By Yasmeen Tsipena
What if you could forget anything you wanted to? To make all your worries and regrets dissipate into nothingness? Would you take the opportunity?
That’s the premise of fourth year film student Noah Freeman Hecht’s newest short film, Forget Me Again, produced through UC Santa Barbara’s Crew Production course — which he has taken four times in his college career. There are few students who know UCSB’s film department quite like Hecht and his crew.
A promotional poster for UCSB rfilm student Noah Freeman Hecht’s latest short film, Forget Me Again.
UCSB’s Crew Production course is one of the Film department’s major draws. Students pitch their ideas and scripts to industry professionals in hopes of getting chosen to develop one the four films that are approved for production each year. Noah has had two films, Moon, which won the Audience Choice Short Award at the 2022 San Diego Film Festival, and Forget Me Again, which was greenlit by the Crew Production tribunal in his junior and senior years.
Forget Me Again premiered on March 24th at UCSB’S Pollock Theater. In a recent interview, Hecht discussed his process for creating and finalizing the film and how UCSB has helped him grow as a filmmaker.
Q: What was the Crew Production course pitch process like?
A: You’re given 10 minutes to pitch your idea to a full audience and four to five judges that the faculty chooses from the film industry. It’s nerve-racking having to go up on stage but also a great experience because everyone who wants to pitch really wants it. I attended pitches from my freshman year and that was the way I first got introduced to the department.
Q: You took the class, known by its number 106, four times, twice as a director of photography and twice as writer/director. Did you notice any differences or growth in yourself and your work?
A: Definitely. Coming out of high school, I had some experience using cameras but a lot of what you learn in 106 is getting to know how a larger crew operates. That was a learning curve. There were a couple times my freshman year where I had to kind of fake my way through it and be like “I know about that,” and then had to look it up later that night.
I felt more prepared directing the second time around. I’d like to think that with Forget Me Again we were a lot more organized. I learned the most about how to work with actors, having had no [prior] experience with theater. It’s also a scary but cool challenge trying to motivate a crew of 30 people through long hours and a lot of work, looking to you as a source of inspiration and guidance.
Q: Can you give readers a verbal trailer of what Forget Me Again is about?
UCSB student film director Noah Freeman Hecht and his director of photography, Luke Todd, on the fourth day on set for the film, Forget Me Again.
A: The story is about a young man who is introduced to a new pharmaceutical drug that allows for controlled memory loss. After he’s introduced to it, he must pick up the pieces of this thing he’s forgotten in order to find his missing friend.
Q: What was the film premiere experience like?
A: It was nerve-wracking because it was the first time that we showed it to an audience of people who weren’t associated with the film. I was working on different versions of the export until two hours before we showed it, which was intense, but it was a really special night. The Pollock is such a cool space — to be able to project our work in there and see it up on the big screen was one of the best parts of the experience.
Q: Can you give a glimpse into the process of submitting to film festivals and what your goal is with Forget Me Again?
A: Film festivals can be really daunting just because there are so many out there. It’s very frantic and random. There’s no festival window and dates are all over the place, so you really need to be on top of it. We still need to get Forget Me Again ready for submission but we’re going to be more ambitious with where we submit this time. There are different levels and they cost anywhere from $40 to $80 dollars per festival [to apply]. We would love to submit to as many as we could, but obviously there’s financial costs associated. We’re hoping to get somewhere recognizable.
Q: Do you feel like you’re happy you chose UCSB for film studies?
A: I am very happy I ended up here. After touring the department, I realized UCSB was such an amazing spot to have a college experience. The fact that it isn’t as technical, as a production heavy school, gives you so much freedom. Here, the professors are so supportive, and the people are far less cutthroat than other film schools may be.
UCSB student film director Noah Hecht finalizing props on the set of his latest short film, Forget Me Again.
Yasmeen Tsipena is a third-year UC Santa Barbara Film and Media Studies major. She wrote this article for her Digital Journalism course in the Writing Program.