Watch 'Jane LA' From Max Landis: A Short Film About A Girl And Her Art Project

Max Landis (Chronicle, and the upcoming American Ultra and Victor Frankenstein) has released a new short film called Jane LA. The 12-minute short film is a documentary/found footage-style story about a girl named Jane who claims to be creating a bomb as an art project. How much of her plan is a joke and how much of it is real? The short is compelling, funny and totally not what you expect. Watch the Max Landis Jane LA short film after the jump.

Sure, the visual effects aren't great but I liked this short film because it just happened — I love the idea that a imaginative screenwriter can come up with an idea, just go shoot it with his actor friends and release it online. We live in very cool times where the gatekeepers no longer exist. Say what you will about Max Landis but he's one of the few big Hollywood creatives making short films for just the fun of it. Here is how Landis describes the origin of the film:

I borrowed a friend's camera to make it; it's shot entirely by me. It was an idea I'd had for a long time; I only really got motivated because I thought Zena [Grey]  would do a good job, and that brought out the director in me. Almost every line of dialogue you here is improvised; there was absolutely no script. I just knew the scenes we needed. I would, before hitting record, throw the actors (random friends of mine) the idea they needed to convey. Occasionally I got more specific, but mostly it was "Prompt, shoot, notes, prompt again, shoot again, notes again" until I got what I needed. The end result got put in limbo as my life grew steadily more busy, but I'm happy to finally release this cut. It's not the "SUPAR HIGH PRODUCTION VALUE SPECIAL EFFECTS WOW" type of short most directors release these days. It certainly isn't "viral." But I'm very proud of it as an experiment in shooting from the hip to tell a story, which is exactly what it was meant to be.

The film also stars Hadrian Belove (of the Cinefamily theater), Russell Henson and Maggie Levin, Anna DeHaan (Chronicle). The film was edited by Kim Kruse and Andy Holton.