Director: Shaha Magdiev

Producers: Shaha Magdiev, Eve Peters

Assistant Director: ZJ Wang

Director of Photography: Liam Podos

1st Assistant Camera: David Melean

Key Grip: Michael Monroe, Cosmo Clark-Shaw

Sound Mixer: Alec Inagamov

“Hullabaloo” is a short family drama about a recovering addict who makes the ill-fated decision to bring his 8-year-old niece to a party with his old friends. We shot the film over 4 days in NYC in March 2025. Shaha drew inspiration from some modern gritty classics like Anora and Good Time as well as some older work, like The French Connection. He also drew on his experience as an AD in the kind of production he wanted to run. He was strict about maintaining an 8-hour workday and giving the actors as much room as possible to perform once we began shooting each scene. As such, he requested that we keep the lighting as minimal as possible to save on time in between set-ups. This was an interesting challenge, but one that I was very excited to dive into. We worked with almost entirely practical lights, using blocking and camera position, as well as a variety of bulbs and gels to light scenes, as opposed to larger film lights. When we did bring in film lights, they were small and mobile, often bounced into the environment to create a much more natural, yet still nuanced look. Not one time in the production of this film was a light pointed at an actor, even with diffusion. This actually set the tone for the rest of my 2025 work, as I continued to favor this minimalist style, allowing me to shoot quickly and cheaply, while still getting a pleasing, story-driven look. “Hullabaloo” was shot on the Arri Alexa Mini with Zeiss Standard Speeds and is currently in the festival-submission process.