Two kinds of light. 8 minutes. Built from terminal.
Derek Claude Simmons — March 2025 / March 2026
The light transforming them. Helping. Hurting. Artificial. Natural. Both. None.
I grew up in a single-wide mobile home on North Nickerson Street in Kansas. The trailer was aluminum, and when it rained it was like the end of days. I was scared to death of the rain as a kid. I remember bumping into my mom in the hallway during one of those storms.
Back then there were lightning bugs in the summer. Thick. They would light up the sky. The mean kids would take a wiffle ball bat and track them down and hit them and make their bat glow a little. You don't see fireflies much anymore. There's really no need for them.
I wrote a short film about a boy and a lightning bug in March 2025. I didn't know what it meant yet. A year later, I wrote almost the same sentence in different vocabulary. The ten-year-old in the wheat field saw it before the fifty-three-year-old could name it.
I believe we need both types of light. But when the power goes out — and it always goes out — the imperfect one gets you home. It was always enough.
48 dream stills generated with Fal.ai FLUX. Every image was dreamed by a machine that has never been to Kansas.
A NotebookLM-generated podcast discussing the original Lightning/Bug script. Recorded March 2025 — before the filmmaker knew what the film meant. Two AI hosts try to explain a boy and a bug. The gap between their discussion and the actual film is the whole thesis.
Coming soon.