\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA photo of the bedroom of Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy killed in a shooting at Saugus High School\u00a0in\u00a0Santa Clarita, California in November 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe project began with the work of CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman, who has become renowned for heartfelt feature pieces. But while those lighter stories have made his reputation, a far darker subject has also consumed his attention \u2013 the growing number of children killed at school. \u201cSteve Hartman was first assigned to report on a school shooting in 1997,\u201d notes text on screen in the documentary. \u201cSince he began, school shootings have increased from 17 to 132 per year.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAll the Empty Rooms<\/em> follows Hartman as he visits the homes of several children who fell victim to school shootings. At Hartman\u2019s side is photographer Lou Bopp, who \u2013 at the invitation of parents \u2014 documents what he sees in those bedrooms. Sometimes it\u2019s mundane details that capture the photographer\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cA toothpaste tube in a child\u2019s bathroom and the cap was left off,\u201d Seftel cites by way of example. \u201cA child who had rushed to school thinking, \u2018I\u2019ll put that on later,\u2019 and never came home.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tPhotographer Lou Bopp in \u2018All the Empty Rooms\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tBopp always removes his shoes before entering one of the bedrooms to photograph. \u201cThey trusted us,\u201d Bopp said of the parents. \u201cThey let us in the rooms, and I did everything I could to treat it with the utmost respect and just taking off my shoes was part of it and not touching anything [in the rooms] was part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSeftel says a sense of reverence guided the approach to the filmmaking.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe key was to keep it really simple. We wanted to [have a] very light footprint,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, our crew was me and the cinematographer and then our producers, but often they would stay outside of the house. So, we would just be a few people. We never used prime lenses because we never wanted to have to stop and change a lens. We used zoom lenses. And they don\u2019t always look as good, but I said, \u2018I don\u2019t care. I don\u2019t want to be changing a lens in this moment and drawing attention to ourselves and what we\u2019re doing and taking up their time for this production.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSeftel added, \u201cThe key was that we just tried to connect with the parents and listen to the stories that they were telling about their children and tried to use that as the guiding star.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tAll the Empty Rooms<\/em> is streaming on Netflix. It won Best Documentary Short at the Cinema Eye Honors in New York last week, the latest in a string of awards that includes prizes at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, the Santa Fe Film Festival, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. Its impressive roster of executive producers incudes Lisa Cort\u00e9s, Claire Aguilar, Sigrid Dyekj\u00e6r, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Adam McKay, and Steve Kerr, head coach of the NBA\u2019s Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n \n\tPeter Albrechtsen serves as sound mixer. Erin Casper, Stephen Maing, and Jeremy Medoff edited the film. Matt Porwoll is DoP; Alex Somers composed the music. Somers and Seftel took care not to let the score overwhelm the film.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe process was really interesting because [Alex] would give us these tracks and he would give us what\u2019s called the \u2018stems,\u2019 which is the pieces of the track that add up to a track,\u201d Seftel explained. \u201cSo, we had all the layers and every time he gave us something, we were like, \u2018I think it could be less than this.\u2019 And we just kept subtracting and subtracting and subtracting until there was just the most minimal pieces in there and it just worked better every time we thinned it and culled it down\u2026 It\u2019s like it drew less attention. We never wanted people to feel like they were being told what to feel, because as soon as that happens it\u2019s over, I think, for a film like this.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor similar reasons, Seftel keeps politics outside the frame \u2013 those extremely fractious debates over gun rights and gun protections that can render young victims of shootings an afterthought.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDirector Joshua Seftel speaks at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on October 31, 2025 in Savannah, Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDerek White\/Getty Images for SCAD<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\u201cThe word \u2018gun\u2019 is never said in this film,\u201d Seftel noted. \u201cSo, it\u2019s a film about gun violence that never says the word gun\u2026 It was a process to get there. Initially, we thought we have to acknowledge the debate, the political debate. And we even had a sequence where you could hear people debating the different sides and if there are sides in this \u2014 which I don\u2019t think there really are. And then over time, as the film started to take shape and come together, we realized that we didn\u2019t need that. I didn\u2019t want there to be anything in this film that would give a person a reason to turn it off.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe filmmaker continued, \u201cWe just felt like there is no debate around this. Everyone agrees that you send your kid to school, they should be safe. And that\u2019s simple. There\u2019s no argument. Everyone agrees with that. And if we can just get back to that idea and remember that these are real lives and they\u2019re real people, they\u2019re not statistics, it\u2019s not just a headline, but there\u2019s an empty bedroom, that maybe that\u2019s a bit of a reset, and that\u2019s our hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
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