What if one man’s sweat was necessary to save people’s lives? What if an artificial intelligence agent was in charge of matching a person to who they’re going to marry? These are only a couple of the scenarios explored in “The Outtakes.” 

In an era oversaturated with comedic content, recent USC alum Dominick Adunagow, ready to step into being a writer-director right after graduation, set out to create a short-form dramatic anthology series, in which episodes don’t connect to one another. His independently produced series “The Outtakes,” or, as he calls it, “the drama version of ‘[Saturday Night Live],’” mirrored the format of “SNL” through a rotating cast of actors in four- to five-minute, self-contained stories.

The show consists of 10 episodes and multiple directors — most of whom are USC alumni. It was shot over six days during April and May of 2025. The first episode of the series was released through Vimeo and YouTube on Oct. 8, 2025, and weekly episodes were released through December. The project was entirely self-funded and released under Adunagow’s production company, A Good Story Company, LLC.

Adunagow graduated from USC in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in the business of cinematic arts. The basis of the stories developed during his transition after graduating from the School of Cinematic Arts. 

“I hit really bad writer’s block, and that summer, I just spent doing free writes every day just to train myself,” Adunagow said. “That’s where these stories came from. And you know, I liked the stories, and it helped me process a lot of the feelings of graduating.” 

For Adunagow, it was important to lean on his USC community for this passion project. “The Outtakes” ended up involving 19 other USC students and graduates, ranging from directors and producers to sound designers and actors. 

“There was no stone unturned, just getting everybody I knew, and it was really nice, and people really liked the scripts,” Adunagow said. “When people were able to rally around an idea of like, ‘This would be a calling for not just for me, but for everybody.’” 

Mark Lowe, who graduated from SCA in 2025 with a degree in cinematic arts, film and television production, met Adunagow through USC’s African American Cinematic Society. Once Adunagow invited him to be an executive producer on “The Outtakes,” Lowe jumped in, helping from the conception of the project to shaping the scripts and producing the stories. 

For both Adunagow and Lowe, it was important to create an environment in which directors could focus solely on their work. Because of this, they brought them in as close to filming as possible. Nearly every episode was directed by a different person.

“We want[ed] to make it as easy as possible for each director,” Adunagow said. “It was very much a TV model of ‘You come and just focus on directing.’ I think that was really important for me to get the best out of them so they can have a pure directing experience.”

With an independently produced project and an extremely sped-up shooting timeline comes its own set of unique challenges, said Lowe. For episode seven, “a story about a pinky promise,” which centered around a young couple in love, the production required a football field, but on the day they were filming, they lost the location.  

“At the very last minute, we ended up not having a firm location for that. So on the day, we had to work with our entire team and our directors to try to find a space that worked for that episode, right after we had just finished another episode earlier in the day,” Lowe said. 

For Adunagow, it was important to tell these dramatic stories in an era where they are less common in mainstream short-form content. 

“With everything being in such a curated algorithm these days, it’s important to still have something that can challenge you a bit and make you feel, even if you weren’t going out of your way to look for it,” Adunagow said.

Jaina Jallow graduated from USC in 2025 with a BFA in musical theatre. Jallow played Lauren, Rhea and Marissa in three episodes of the show. During her time at USC, Jallow auditioned for one of Adunagow’s films, but wasn’t cast in the role. Years later, and a couple of weeks before she graduated, Adunagow reached out to her, offering her a role in “The Outtakes.”

For the second episode Jallow appears in, “a story about love and AI,” she has a very emotional scene where there is a close-up of her crying. For Jallow, this was an exciting acting challenge. 

“It was a lot of imagination. It was a lot of really tapping into the skills that I learned from [associate professor of theatre practice] Laura Flanagan and [adjunct lecturer] Hugh O’Gorman at USC, in terms of really stepping into an imaginary world, really placing yourself there, and then fully feeling the weight of all the circumstances around you,” Jallow said.

Both Lowe and Adunagow emphasized the importance for current students to build up their USC community, which was integral to the creation of “The Outtakes.”

“If you are passionate about making work and you want to be a part of that, you’re going to find that community in the process of being at SCA, and that’s really how this came together,” Lowe said. 

Adunagow echoed the sentiment, stressing the difficulty of making it in creative fields alone. 

“Really deepen those connections to the left and right of you, to your peers,” Adunagow said. “It’s so hard to go about this alone, you need a good community, and that can be your USC people.”