Day 2

Day 2 began the same as every other day during production.  Sleep at 3am-ish.  Wake at 6:30am.  Head to set and prepare.  It's strange how the lack of sleep never really affected me on the 12 hour days.  I'm thankful that it was only a 4 day shoot, so that I wouldn't have to eventually feel the sleep "deprevity" during the filming process.  Adrenaline rush for 96 straight hours.

One of the biggest challenges I had during the shoot was to figure out how I wanted to shoot this one particular scene.  I don't want to go too much into detail, but it was an emotional moment that the lead protagonist Ben (played by Alex) has by himself that is one of the climaxes of the film.  It was a scene that I knew I didn't want to reset over and over and cover from different angles.  I felt that in order to get the best performance from him (and not run him dry), I would need to have him run the entire scene once or twice and have camera adjust to whatever he is doing.  Let the actor dictate his own movements, and have camera be follow (hey hey, Malick!).

Camera crew following Alex and Akasha.

So this is where you really must have trust in your cameraman and your actor.  This entire emotional climax was unscripted, unrehearsed, and a total improv.  We didn't allow any crew member to talk to him 30 min prior - or even look at him for that matter.  The only people in the room were my cinematographer (Jeff Buras) and sound mixer (Isaac Hammons).  They were already both set, as we put the actor into place.  I yelled "Action" and then the scene played out.  It ran roughly for 7-10 minutes, before we ended the scene (It'll be cut down dramatically later).  We did it one more time with a few more adjustments.  Afterwards, Alex and I talked to each other to assess how we felt about the scene and we both agreed we nailed it.   Camera and sound were perfect too (as they pretty much were the whole shoot).

Mindy Le and Beth Chatelain (My Line Producers!!)

Evidently, we didn't take too many photos the first two days.  But the next two posts will have tons!!

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My next big challenge was when we shot the first scene with the female protagonist, Amy (played by Akasha).  The entire film is dependent on the chemistry between Ben and Amy, so it was a little bit nerve-racking as we first started to work the scene.  If they don't work well together, then our movie's gonna really really stink.  It'd be kind of like watching one of those rom-coms and the chemistry is so bad from the start, you think to yourself why are you even watching this?  So much relies on these characters' ability to connect to one another - reveals the dynamic of their past, where they are in their lives right now, and how these two people can relate to each other.  Micah was lenient enough to schedule in for me some additional time to work with them to figure out the scene.

So when we started rehearsing, I threw out the script.  All the dialogue, blocking.  Everything.  It simply wasn't working with the space we were in or the characters that the actors were creating.  The actors and I decided that we should try something new, so we improved the entire scene.  We talked about where each character was coming from from the previous scene, and they acted it out several different ways.  With the help of my scripty Melissa Porter (who directed an amazing thesis project this semester), we narrowed down their improv to specific beats and topics that we liked.  This opened up a whole new dynamic with the characters' relationship.  The actors talked and acted more natural and freely.  Everything became more spontaneous.  It may be a bit more difficult in the editing room to be able to match consistency, but I feel like I was able to get far better performances from it.  It felt less scripted, more natural.

Day 2 complete!