graduating a year early, he moved out to California to study filmmaking and is a writer, director, and editor with awards in all those categories - including best picture.
Meghan Woodard (Producer)
![]()
Meghan is a Communications Media major with a double emphasis in acting and post production. She is enjoys every part of the producing process and hopes to one day be a producer in the industry. Excited to work on such an amazing film, Meghan hopes that the messages of pursuing your dreams and taking the chance of being vulnerable are ones that the audience carries with them through their experience of the film, Playing Ourselves.
Brigitta Sanchez-O’Brien (Director of Photography)
![]()
Born and raised in northern Virginia, Brigitta moved to California to pursue an artist’s dream at eighteen. She’ll be graduating this Fall with a B.S. in Communications Media and minor in philosophy. Her undergrad years were spent primarily studying cinematography and journalism—acting as DP on multiple student films and picking up freelance camerawork in the SoCal area.
Andrew Ascough (Camera Operator)
![]()
Andrew Ascough was born during 1997 in Dublin, Ireland. At the age of six, he found his aspiration for filmmaking when he stole his father’s camcorder and gathered his neighborhood friends. From the age of fifteen, Andrew invested himself in his freelance video business. Now, he is studying film in California and working as a freelance cinematographer. His experience ranges from PA to cinematographer on professional broadcast and music video material.
Christian Cuevas (Camera Operator)
![]()
Christian Cuevas, a SoCal local, originally wanted to pursue studies in marine biology with hopes of working on nature documentaries. After being homeschooled for high school, he set his sights on narrative filmmaking and enrolled in film school. Ever since, he has had a passion for visual storytelling and will graduate with a B.S. in Communications Media with an emphasis in cinematography. He has had years of set and DP experience. He has also grown close with many of these team members and believes in their creative capabilities.
Michael Uyehata (Gaffer)
![]()
Michael Uyehata is a student of cinematography who is reveling in his status as a starving artist. He also loves observing and capturing beautiful things. When he’s not lighting sets or geeking out over camera gear, he’s probably watching an artsy film, or catching a couple of games of Overwatch. He currently works as a professional grip or gaffer and plans to continue after graduation from film school this year.
Lexi Lovetere (Set Designer)
![]()
Lexi Lovetere was born and raised in northern Illinois, just outside the Chicagoland area. She later moved to Southern California to study filmmaking. She will be graduating this fall with a B.S. in Communications Media with a double emphasis in production and screenwriting, however, Lexi's primary focus is in production design and set decoration. She has worked on multiple film sets in this department and is pursuing a career in art direction after graduation.
Joseph Graves (Editor)
![]()
Joseph originally wanted to be an Air-force pilot, but a friend invited him to act in community theater so now he studies philosophy. Since 2016, starting film school in southern California, he has been an editor of countless projects both student and professional ranging from commercials to award winning short films.
Tian Kok (1st A.D.)
![]()
A Northern California native, Tian moved to Southern California to pursue filmmaking at the age of 16. She chose to major in screenwriting and assistant directing and has considerable experience in both. She loves the rush of filmmaking and working with her teammates to turn stories into cinematic experiences.
