Brandy Hernandez is a 20-year-old Mexican American screenwriting junior at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
This year, she was able to make real one of her favorite memories with her grandfather Severino Casarrubias, who died about a year ago, through her film ”Tortillas.”
A memory from thirteen years ago: When Hernandez was about 7 or 8 years old, she traveled to Mexico with her family to visit her grandparents. “We were making tortillas for dinner and I was trying to make them but they were turning out super small, and I was mad because they didn’t come out good,” she said.
Hernandez said what stood out for her younger self at the time was that despite the tortillas’ small size, her grandfather would try them and say, ‘’O-M-G they are so good mija, they’re really good.”
“I’ve always wanted to write a short film about my grandfather,” said Hernandez, who is the screenwriter for the film. “So that’s a memory that I would think [about] a lot and I just wrote it down.”
Even though Hernandez was born in the United States, she was able to visit and take part in her family’s culture in Mexico. There, she would cook and eat delicious food like tortillas, chiles rellenos, and quesadillas. Sometimes she would travel there once a year because her parents are both from there.
In fall 2022, she took advantage of the SCA’s Latinx Film and Media Association (LatiFam) script casting call to make this memory alive again.
“Tortillas” is LatiFam’s first-ever production, featuring a crew that’s predominantly from the Latinx community, which Hernandez said is uncommon on campus.
“There was only one non-Latinx person,” she said. “It was a very unique experience cause usually all of the student sets I’ve been on at SCA or USC it’s mostly white people.”
“I felt like being at home or being with my family.”
Hector Martinez, the film producer of “Tortillas,” said they ran into some obstacles in the production process that he hopes will be easier in the future for others at LatiFam. He said he feels a lot of responsibility to make “Tortillas” the best he can, because it is the first film for the association.
“We would be the first, and we had some struggles that hopefully in the future other productions won’t have to go through,” he said. “I took a big responsibility in everything we did.”
LatiFam was founded in 2019 as a USC Latinx student organization for those interested in the film industry. Sophia Ruiz, first assistant director and co-president of LatiFam, explained that the association was growing pretty well until the COVID-19 pandemic. That made it difficult to have events on campus and projects like this because they were online.
“It was a little bit hard to get a lot of people involved since it took off in 2019 and then in 2020 we were on Zoom,” she said. “But now we’re back on campus and we are really excited about all of the events we’re going to make.”
Through the experiences of those who surround her and her own, Hernandez gives life to characters that express vivid memories and are relatable to other people’s experiences.
“I like telling stories of real people and people that I know,” she said. “My friends or my family inspire me a lot.”
Hernandez strives to become a successful screenwriter. What success means to her is being able to create and direct her own films in the future, and have people “resonate” with them.
“Just hearing people say that they can relate to my stuff… it’s just a good feeling. I feel like I’m doing something good,” Hernandez said.
“Tortillas” is not the first story Hernandez molded into a film. She said she has written scripts for other people to use for film contests. She has also written and directed her own short films for USC’s screenwriting program.
But she said that “Tortillas” has a special place in her heart, and that she hopes there would be more films with a bigger Latinx crew.
“I’m hoping that in the future there would be more Latinx productions and I’m hoping that maybe the next one can be all Latines,” Hernandez said. “I’m hoping this opens more opportunities for other people, specifically the Latinx students at USC.”
Ruiz said that even though representation on-screen is very important, filmmakers also need to consider the representation off-screen. “Tortillas” is an example of this.
“We always talk in classes about the importance of representation on-screen and I think it is very important, but we also need to consider the representation off-screen of all the people who work behind the scenes,” she said. “What was really exciting about ‘Tortillas’ is that we were able to have a majority Latine casting crew.”
“I never thought I would get this experience, not just on-set but as someone who shares the same culture as a Latine experience,” she said.
Hernandez, Ruiz and Martinez all expressed how much they enjoyed working with other Latinx people on set for the film.
“I feel like [my favorite moment] was just hanging out with people afterwards,” said Hernandez, who hopes she could produce a film with an all-Latinx crew in the future.
“[My favorite moment] was stepping back and just watching all the Latinx crew do their thing and see how some of the shots came out already,” said Martinez.
“I don’t have a lot of set experience and I know for a lot of people on the crew it was their first time,” Ruiz said. “It was really great to see that environment where everyone was able to work with each other and make new memories and friendships.”
Despite Hernandez’s ability to portray people’s experiences in feature stories, in real life she considers herself “introverted, a little awkward.” She also said she feels she is “nice.”
For Martinez, Hernandez is “funny, chaotic in a good way, and unique.” He said that before meeting her, he was not expecting her to be like that, but he is glad she is because they were able to connect a lot more.
Ruiz said that Hernandez’s creativity “blew [her] out of the water” from the first time she step into the set. She described Hernandez as someone “passionate, sincere and creative” that “not only can write but also production design which she thinks it’s really amazing.”
The “Tortillas” film is already in its post-production stage. Ruiz said the film will be premiered at the 3rd Annual LatiFam Film Festival from March 31 to April 2.