Short Term 12 is a short film that attempts to present a realistic portrayal of life in a present-day group home, as seen through the eyes of the home's 33-year-old supervisor, Denim. The story takes place in a single day and shows everything through the lens of its main character (Denim), a man who is not much different than the kids he?s trying to help. Every character in the film, in one way or another, is dealing with the same thematic question: How did my parents affect me, and can I do anything about it? Because I worked at a group home for two years, and corresponded with various staff members over the course of writing this script, I decided not to focus on the problems of writing an accurate portrayal of life in a group home. From the beginning, I knew that I had my facts straight, as most of the scenes in the film were based on things that happened to me, or stories I heard from coworkers there. For the sake of this paper, I decided to focus on the problem of translating the script to the screen in a way that "felt real." This was my biggest problem in making this movie, and will probably continue to be my biggest problem with every new film that I make. This paper will attempt to define what it means to create this illusion of reality, and will show how we tried to accomplish that in the making of Short Term 12. The screenplay for the film can be found in Appendix A. The DVD is available for viewing in the Media Center of Love Library.
