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| How Was Your Weekend? |
In Cam Banfield's short film, How Was Your Weekend? office employee Steven (James Morosini) confronts the inescapable Monday ritual of being asked about his weekend. In a swipe at corporate America, Steven asks what would happen if you didn't have a nice weekend, and you broke from the unspoken etiquette and answered honestly? In Bamfield's emotional horror and thriller-fuelled imagination, the office falls off its axis.
Bamfield has previously written and directed for the UCLA comedy shorts, How To Know If You're A Douchebag: Anatomy Of A Douchebag (2016), House Hunters: Young & Over Budget (2017), and Cop Bros (2017).
In conversation with Eye For Film, Banfield discussed drawing on personal experiences, being drawn to emotional thriller and horror narratives, and placing his short in the prison genre.
Paul Risker Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Cam Banfield: There wasn't a distinct moment per se, like when you hear these amazing stories from the Steven Spielbergs about making films since they were little. For me, it was an organic thing where creation was almost a form of survival. I really didn't have a way to express myself in the way that I wanted to when I would socialise or present myself publicly, and storytelling allowed me to do that.
I'm crazy about it now, and it's my first film, but I can't stop thinking about the different stylistic ways of telling stories. What I'm trying to do is write these very personal, first-person point-of-view-driven emotional thrillers and horrors, because everything in everyday life is a horror thriller, which we all go through every day in some capacity.
This project, as the one to kick it off, is the most mundane but relatable horror nightmare that we've all experienced, whether it's actually in our job or if it's at gatherings. I always felt the kitchen scene in our short film is in line with your extended family over Thanksgiving, that you don't really know how to talk to, or what basis you're on with them at any given moment. It's all about trying to drill down to the relatable human experience.
PR: This offers a broad scope for the story, but if we were to drill down, what was the seed of the idea for the film?
CB: I was working an office job, because so far, I've made $0 as a writer and director. It was my first time being in one of those hyper-turned-on, fluorescent tube-lit environments that I had to get acclimated to. It was like whiplash, and I couldn't help but notice every single micro-interaction. It's got this weird underbelly of sinister but polite, and funny but dark. It's constantly towing that line, and one day I remember texting my producing partner, Greg Cohen, telling him all of these people are asking each other the same version of the same question, but no one cares about what the answer is. I'm watching these people ask "How was your weekend?" And the answer is "Good."
It dawned on me that if you break that mould and go against the grain of what the social expectations are for being a proper office employee, the role that you should play, you could upend everything. That's where the surprise and magic trick in our film is, because it really is that simple. What if it starts with one person? What if one person didn't have a good weekend, and they openly admitted it instead of being the performative version of a good corporate employee? Well, if one person did that, then you start to think about how big this could be. What if everyone was doing that and what if everybody cut through the BS and was actually honest, genuine and real?
In the premise of our short, hell opens up, and it becomes a struggle for Steven's work-life balance. It's about what happens when you bring the personal into the workplace, and the way that it slips back into your personal life, and the surreal horror that comes from that.
PR: We're programmed to answer questions a certain way, as if there's a right and wrong answer. The film takes a deliberate shot at this culture we've cultivated, which discourages people from speaking honestly about their feelings.
CB: I didn't actually mean to get under the reel, and it's strange because I can't unsee it now. We filmed in the summer of last year, and it was a very fast-paced post-production process. I've subjected myself to the torture of hearing, "How was your weekend?" five hundred times a week, instead of a few because of the post-production process. Now I can't unsee the way it opens the door to everybody's fake performative modes of being. There are a lot of children in adult clothing that are trying to perform being an adult, but if you squint just a little bit: 'Oh, I see what you were like when you were like six and a half.'
The other craziest part that kick-started this whole process, was when you say "bad," and the person that's asking is so genuine, that they go blank. It's almost like they're looking into your eyes, and the computer chips are telling them they need to make genuine human eye contact right now, but it's like they're looking through the back of your head. I literally caught myself one time telling somebody, "Oh, actually my weekend was really hard because there were a lot of family problems." They were blanking, and asked, "So, about that report that we need to turn in on a 2pm call. You good for that?"
It's about switching between normal mode and work mode. We have to turn on work mode and it's really hard turning it on every single morning for a nine to five job or whatever your occupation is. It's damaging on the psyche, and I know that probably sounds a little bit oversensitive and like I'm tiptoeing around how we have to exist in the world, but it's a lot when it doesn't come naturally to you.
PR: There's the adage about first and lasting impressions. The film's opening shot is a powerful one that immediately commands the audience’s attention. What was your thought process behind the opening sequence?
CB: Honestly, there was no other way of starting the movie. It was the first set-up, and I wanted to specifically lean into the discomfort of what that moment feels like with a lot of people in a cramped, hot office in the summer. I wanted to capitalise on that, and I felt something good would come from it.
When you have an amazing actor like James, then cool shit happens. It's obviously a guy in his car, but I'm trying to communicate that we're not showing you an office commuter, we're showing you a prisoner. The prisoner is in his cage — there's a glass visitation window, and we're watching him in his little habitat before he turns on work mode for the first time. It felt like there was no other way to open the film than that.
We didn't get any other coverage — it was shot one. I said, "I want this camera on the hood of the car staring up into his grill as close as we can get and just let him be." And it worked. Then, tying that into the final shot, which shows a nice little change, he has a nice smile because he has gotten his act together, and he has listened to the office supervisor.
PR: Prison movies are framed by themes that transcend the spatial. So, stories that are not set in physical prisons, but are about characters that are trapped and discontented with their lives, can be described as prison movies. A film like yours is about a captive of sorts, and whether he can break free from the expectations of the model employee.
CB: This is a prison movie. It sits in that world, but it's also an identity and journey movie, which are well suited to that, if we're calling it a prison genre. You meet the character in a classic cinematic fashion where you know something has happened prior to the film beginning. Here you've an amazing actor like James, who's got a deep internal emotional life that pops off on the screen, and we're along for the ride. It's about the idea of escaping a version of a prison, even your own internal one.
Different versions can splay off the main tributaries and branches. There could also be prison movies about a relationship and that's your prison, or it could be a badass action movie, and you're literally in prison. They are all cut from the same cloth, and I like that framing, because, unfortunately, we're all prisoners of something. It could be our ambition, our job, our circumstances or our relationships.
There's something about going along for the ride with someone, watching them escape their prison, or at least better their circumstances, that's tantalising and so watchable.
PR: Having spoken about the character's emotions, I remember reading that literature is able to enter the character's mind in a way that cinema cannot, or not as easily. Cinema, however, has tools to express the internal world of its characters. Essentially, each form communicates in its own way with either the reader or the audience.
CB: So many of the bones of even the early stages of thinking about this project are in line with what you're saying about literature versus cinema. I knew the sound design and music were going to be the thing that took this to the stratosphere. Our sound designer and our composer, Zach Robinson, pump something in here that is so tactile and real and grotesque, but in a human and natural way. The way that music makes me feel when Rachael Harris' character is leaning into his ear telling him, "You're gonna do what I say," makes me sick to my stomach, and I've seen the scene hundreds of times.
What I'm most crazy about in terms of executing a vision, at least right now in these early stages, is making sure what I'm hearing when I'm writing it, when I'm fantasising about it, and when I'm talking about it, is what you get to hear.
I don't come from a technical background, and I had an amazing director of photography in Matt Clegg, who shot with the most beautiful large format camera, and made a very non-cinematic setting look beautifully cinematic in widescreen. The transition from literature to a cinema format is my being able to tell people exactly what I'm hearing so that you can hear it as well — how loud and how quiet. That soundscape is fascinating, and it was a blast to do that for the first time. I thought to myself, 'Oh my gosh, this feels real now.'
How Was Your Weekend? Premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
