The film was shot completely on Long Beach Island . It follows a man seemingly alone in a shore town following the storm as he wanders around , scavenging and restoring various items that have washed up from the sea . One such item is a doll , which he fixes up and attempts to bring back to its owner . Pastuszek and Nicholas Bupp ( the cinematographer who also co-wrote the film ) were students on winter break from the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles when they traveled to New Jersey to shoot the film . Pastuszek describes the AFI program as very rigorous and structured . The Islander was created in response . At AFI they made four short films over the course of two years . “ At every stage , the Conservatory treated it like a studio would ,” said Pastuszek . “ They wanted to see every draft of the script . Then have a meeting after each draft was written to talk about if the story was as strong as it could be and see if the director had a plan to make it happen . They were so on top of us and so structured that we decided we were going to go and make a film that would be the anthesis of that process .” The two created an outline for the story and a premise : a lonely person who lived on an island would find a doll and the film would show the emotional connection of going from isolation to having something to care for . Together , along with the actor Jeff Swisher , the plan was to go across the island with a camera and harvest as many moments as they could . The end result is a beautiful short film that resembles something between a piece of poetry and a dream - complete with wonderful scenes of nature . “ It was not meticulously storyboarded ; in fact , it was very much the opposite ,” explained the film-