Muscle Memory follows six friends who unexpectedly cross paths after years of growing apart, exploring the lingering familiarity of friendships that have ended but never completely left you. I made the film because I wanted to examine the way certain people become embedded in our memories, and how returning to them can bring back parts of ourselves we thought we had outgrown. As my first short film and the debut of Dashwood Films, it was also my first experience carrying a project from an idea into an actual production. Directing it was an incredibly difficult experience. The shoot was chaotic, often overwhelming, and challenged my understanding of what it meant to lead a set and protect a creative vision while working with other people. The process left me with a complicated relationship with the finished film. A year later, I don't particularly like Muscle Memory, and I see countless things I would change if I made it today. At the same time, I think there is value in keeping something that I have so clearly outgrown. It captures my earliest understanding of myself as a filmmaker, before I had figured out the kind of stories I wanted to tell or the kind of director I wanted to be.
