Review Fix Exclusive: Stephen Herman Talks ‘Message Received’

Review Fix chats with film director and writer Stephen Herman, who discusses his newest short film, “Message Received.”

Review Fix: How was this film born?

Stephen Herman: It was actually an accident. David and I were on a long bus ride scouting out locations for one of our films. During the ride we discussed the reoccurring issues we deal with during post production. One problem we kept running into was getting good audio from the actors. We were wondering how we could get around it with the next film and the idea hit us – what if we did a whole film without anyone speaking a word? And boom! The concept for Message Received was conceived.

Review Fix: What inspired it?

Herman: Recently I watched our very first short film – Last Call. We did that over 5 years ago and I was surprised how much the film still resonates with me. It inspired me to recapture that same feeling again just in a different way. Last Call was all dialogue. On the other hand, Message Received had no dialogue. In both films the actual “phones” became characters themselves. In one, the phone was used to save a life; in the other to hide one. I wanted to capture that motif of communication, or the lack there of. That was my inspiration at heart.

Review Fix: What did you learn from your previous films and how did those lessons affect this one?

Herman: I think we learned to trust in ourselves again. I say that because when we first started this, our main focus was all about small stories with big concepts. I think we lost some of that along the way. With our last few films we were trying to squeeze feature length concepts into 15, 20 minute short. For Message Received, we didn’t go with the a full crew or big cast. David and I did it all by ourselves. Just the two of us, a camera and a script – our original plan.

Review Fix: How is this film different?

Herman: It may not look like it but Message Received is very technical. In all our films we used a lot of dolly shots, tripods, and sliders in order to make them feel more “Hollywood”. Message Received was 95% handheld shots. I wanted the film to constantly feel unsteady and off balance to capture the tension the main character was feeling. If you notice the camera kept panning to all these wide empty spaces on the walls. That was all planned. Not just to make room to overlap the text messages on later, it was also symbolizing the walls we build up between each other. It made the characters feel smaller on screen and the text messages larger than life. They became the true antagonists of the film. One character even wore a Smiley face emoji mask.

Review Fix: Why must someone watch it?

Herman: I feel like Message Received says a lot without saying a thing. There’s no spoken dialogue in the entire film. All the characters communicate via text messages. I read that 18-24 years olds’ send and receive about 128 texts a day.25-35-year-olds’ range around 75 a day. So… if you’re going to be reading texts anyway why not watch this film? Haha.

Review Fix: How have the accolades the film has earned affected you?

Herman: The film’s been getting a lot of great reviews. We won Best Director at the NYC CUNY film festival this year. The road to making a film can be long and strenuous. A lot of people have no idea the amount of time and work that goes into this so a well-timed award can be just the fuel you need when your tank’s on empty. A supportive comment can get you a couple more miles.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Herman: Maybe another short or two, then we’ll be branching off into feature films. It’s the next stop on the journey.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13802 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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