stop it. · press kit · 2026

Finding that negative thoughts reset the day, a young man is stuck in a loop of self-deprecating madness. Once he cannot have a negative thought, that’s when he can get through the day.

Each pass through the day tightens. The faces around him, in a bar, at a window, on a street, begin to carry the same expression, and the advice speeds up to meet them. The film holds on those faces long enough for the resemblance to become uncomfortable. What the loop is for, and whether it ends, is settled in the last minute.

stop it. was shot over three days in Los Angeles, with a cast of six. It runs 8 min.

A man’s worst day keeps repeating, and every time it starts over his own head supplies more advice about how to fix it. Affirmations, breathing exercises, a voice telling him to sit with the feeling. The comedy is aimed at all of that, not at him. He is having a terrible time.

We shot it in three days in Los Angeles at the end of May, four crew and six actors. Mary Holland produced, designed it and plays Katie. Samuel Diaz shot it on a Sony FX9 with two Angénieux zooms, the 15 to 40mm and the 30 to 90mm, so we could reframe inside a take instead of stopping to swap glass. Edward O’Neil did the sound and wrote the score. I cut it. Because the story loops, we shot the repeated beats from the same positions and let the performances carry the difference. The finished cut runs eight minutes, and most of what came out was explanation nobody needed.

[locations, camera and lenses, colour and post, and any supporting fund or lab.]

Hal Whitman is a writer and director working in short-form narrative, based in Los Angeles. His films are built around a small cast and a single interior pressure, shot close and cut so the audience arrives at a feeling slightly before it arrives at the explanation. stop it. is his most recent short.