The excitement, vulnerability and uncertainty of an unexpected romantic connection can create the chemistry and tension that make romantic films so compelling. Those emotions are the driving force behind the new short film, ‘The First Date,’ which explores the unpredictable nature of connection and attraction.

The 15-minute movie is set to premiere in the Short, Sweet, & Queer section of this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival. The screening will be held next Saturday, October 17 at 4:00pm PT at The Lot, Screen 4.

Will Crouse and Ashley Crowe wrote and directed the short. Crowe and Alex Nolen star in the movie.

‘The First Date’ follows Amesha and Jori, two women who meet at a bar and immediately catch each other’s attention. What begins as a chance encounter soon becomes an adventurous and unforgettable first date.

Amesha has never been with a woman before. Meanwhile, Jori has never taken acid, creating an unusual starting point for their evening together. As the night unfolds, both women take a leap into unfamiliar territory.

Their experience becomes a tender and playful exploration of vulnerability, courage, and human connection. Through their journey, the story examines the excitement that can accompany stepping beyond familiar boundaries.

In honor of ‘The First Date’s premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Crouse and Crowe generously took the time recently to talk about penning, helming and starring in the project during an interview over Zoom. Among other things, the filmmakers discussed how their friendship and their real-life experiences inspired the short’s story. They also discussed how, after years of collaborative writing, directing and production challenges, they’re grateful to premiere the deeply personal movie at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Film Factual (FF): Together, you wrote the script for the new short, ‘The First Date.’ What was the inspiration in telling the story in the film, and how did you get the project together?

Will Crouse (WC): Ashley and I worked on a short film called ‘The Reception’ together, where she was an actor and I was the director. I instantly thought Ashley was a fantastic actor and really enjoyed working with her.

We started hanging out and talking about life after the short had wrapped. That was in 2019, which is crazy to say. It’s coming up on seven years ago.

We had been talking about different parts of life. Ashley told me about a woman she was dating at the time and how, out of nowhere, she was struck with this feeling of love for this woman. That was so new to her.

I had this story in my head about two people who, on a first date, wildly decided to do LSD. Hearing Ashley talk about this new experience, I had this moment of thinking, I wonder if there’s some way that my inspiration of two people doing LSD on their first date could be wedded to some of the story Ashley was telling me about how her real life went.

So I went to Ashley with some pages of a script. Everything started taking off from there.

Ashley Crowe (AC): I loved getting to work with Will. From the moment I first came into his audition room, there was such a kindness to him, as well as a curiosity and openness. After working together on ‘The Reception,’ our friendship formed.

When Will came to me with the idea, I thought, okay, this is kind of cool. I felt honored that he would even consider my story and pair it with his.

I love how the inspiration took hold, and then we just kept working on it. Our friendship grew through it. It’s been this really beautiful project that we’ve gotten to work on together over the last few years. It’s been an anchor in my life for personal reasons, too.

Being able to work with somebody who is willing to flesh out a story together, especially a story that’s really personal for both of us in different ways, has meant a lot. The conversations that have come out of it, and the shifts in our individual lives since we started, have been significant. I’m no longer with the person who was my first love. We’re both married, and we’ve had different career experiences. We’ve always been able to come back to this.

There’s the story that’s on the screen. But the story of Will and me working together is its own beautiful story as well.

FF: Besides penning the screenplay together, you also co-directed the movie. How did creating the story help influence the way you approached helming the short?

WC: It was a long process of writing and developing the story, figuring out how we wanted it to move, and discovering what it wanted to be. It developed so much. Our first conversation was seven years ago, and we were tweaking and refining the script right up until we were shooting.

Ashley is also one of the leads (actors) in the film. So, heading into shooting, we had a lot of conversations about the visual world and the vibe we were trying to convey. Ashley did an amazing job putting together a lookbook for our designers that captured the visual feeling of the movie.

I did a lot of preparation with our cinematographer. I also worked closely our wonderful producer, Bryan Wright, to get the crew together.

When we actually shot, we had this great moment where we said, “Okay, we’ve been making this thing.” I told Ashley, “You go be an actor. I want you to feel fully free in the world.” The movie is basically two people, and she’s in every scene.

That was a beautiful handoff. I stepped into the director’s seat and guided the day-to-day. Meanwhile, Ashley was deep in the world and headspace of her character.

Then we had the post-production process, which was really lovely. Once the shoot was wrapped, we could reconnect. We were in post for one to two years, so we were working on this for a long time – editing it and getting the sound, color and everything right.

We worked closely with our wonderful editor, Kat Webber. The three of us had a lot of calls and conversations about the shape of the movie once we had the raw material of the shoot. That’s how we navigated the different roles and the different phases of the project.

AC: I think one clear way of looking at our partnership throughout this process is that we’re the co-creators of this. We created it together, and at different points, we took on different roles.

Will really has been the steady constant for this entire project. Without him, this story – which I think is a beautiful one that showcases both of our talents – would not be what it is today. He brought that steady presence not just from a creative standpoint, but from a technical standpoint. He understood what it takes to actually get an independent film off the ground.

In the beginning, it was more of an artistic pursuit: writing together, molding it and crafting it. Then, when we came to the time of filming, what I learned was that I really came at this as a storyteller and creator first and foremost, and not just as an actor, which has been my main profession.

Will was great about taking on that load and giving me the space to focus on acting. I didn’t have to worry about what was happening outside of that. I could just exist in the world and bring these characters that we had spent so much time developing to life.

I also learned that, as a director, when you’re on set, you’re looking at everything. You’re not just looking for the performances; you’re looking at composition and managing an entire team of creators who bring their own expertise, creativity and opinions to what the world looks like.

There was a lot of trust involved. For me, it was trusting that Will had it handled. For him, it was trusting me as an actor to bring those characters to life.

I had never felt so empowered or had so much agency as an actor. I was really relying on my craft and skill set as an actor and trusting his eye to handle the technical side.

As an artist and an actor, it was a dream to work with him. It was really empowering. It taught me what it means to be an actor as an artist, rather than just an actor.

FF: Speaking about the acting side of the production, how did you both approach working with the other lead in ‘The First Date,’ Alex Nolen?

AC: I was so excited to be working with Alex. Alex and I actually went to college together. We were in the same theater program at Loyola. She was always working and somebody who I enjoyed watching on stage, so it was such a treat to actually get to perform with her. She was very giving and present.

For me, particularly with Amisha’s character, it was about finding the differences between us, as well as the similarities. What is it about Amisha that I see in myself? I think I do that with any character that I’m playing because I believe you’re going to leave a piece of yourself with each character. But you’re still a vessel for that character’s story and not your own.

It’s a beautiful dance to go on that experience with a character. To do that with an equally giving, professional and talented scene partner is such a treat. Alex was absolutely wonderful to work with.

WC: I love working with Alex. Ashley and Alex actually played off each other as scene partners in ‘The Reception,’ and they had a scene together that was kind of a meet-cute.

It’s actually off of their ease of working with each other and both of their clear talent that the idea started to come to me. The story is about two people who do LSD on their first date, so it’s about opening your mind as well as opening your heart.

When Ashley told me her story, I thought, Okay, maybe it’s these two women. Then it immediately hit me: What if it’s just Ashley and Alex? It all came at once. I thought, That’s the vision. That’s the movie.

Working with Alex and Ashley was amazing. They’re both so talented. Ashley said to me afterward, “You gave me some of the least direction, in some ways, that I’ve ever had.” I think it’s because we had spent so much time working on it and we did rehearsals together. By the time we were actually filming, there wasn’t a lot to say.

A lot of times, I think the best thing you can do as a director is be vocal when you know the actors are in it. A decent amount of my direction was, “You guys are in it. Stay in it. Keep going.” Then I’d move the camera a little, or tell them that we needed a voice a little louder because of something technical.

Working with the two of them was wonderful. It was so natural and easy. I think they’re both very effortless, which is a real quality you need, particularly in film acting. You need to be as relaxed as you can be.

It was also an intense shoot. We shot 10-hour days most days, we were moving locations and we had a lot of different things go sideways. I was always so impressed. I’d be running around with the crew thinking, Okay, we can’t do that, so now we have to do this. I’d come back to them and they’d just be completely chill, chatting and talking about something.

I was always glad that all of the chaos hadn’t affected them. They were able to have this sense of calm in the midst of a big machine swirling around them.

FF: Speaking about the locations, how did you find where you would shoot during the production?

WC: Maybe I’ll start this one with a story, and then, Ashley, I’m curious what it was like for you because we were moving all around.

The wildest story of all of it is that the movie starts at a bar. We lost our bar the day before we were going to shoot there.

We shot the movie over the course of four and a half days. Day two was the day we were going to shoot at the bar, and on day one, we found out in the morning that the bar had a leak and we couldn’t use it. We had to figure something else out.

My producer started calling different bars, and we brought on a location scout to try to find us different options. We had to move our whole schedule around. I was told that we had to pick a day for the bar because otherwise we’d never get all of the background actors in place.

We picked a day one day later, so we had 24 hours to find a bar. It was an absolutely wild experience. We moved some of the park scenes to day two. That whole day, we were shooting in the park, which was our first real big day with a big crew outside in the heat.

Netween scenes, my producer would come up to me and say, “What about this bar? What about that bar?” So many of them didn’t work because we needed a funky, fun, cool, chill, vibey bar where you could imagine doing LSD. The initial options were much more sports-bar-oriented, which wasn’t the we needed for the film .

It was wild. It was like a ‘Cinderella’ moment. At the 11th hour, we’d finished shooting the whole day, we were all exhausted and we were sitting in this little meadow with the production team. Our production manager, Sam, stood up and said, “Pink Squirrel got back to us.”

At that point, “Pink Squirrel got back to us” was the most magical phrase I could hear. From the name alone, you can imagine the vibe. It was the right vibe.

We went there and looked at it, and it’s what you see in the movie. It was perfect. It was actually probably even better than the first bar we had.

It all came together, but choosing all these different locations and figuring out how to replace a location under that kind of time constraint was a real learning experience for me. It was certainly wild, but it all came together.

I’m curious what Ashley’s experience was because she was moving around to all these different locations as well.

AC: My experience was so hands-off that some of this is as much of a surprise to hear for me as it might be for you, Karen!

I knew things were going on. Will would occasionally message me and say, “The bar’s fallen through, but we’re on it. We’re working on it. Don’t worry about it.” It was really out of courtesy to me, as his co-creator and partner in this, to let me know.

I was so hands-off with any responsibility besides focusing on my character and getting a good night’s sleep so I could show up and be a good actor. Everything else was just noise around me, and I didn’t hear about it until afterward.

I’m used to it as an actor. You go where you’re told to go, wherever that’s going to be.

WC: Which is great. I love that.

AC: You know there’s stuff going on around you, but I had my job set out for me as an actor. I believe that outside of the craft, creativity and artistry of acting, there’s also a professional side to it. You have to block out the noise. Will gave me the space to do that. That was my experience.

FF: Will, earlier you mentioned the short’s cinematographer, Gianna Aquilina. How did you work together to determine how you would visually shoot the film?

WC: Gianna Aquilina, or Gigi, as we called her, is a wonderful DP (Director of Photographer). She’s primarily based out of New York. I had actually worked with her before. She was one of the gaffers on ‘The Reception.’

She’s a wonderful artist. I typically like to storyboard in conjunction with my DP. I come in with ideas, but I also want to be open to what they’re seeing in their head.

I went to New York for a long weekend, and we storyboarded together. It was beautiful to see how she saw the film and the different visual language she could bring to it.

I think we worked really well together. It felt similar to working with Ashley on the writing. Somebody puts out an idea, someone says, “Yes, and,” or someone says, “I don’t know, maybe we curve it a little this way.” It all felt wonderful and natural as we developed the shots with Gigi.

We then had a bit of a wild experience. On the first day of shooting, Gigi found out that she had COVID. A lot of the first day of shooting was outside, and we had a much smaller crew. But we still had to completely change how we were going to work together.

We developed a plan to move forward and let everybody know that Gigi had COVID. We worked in masks through the rest of the shoot. This was in 2023, so it was past the height of the pandemic, but still a time when we wanted to be sensitive.

Gigi then DP’d remotely, which was something I’d never experienced before. Since we’d spent so much time together talking about the film and developing the shot list, I felt really comfortable filming together through Zoom.

There was never any thought that we’d get somebody else. I needed Gigi and her vision, so we found a way to make it work. She was able to see what we were seeing on the monitor through her computer. I don’t know how they did that, but I’m very grateful to our electrical and technical teams for getting it set up.

Even though she was working remotely, Gigi still had a wonderful gaffer, Jan, who could communicate with her about what he was seeing. He could dell her if things were blowing out or if something was too dark. We had this three-way communication style that ultimately really worked, and I’m so happy with how the film looks. So much of that is due to Gigi’s vision and creativity.

FF: ‘The First Date’ is set to have its world premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival. What does being a part of the festival mean to you, and how does it feel to finally share the film with an audience at the festival?

WC: We’re both incredibly excited. Newport is such an awesome festival in Orange County and regularly draws 50,000 or 60,000 people every year. It’s such an honor to be part of their programming.

Their programmers are incredibly kind, and the festival is very filmmaker-friendly. There are so many filmmaker events and ways they want to bring us together. It’s an absolute dream.

During the final process of editing, when we were doing the final sound mix, I was sitting there with the sound mixer saying, “I’m going to cry so hard at the world premiere.”

It has been a whole journey to get here. I feel like we couldn’t have asked for a better place to world-premiere the film.

AC: the feeling is the same for me. This was my first time doing this as a filmmaker. I’ve always been on the actor side of things. So I know what it feels like when you get a booking, which is great.

Filmmaking is a whole other level. You hear a lot of no’s, and when that first yes comes in, it’s very exciting.

For it to be a festival that is open, friendly and excited about seeing your film, the feeling is so cool. Even the fact that somebody has watched our film outside of friends or family and said, “We want to show this to our audiences,” is exciting. Once a project is finished and somebody sees your work and wants to show it, it’s such a great feeling.

I’m so excited. To premiere the film in a place like Newport is great. We’re going to have a blast.