Not Alone | Short Film

Burdened by survivor’s guilt and struggling with alcoholism and depression, a young Afghanistan War veteran is guided by an older Vietnam War veteran, who helps him rediscover camaraderie and reconnect with his family, proving that no battle is fought alone.

Written & Produced by
Bradley Lanphear & Corbin Schweitzer

Director/Cinematographer
Bradley Lanphear

Cast
Frankie Galvez
Melissa Blanco
David Eagleston
Vivian Atencio

Composer
Chris Thomas

Gaffer / 1st AC
Andrew Thomas

Editor
Bradley Lanphear

Consulting Editors
Janna Lanphear
Doug Rittenhouse

The idea was to try something bold and different in the niche of branded short films, because when storytelling really matters, sometimes interviews and B roll aren’t enough. In this case the storytelling REALLY mattered… To everyone involved…The client, the audience…and me.

I am not personally a veteran and I never served in any of the armed forces, but I spent a few years working full-time for a series called American Warriors, telling the stories of veterans from all eras. During my time there, I gained an even deeper appreciation for the sacrifices of our uniformed men and women. Fast forward, a few months ago when CampV asked me to tell the story of what they do to serve veterans, I knew I wanted to make something special.

During our initial creative meeting, we watched a few samples of different styles of brand films. I had curated a selection of samples that I felt demonstrated a strong contrast of styles. Some were doc style films I had made, plus I included a tear-jerker of a scripted narrative short film from a major national brand. It was a very different approach to branded stories which I had never actually done before, but I really wanted to pursue. I thought it was a long shot to even pitch such an idea to a small town nonprofit, but to my pleasant surprise, they actually went for it. I went home from that meeting excited and put my head down in my work cave and wrote my first narrative script. The following week I presented my first draft of the script to a room full of military veterans and every one of them was in tears just reading the script. They called in someone else who didn’t know what we were working on to give a 2nd opinion. With no prior context, they read the script and by the end, this person was visibly moved by the story. I had never met this person, but they turned to me and said, “You wrote this?” I nodded, and they said, “I hate you.”

Having received the seal of approval on the concept and story, we officially went into pre-production mode.

We wanted to create a character who would be relatable to as many veterans as possible, conveying just enough information to feel authentic, but without over-expanding the story with specific details because we needed to keep it short, as well as introduce the brand without making it “feel” like a commercial. The foundational idea was to tell the story using very little dialogue and rely on emotive facial expressions and contextual hints to lead the viewer to fill in the blanks.

Combat veterans often suffer from PTSD and survivors guilt which can often lead to feeling mentally and emotionally trapped in the past, constantly re-living the same traumatic experiences over and over again. As a side effect, this also causes a sense of isolation and broken relationships. Combat veterans often feel like the only people they can relate to are other combat vets.

We wanted to convey this idea of being stuck in the past through visual means, instead of relying on extensive dialogue. We did this using a few different cinematography concepts (And later in post-production we also augmented the visuals with delicate original score. More on that later…)

We wanted to make every camera movement mean something to the story. Nothing wasted or unmotivated, but also thoughtfully breaking the rules at key moments to create juxtaposition.

It’s been said that using right-to-left movement can be used as a subliminal way of looking at the past. We used this idea heavily in the first half of our film. In every instance possible (Except in cases where physical space wouldn’t allow) we kept our leading man always moving from right to left, as well as looking and speaking his lines in that direction. It’s a subtle, but intentional choice to say that he is trapped in his past. Later, as his character develops and he begins to put his life back together, all of his movement becomes left to right, indicating he’s now moving forward and leaving the past behind.

Using the same principle, our supporting man (an older combat veteran who has already faced the same struggles and come out on the other side) always moves from left to right. A subtle and intentional way of saying that he has already been there.

We used this principle throughout the film, but it is most clearly at work during this cemetery sequence.

One of the most fundamental rules of filmmaking is the 180 degree rule. I won’t go into a deep explanation of that rule here because there is already an excellent lesson available on youtube from StudioBinder. If you don’t already know what the 180 rule is, go watch that first, then come back here.

In this scene we break the rule in order to convey the sense of intense anxiety and inner chaos our leading man is feeling. The scene starts with the camera mounted on the side of the car and looking through the window. As per our method of using direction, our man is looking from right to left. In shot 1, the camera is stable and the only movement is the motion of the car. He begins having a flashback caused by sounds on the radio. As his anxiety suddenly spikes, the camera moves to his opposite side. In stark contrast to the stable previous shot, this shot is now very shaky and unstable. The chaotic camera movement combined with some quick dutch angles and lens blurring brings us into the chaos happening in his mind. It might seem like a break in our own method of using the right to left psychology since he’s now looking to the right, but actually it’s consistent and here’s why…

In the first shot he’s looking into the past therefore looking to the left. In the next shot, he’s re-living the past. In his perspective he’s actually there in the present so we have him looking to the right. Once he snaps out of it, we return to the previous angle and he’s looking left again.

Our supporting lady is experiencing some pretty extreme distress of her own caused by her husbands PTSD. We see her reaching out for help from the older veteran. Her shot is handheld and shaky because her life feels unstable. In contrast, when we see the older man on the other end of the phone call, his shot is stable and grounded. And again, using the directional psychology, the older man is looking to the right because he represents forward progress and she is looking right because she wants forward progress.

Script changes and using preexisting footage

The combat scene as it appears in the film is different from the original script. Our budget for this production was very tight and we couldn’t afford to shoot it the way we wanted, but we wanted to put as much value on the screen as possible in order to elevate the perceived production quality. We actually ended up using footage featuring the same lead actor from a completely different project I shot years ago, which never got finished and was ultimately abandoned by the producers. (Fortunately I was in possession of the footage and have complete freedom to use it any way I want without any legal hurdles.) The story line of that footage was close, but not a perfect fit for the original story, but we were able to tweak and finesse the script to make it work. Similar idea to how Lucasfilm used old footage of young Harrison Ford to create the backstory scenes in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This made it relatively easy for us to make the necessary script tweaks in order to use the available combat footage.

With a few subtle but important dialogue changes and the use of allusions, the end result is that we were able to significantly increase the perceived production value of this short film without any added cost to us or the client.

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Additional Challenges and Solutions: Weather

This was planned to be a 2 day shoot with our shooting schedule arranged according to location in order to minimize travel time. We also didn’t have the luxury of having a pre-scheduled rain date because of conflicting schedules with the actors. Immediately following this shoot, the actors were all going in separate directions and it would be quite some time before schedules could realign. So rain or shine, we had to get it all done in 2 days. When we put it on the calendar about 2 weeks before the shoot, the forecast looked perfect, but of course, that changed… Day 1 ended up being clear weather as planned but day 2 turned into nearly solid rain the whole day. This forced us to pivot our shooting schedule from being soley based on location, to a combination of interior vs exterior and location. We needed to shoot all of the exteriors on day 1, but due to location limitations we also HAD to shoot certain interiors on day 1.

Every location on day 1 had its own unique set of uncontrollable factors which ate up time. Filming at the veterans center was challenging because we were also working around their normal daily operations. That was an intentional decision because we knew we would have plenty of volunteers for background extras instead of trying to coordinate dozens of people to come out just to be in the background, but it also made it take a long time. We also had to film the interior gym and jiu jitsu sequences because those locations are part of the veterans center and there would have been no time to travel back again the next day to film those interiors. Also, during the first cemetery scene which we shot on the evening of day 1, we lost a lot of time because there was a landscaping crew working at the same time AND there was construction happening across the street. Way too much noise happening resulting in long delays waiting for moments when we could record without machinery noises destroying our audio.

With all of those factors combined, we ran out of useable daylight after only half the cemetery scene was filmed. We kept that problem in mind and kept our eyes on the weather and moved into day 2.

Since it was all indoors, we were unaffected by the weather and all went mostly according to plan and was actually a lot of fun. After we wrapped day 2, we were still left with figuring out how to accomplish the critical remaining exterior scenes. Cast and crew all gathered around the dinner table and put our heads together. It was fortunate that everyone involved shared the same personal interest in seeing this story finished. Our amazing actors were able to shuffle their personal schedules and everyone freed up the morning of the next day. The rain was expected to stop around early/mid morning and we would be able to squeeze in a few hours of shooting time before everyone had to leave. We shot the 2nd cemetery scene first thing that morning, and then the 2nd half of the first cemetery scene as well as the final closing scene immediately after.

So our 2 day shoot became a 2.5 day shoot. Fortunately, Corbin, our producer was smart and made sure we had a contingency budget. We were able to pay our actors for the extra half day and stayed perfectly on-budget for the whole project.

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Additional Challenges and Solutions: car shots.

Moving car shots are tricky. There’s really only a few ways to do it and they all require either money or resources that we didn’t have. Usually this would be done in any of 3 typical ways. 1) Camera mounted to the side of the car with suction cups. 2) Put the car on a process trailer with cameras, lights and operators riding the trailer. 3) Do it in a virtual studio where nothing is real.

We did use a suction mount rig for some shots, but that rig is time consuming to set up and we needed to shave down time everywhere we could.

We used the suction rig for the flash back scene, and for one other hood mounted shot.

For the 2 remaining through-the-window shots, we couldn’t afford the 30mins it would take to reset the suction rig for each shot. We needed something faster. Channeling my inner stunt guy persona, I came up with a very unconventional method which actually worked perfectly to meet our needs…

[Disclaimer: Do not attempt this without proper training and safety measures. High risk of personal injury or death. ]

I devised a quick changeable system using climbing rope and a harness to suspend myself from the side of the vehicle and film through the windows while standing on the truck running boards. With just a few carabiner clips we were able to easily move the suspension system from one side of the truck to the other in less than 2 minutes. Since there was no audio recording and we only needed a few useable seconds of each shot, there was no need for the actors to worry about written dialogue, just facial expressions. The result was that we were able to capture each angle in one take and under a total of 15 minutes for the whole scene. We also got some funny stares from bystanders and some big kudos from the cast members.

This wasn’t something that we just slapped together in the moment. We knew that time was going to be of the essence for this whole project, so my 1st AC and I actually spent an entire day testing and rehearsing this one scene a few days before the shoot. Practice makes perfect.

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When Bradley first reached out to me about “Not Alone,” I knew immediately it was a project worth making. We’ve worked on numerous documentary and commercial projects over the past several years even though we live halfway across the country from each other. So when he pitched me this deeply personal story (a first-time narrative short rooted in veteran experience), I could already see the vision taking shape. What made it especially unique was producing the entire film remotely while Brad filmed in Tyler, Texas.

As a first-time director stepping into narrative storytelling, Brad brought strong vision and commitment. My role was to support him in bringing that to life with precision and efficiency. From script breakdowns to budgeting, scheduling, call sheets, and back-end logistics, I handled the production infrastructure. All communication, whether with Brad, his AC, or the cast, was done through Zoom, text, and email. We solved location and weather conflicts, locked in Airbnbs for cast lodging, and adapted every curveball with careful planning.

Of course, there were moments when I wished I could have been there on the ground, especially when things got tight with schedule shifts and gear setups. But the truth is, we pulled it off. Remote producing worked better than expected, and it proved that with the right team and systems, distance is no excuse for execution.

What Brad achieved with “Not Alone” wasn’t just impressive for a first-time director, it was smart filmmaking. We worked within a modest budget, but thanks to Brad’s prior combat footage featuring the same lead actor, we repurposed content with surgical precision. A few strategic rewrites and we had a combat flashback scene that elevated the entire production value without inflating the budget.

When weather hit, we pivoted. When other challenges came up, we collaborated and created nimble solutions. That flexibility was possible because of our pre-production planning, strong communication, and a contingency budget that let us extend cast payment while still staying on track financially.

At every step, this project required resourcefulness. But that’s exactly why it worked. “Not Alone” is a testament to what can happen when story, intent, and execution align. It honors veterans with dignity and clarity, using deliberate visual grammar and emotional restraint. And for Brad, it’s a bold and impressive first step into narrative directing. For all of us, it was a reminder that great filmmaking isn’t about having everything—it’s about using what you have, wisely.

Here is a BTS reel of the making of Not Alone.