After making my first short film, I knew I wanted the next one to be simple. Keep it light, keep it fun, and see if I could make a small idea actually work on screen.

This time, we stripped everything down. My first short had a crew of twelve, which felt huge to me back then. For this one, it was just three of us, including me. Roger Lee came on as Director of Photography. He’s a longtime friend whose work I had always respected, and after he helped me color my first short, I realized we had a very similar eye and taste in film.

I looked at this film as a test. Not just for me, but for us as a small team. I’ve always believed filmmaking is built on trust. The best advice I ever got was not to network just to network, but to find people who love this as much as you do and grow together. That’s what I wanted. A small group of people I could keep creating with, no matter how big or small the project was.

The story itself is simple. A couple can’t figure out where to eat. That’s it. We shot it in my apartment and my cousin’s place, and every extra was played by a family member. The budget was basically nothing compared to my first film, but that was the whole point. I wasn’t trying to make something perfect. I wanted to see if I could take a small, relatable idea and make it entertaining.

Simple does not mean easy. When the idea is that small, there’s nowhere to hide. No big set pieces, no flashy concept, no spectacle to cover anything up. It has to work through timing, performance, editing, and whether people connect to the situation.

At the end of the day, What Do You Want?! was just us having fun and trying to make something honest out of a ridiculous everyday argument. I’m proud of what we pulled off with what we had.