Adam's Video Life Journey

Bruce Von Stiers

It's the mid 1980's. Video camcorders have become somewhat affordable. This opens up a whole new field for wedding related things. That is, people are having their weddings videotaped. And now, in addition to wedding photographers, there are wedding videographers.

In the comedy short film, Life On Pause, Adam is a wedding videographer. He's kind of hapless yet still seems to get a lot of wedding gigs. But he continually gets lost on the way to the weddings he's supposed to videotape. He consults maps, only to still be confused.

Adam goes to a party at Valerie's house. He had been a college friend to her. But he is secretly in love with Valerie. At this party, Adam is going to let Valerie know of his true feelings for her. But to Adam's dismay, Valerie announces her engagement to Trevor.

Heartbroken that he may be, Adam volunteers to be the videographer for Valerie and Trevor's wedding.

But life, happenstance and karma all seem to converge to make the videotaping of the wedding something other than was intended.

Daniel Desmarais played Adam. He appeared in Merry Good Enough and the short drama The Delivery Guy.

Jackie McCarthy played Valerie. She starred in recent episode of Law and Order: SVU and starred in a comedy short film I recently reviewed, Static Cling.

BJ Gruber played Trevor, Valerie's fiancé. He starred in Static Cling and appeared in Good Egg.

Eva Visco played Mrs. Peterson, Valerie's mom. She co-starred in Static Cling and in other short films, she's played a grandmother, a school principal and a landlady. William Scott Brown played Valerie's dad, Mr. Peterson. He has played a Capitol cop, a pastor and a janitor in other films. Cris Colicchio and Kathy Richter played Trevor's parents.

Also appearing in supporting roles were Tara Catherine Reid, Vince Phillip, Anna Lucie Schollerova, Vince Chang and Tim Brian Anderson.

Steve Lifshey wrote, directed and edited the film. His other films include The Masterpiece and Static Cling. Jakub Preclik was the cinematographer. He was the cinematographer for the comedy show Whisper Naked Shadow.

Life On Pause is a fun film that proves out karma might just be a real thing. Adam has been mooning over Valerie for so long it seems inevitable that either something very wrong will happen between them or a romance just might peek its way through. Trevor is portrayed as pretty clueless, a good-looking guy who does his own video filming for his daddy's company. You can tell that under that sweet exterior, Valerie is very calculating and manipulative. Her parents are interesting, especially as her dad has a thing about maps. The film even has a bit of an inside joke about maps. And Trevor's parents are the typical rich folk type, handing Trevor a huge envelope of cash at the wedding. As this is a comedy, the circumstances aren't necessarily true to life. But the acting was well done, especially Adam's last scene at Valerie's wedding.

Life On Pause was made as a proof-of-concept short film for an upcoming feature version. The feature will expand the storyline, adding elements of backstory and fleshing out the main plot.

You can view Life on Pause for free on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/502262382/1a018edf41

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© 2025 Bruce E Von Stiers