Inspired to create his story because of a longstanding ambition to make a film with four of his friends (Schuetze – who wrote, directs and stars in the film – was at high school, and in the same theatre company, with his fellow on-screen stars), this quirky tale of a quintet of performers feels like the perfect way to brighten-up anyone’s start to the week. Forming a narrative around an email chain where they discussed ‘living in Paris in a one room apartment in matching suits, trying to make it as artists’, The Paris Quintet in Practice Makes Perfect is a light-hearted look at artistic cliques and clichés.

From the moment Schuetze’s film kicks in and we’re presented with its opening shot of many hands typing the name of the film on a typewriter, its unusual score playfully dancing alongside the imagery – we’re left with no doubt that this isn’t going to be your conventional narrative. Toying with structure, performance and choreography in its tightly woven 11-minute duration, on its surface The Paris Quintet in Practice Makes Perfect feels like a film of simple ideas, but really scratch that surface and the complexities of its narrative and production really shines through. “We rehearsed for 8 days before production to figure out some of the choreography sequences you see in the film”, says Schuetze, “but it was nerve-wracking none the less to pull off the routines on a tight 3 day shoot schedule with all the crew, lights, and cameras around, needing up to 15 takes in some instances to nail it. Shea Pollard, the director of photography and I worked off of a shot list but without storyboards, so a lot of the framing, and camera moves we figured out as we went along using the constraint of shooting in a tiny room as our ally. We only figured out the final reveal out the window after we’d finished principal photography, so it required a lot of work, shooting, and reshooting the plates, rotoscoping the actors and relying on the special effects ingenuity of Diego Maclean, a gifted animator friend who I’m fortunate to get to work with, to pull it off.”

All that hard graft certainly paid off – if Schuetze and his team were hoping to make something unique and eye-catching they certainly succeeded. You could easily watch Practice Makes Perfect and list all of its inspirations and references as its quirky storyline plays out, but even when doing this it never feels like a film lacking in its own ideas or its own distinct voice. Currently working on developing his short into a longer piece, Schuetze gave Short of the Week a brief glimpse of what we can expect from the feature-length film:

“This short film was first intended as a production demo, to introduce the characters, style, and story, to raise funds for a longer short (to be shot in Paris) but the success of the short film at festivals encouraged us to expand the idea and push towards making our next effort as the Quintet a full length feature. We’ve been working on the feature for quite a while now, and are finally approaching a script that feels like it’s ready for production. The only thing we are missing still is the funding of course, but we are working with French and Canadian producers to make this weird dream a reality. The feature script follows the Quintet now finally living in Paris still in a tiny one room apartment trying their hardest to pass as authentic Parisian artists even though they still don’t speak a lick of french. They have also met the girl of their dreams, just as they’d imagined, and are trying to win her heart, but don’t understand that they can’t be with her as they are five and she is only one.”