In July 2026, a crew of five spent three days in a rented apartment outside San Diego making a ten-minute film about a marriage at a crossroads.

The Table is about that fight. The one every couple knows — the argument that has been building for years, that finally arrives at the dinner table one winter evening. It is about what is really being said underneath the words, and the secret one man has been carrying alone that changes everything.

It is, ultimately, a love story. One that goes right.

I started writing The Table the day after a fight with my wife. Not a dramatic fight — the fight. The one we always have, where two people who love each other desperately somehow end up on opposite sides of a table wondering how they got there. We both wanted to be in the loving phase of our relationship. Instead we were in the fighting phase. Again.

I went to work the next morning and started writing.

I make documentaries, which means I have built a practice around watching people — the look someone gives before they say the hard thing, the way a person goes quiet when they are hurt, the gesture that says everything the words cannot. That is the language The Table is written in. What drew me to fiction with this story is that documentary could not contain it. This was not someone else’s truth I was observing. It was mine. And I suspect it is yours too.

This is not an idea looking for funding. Principal photography is complete. We shot 43 setups over three days with a professional production sound mixer, two cameras, a locked script, and a cast who showed up because the story was worth showing up for.

The production was funded almost entirely out of pocket. Cast and crew were paid. The location was rented. Insurance was carried. Everything that needed to happen to get the film in the can, happened.

What remains is post-production — and post-production is where a short film either becomes something people watch, or stays footage on a hard drive.

Every dollar goes to finishing the film: an editor to shape it, a professional sound mix, and a color grade. These are not luxuries. Festivals reject films on sound quality faster than on any other technical issue. An outside editor brings the fresh eyes that a director who also shot the film cannot bring to his own footage.

The Table is being finished for the 2026–2027 festival circuit, with submissions planned to San Diego International Film Festival, San Diego Short Film Festival, and Denver Film Festival, among others. Festival screenings are how a short film like this reaches an audience — in a room, with strangers, in the dark.  That is the whole goal. Get it in front of people who might recognize themselves in it.

Flying Bunny Productions is an independent film company based in Denver, Colorado, making intimate, character-driven documentary and narrative films. Previous work includes Whit, a short documentary about a man navigating identity and vulnerability after a cancer diagnosis, and Alyse, a narrative short currently on the festival circuit.

Thank you for reading this far. That alone means something.
Milo Smith - Director/Producer