Card Game Screened At Hudson Mainstage Theater

It’s not every day you get to watch a piece of your imagination flicker into focus on a movie theater screen. But that’s exactly what happened tonight for Isaac Middleton—the mind (and muscle) behind the sci-fi short “Card Game.” If you figure fifteen minutes of film sounds like a weekend project, think again. Behind every on-screen second lies what feels like an eternity spent corralling actors, scouting for that perfect alley or rooftop, wrestling with paperwork, and feeding a small army. Throw in enough late nights with sound and VFX to scramble anyone’s sleep schedule, and endless rewrites that make you question all your life choices, and suddenly, years of your life are gone in the blink of an eye. 

Most indie films never make it out alive. Money dries up, people drop out, a location falls through, and whole productions vanish without a trace—just a few deleted files on someone’s hard drive. But that’s not how this story ends. Middleton and his crew refused to let “Card Game” fade out. They found ways around every disaster, big or small, and kept moving forward even when it felt impossible. 

Nobody pulls this off alone. Andrew Johnston stood behind the lens, making sure every shot looked sharp. Dwight Taylor ran the gauntlet of sound design and editing. Desiree Choy and Justin Cabanting lit up the scenes. And through all of it, Isaac Middleton was everywhere at once—rewriting, improvising, simply refusing to quit. 

Each member of this team could have headlined a project. Put them all together? That’s the real magic.
So what’s “Card Game” about? Imagine a place where superheroes actually exist, only instead of fighting villains, you catch them kicking back, masks off, cards in hand, cracking jokes between calamities. It’s a peek at the downtime of the super-powered—a little side of hero-life nobody tells you about. 
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Tonight’s premiere happened at the Hudson Mainstage Theater in Hollywood, complete with velvet ropes, a crowd buzzing with friends and fans, and—because this is Hollywood—valet parking to top it all off. The night was packed with short films, but (forgive my bias) “Card Game” hit different. If you weren’t there, Isaac noticed, trust me. And to everyone who came out, or wished they could: your support means everything. It’s the only way movies like this see the light of day. Thank you, truly, for helping make it possible.