'Do Not Erase'

Well, this one's indeed short -- nine minutes -- being the short film equivalent of the short-short in short stories. But it packs a punch, and would be worth your time even if it was longer.

Some of the time-travel shorts and feature-length movies I've been watching of late pit love against time travel, or time travel on behalf of love, or even has both love and time travel in the title. Do Not Erase aka D.N.E is a satisfying little take on all of that. Brian our hero is at a blackboard, finishing up his time-travel equations. His love, Sophie, regrets the time he's been giving to the equations and not to her, but she's waiting for him to finish, which will be soon, so they can spend more time together. While they're talking, a maintenance guy enters the room and erases a crucial part of Brian's math. Brian wants to finish his work. Sophie leaves in a huff. And then the action starts.

Let me first say, as a college professor, that I've long worried that a maintenance person or clean-up worker would one day come into my office when I wasn't there and accidentally throw out a crucial piece of writing. Actually, I haven't worried about that too much since I started writing on computers now decades ago, but you get what I mean.

I should also say that I guessed the very ending, about two minutes into this nine-minute film, but that's ok. It was still enjoyable and well rendered. Good job by Brian Otting (who co-wrote) as Brian, Michele Boyd (who's been in NCIS-LA) as Sophie, and (the sadly late) Richard Hatch (yep, from Battlestar Galactica - the original) as the clean-up worker. And Matthew Campagna did a good job directing.

Hey, I just realized it took me about nine minutes to write this. Should I write 'do not erase' at the top? If you're reading this, you know the answer -- at least, in this timeline. (Where you might also want to see the excellent but unrelated time-travel series on Netflix from Japan, Erased, for the sake of balance.)