Whiplash

This eighteen-minute short is a proof of concept made in front of the feature. Damien Chazelle's Whiplash script had made the Black List and nobody would fund it. He filmed a single scene from it as a short and took it to Sundance in 2013. It worked. The short screened on 18 January 2013, won the Short Film Jury Prize, and persuaded investors to finance the feature; three million dollars was raised. J. K. Simmons already plays Terence Fletcher in the short. He kept the role in the feature and won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for it. Andrew is played by Johnny Simmons, no relation, and that part went to Miles Teller in the feature. What you are watching is the first version of the film's hardest scene: a teacher at a music school taking a student apart over tempo. Who it is for: viewers who liked Whiplash and want to know how it managed to exist. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the whole story. The short is a single scene; it has neither a beginning nor a resolution.