Arlin Godwin

This is page is home base for Arlin Godwin's short film STOP TAKING PICTURES

The film stars Lina Romero and Joseph Groth and was financed, written, and directed by Arlin Godwin

The film was Co-Written & Produced by Trevor Taylor

Arlin also edited the movie and scored its soundtrack

STOP TAKING PICTURES 

Also features-- 

Chrisse Soukai as the voice of the DC Metro Transit Police 

Andrew Stone as the voice of Aaron's friend and agent Jeffrey Gunnison

Simon Jackson as the vooice of the Psychiatrist

MORE NOTES ON THE PRODUCTION ARE BELOW

Director Arlin Godwin, Producer Trevor Taylor, Lead Actor Joseph Groth & Actor Lina Romero 

BELOW - Lina Romero as Lilly in STOP TAKING PICTURES

NOTES  ON THE MAKING OF A MULTI-AWARD WINNING SHORT FILM

 What follows happened for real--in Washington, DC. 

We made a movie. Winter. 2025. 

I had an idea a long time ago to set a spooky, psychological thriller in the DC Metro system.

Just thought it looked so cool somebody should use it as a cinematic backdrop.  So yeah. That's what we did.

We shot on the Blackmagic 6K Pro in Raw 12bit and also a great deal on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone in 8K HEVC. 

Inspired by Ridley Scott's short film, also shot on that same phone the Samsung S23 Ultra in 8K. But Sir Ridley probably had far better lenses? 

Everything was shot, of course, at 24fps. No 30 or 60 for God's sake! 

We used the phone because we needed to shoot in real Metro subway stations in Washington, DC, and that won't work with large cinema cameras. 
Also, the phone has fantastic stabilization and auto focus, and is extremely lightweight. Turned out we did fine...did not get arrested and got the 
footage we needed while appearing more or less like average tourists shooting pictures with a phone! 

Trevor and I shot the film ourselves and lit parts of it ourselves with some really great help from a fellow filmmaker Andrew Steffan, who came in and 
made our plain white walls look much more noirish. Thank you, Andrew! 

We edited on Premiere Pro 2025 with the usual Adobe problems that are now starting to become part of my DNA. For the next film, we are seriously 
talking DaVinci Resolve. Adobe just is not keeping up with the Joneses these days. 

We added grain in post because the picture was so sharp it was ridiculous. With about equal amounts of footage in 6K and in 8K some softening was 
in order. And both Trevor and I like a little grain in our pictures. 

My name is Arlin Godwin and I started this project in the summer of 2024 with a guy I work with in the broadcast television world--Trevor Taylor. 
We were at that time both full-time broadcast TV guys who worked in daily production. When it comes to filmmaking we are take charge guys. We don't 
“manage” anything. We don't sit around talking about doing things. We plan, and then we do. 

Both of us are photography nuts, own a lot of cameras and lenses, and speak the language of images on a daily basis. 

We both write, shoot and edit. We also both just fucking love movies! 

At the time that we seriously started to talk about doing this film--my previous short VIOLENT TRUE BELIEVER had won an award at the Baltimore Next Media 
Web Fest and was about to screen at the Maryland International Film Festival. At that same time Trevor was helping out with the Ocean City Film Festival 
in Maryland--where director John Waters was appearing. Trevor was also busy writing and planning his next film project. 

When I started to explain my basic premise for STOP TAKING PICTURES, I was not thinking we would actually do it. I had a feature script I had written and 
that I wanted to do, and everyone had told me to stop making shorts and do that...But soon enough, ideas started to flow, and we couldn't really help ourselves. 

We're both film nerds to the core, and very quickly we began to shape the story into what it became. And no, it didn't happen super fast. It took a lot of 
conversations where we argued over ideas and characters and what did it all mean, and should it be like this or like that and there was a lot of back and forth. 

But it wasn't wasted time. 

Our long chat sessions led to progress day by day, and eventually it was time to get the cameras out. 

After 22 drafts over 6 months, we finally shot the film in January 2025. Finishing in February. And yes, we produced it very intentionally in Black & White. 

We love color, but we love black, white and gray more! 

Truth is we were very influenced by Robert Eggers and THE LIGHTHOUSE…gorgeous film. 

And we both love ERASERHEAD and pretty much anything by David Lynch. I was literally writing the script when we got word that Lynch had passed and 
we felt obliged to make our little movie pay homoage to him by including an unexplainable ending! We felt it was what he would have done…

STOP TAKING PICTURES is based on an idea I had way back in 2008 about a photographer in Washington, DC, who takes pictures of subway trains as they 
come racing into the underground stations and later discovers that ghosts are showing up in his images. Nice simple idea. But not a complete story by any 
means. 

Still, over time, Trevor and I shaped it into a strange tale that I think is about sacrifice really! Although what it's really about it up for debate. 

In any case, one thing I had always thought is that DC's subway stations are really cool looking and would make a great backdrop for a film. 
The design is like something out of Kubrick's “2001”. 

You can point a camera in any direction and get amazing images.