Baggage

When a filmmaker who is both a director and VFX artist makes a short, you know there’s bound to be incredible visual splendor involved…but I certainly didn’t anticipate all of the raining dildos. Yep, you read that right. In Tim Hendix’s cheeky Slamdance short Baggage, an absurdist comedy set in a blind date cafe that requires everyone to bring their emotional baggage in the form of a literal suitcase, you never know what might spring out of the bag. Against the backdrop of a 1930’s Art Deco cafe aptly named Cafe De Baggage, with the motto ‘Be Yourself Baggage and All!’, Hendix playfully explores themes of trauma, compromise, and the promise of love.  

There’s something about a transatlantic accent that can romanticize any story and the on-screen chemistry between actors Horace Gold and Michelle Ortiz couldn’t be any more perfect, even if they spend most of the film arguing. Exploring the difficulties of dating and feeling worthy of love, with Baggage Hendrix pulled from his own personal struggles of having an autism spectrum disorder called Hyperlexia. “Communicating via subtext, breaking from routine, and anticipating a partner’s unspoken needs can be difficult for me,” the filmmaker admits.

Plagued with questions, Hendrix’s personal concerns fuel the film’s emotional core, reflecting universal fears: “Is there anyone out there who can handle me, with all my quirks, limitations, history, and burdens?” and  “What if I find the right person, but being honest about these all things is what scares them away?” Despite the specific influences behind the short, Baggage resonates as it acts as a welcome reminder that despite our individual differences we all share similar wants and desires.

“This script was almost made in 2020 with my first (and to date, last) ever substantial paycheck for commercial directing. ” – Hendrix discussion the creation of Baggage.

Featuring a number of brazen one-liners and more than a few slapstick moments that will have you laughing out loud, Baggage is a testament to Hendrix’s sharp sense of humor in how it offers some much needed levity to what is ultimately a deeply vulnerable experience for many. “I couldn’t think of a better way to express these insecurities than literal baggage – Giving the things that embarrass us and weigh on us a physical presence to match their emotional one.  Also, I really, really wanted to create a monsoon of dildos. It is the year of our lord 2025 and I will not be kink shamed.” Amen to that.

The aesthetic of this film is a Jazz Moderne extravaganza. Pre-code movies from the early 1930’s were a major inspiration for Hendrix and with costume design by Aleece Martt and hand-painted titles scanned in by a traditional sign painter, Hendrix went all out to make Baggage feel period accurate while adding his own artistic flare. “Classy but naughty, risqué but restrained, and black tie but laugh out loud”, Hendrix explains. “When I could finally film this at the end of 2021,  I channeled that vibe into the dialogue, visual design, and casting.” With an absolute army of artists who would come to work on the visual effects, it should come as no surprise that the film took almost three years to complete. 

So how did he make such a visual effects heavy short film feel so seamless in its world building? While the majority of the film was shot on an Alexa Amira with Super Baltar Lenses, the miniatures and additional elements were shot with a RED camera graciously lent by a friend. “A strange but very kind former roommate of mine would hand it to me in the Trader Joe’s bag he kept it in and not ask me about insurance or red tape,” Hendrix jokes. But all jokes aside, the camera’s high resolution provided the Baggage team with enough data to scale up the miniatures and add lens characteristics in post. To capture the miniatures themselves, the director and his team used a probe/snorkel lens – typically used in commercial food ads, a space Hendrix is familiar with -perfect for creating the illusion of making the miniatures look and feel giant to seamlessly pair with the live-action plates.

“I wanted the color grade to maintain a fantasy storybook vibe, while feeling historically accurate” – Hendrix explaining why he wanted to replicate the Technicolor three strip approach

With post production taking a year and a half after they wrapped their final shoot in April 2022, Hendrix reveals that he “personally finished and built every single composite”, although for specific shots, he “enlisted the help of matte painters, 3D artists, and illustrators”. With a goal to “follow through with the handmade aesthetic of the miniatures, and carry that through to the final product,” Adam Miller served as the primary matte painter on the project. His work enhancing existing photography with scale and period details, while maintaining the painterly and 2D feel of the matte paintings of the era. Hendrix would then add motion and embed those shots with the rest of the live-action footage. The process of making Baggage may well have been exhausting, but the result was undoubtedly worth the effort.

Striving to maintain a storybook approach that felt period-accurate to the 1930’s, Hendrix and his team opted to simulate the early iterations of the three strip Technicolor approach, seen in movies like Nothing Sacred and A Star Is Born (the original!). These old films were shot on a camera that had three strips of black and white film running through it at the same time as light going through the lens would hit a prism to split the red, green, and blue channels to individual strips. They’d then be dyed and re-combined optically. To replicate this, colorist Jared Rosenthal broke the short film into three black and white channels and ran separate black and white emulation on each one, before re-combining them. “The process nearly killed him and this is proof,” Hendrix tells Short of the Week in jest. Adding that his short is “a wild assembly of Alexa humans, miniature set extensions, miniature puppets, vehicles, actual hand drawn paintings, CGI, and every other form of media that exists.”

Dazzling and spectacular, Baggage premiered at Slamdance and was featured at BeyondFest and the Seattle International Film Festival. It also took home the Best Narrative Short award at the Lower East Side Film Festival and won the Best Visual Effects award at Filmquest. We’re pretty sure those wins had something to do with that monsoon of dildos!