DAY 25 - August 17, 2008
Today we filmed another scene using Dana and Fran's house as a location. This was a flashback scene featuring a character who is pivotal to the entire story, but who only appears in this one scene and thus had gone uncast for the duration of the shoot until the previous Thursday, when I pitched the role to actress Mary Criddle.
I'd met Mary recently at a filmmakers' group meeting, and decided she would be a good fit for the character, so over coffee at Spot Cafe I explained the character as best I could, and gave her a copy of her lines.
I know that this particular character must have been difficult to make sense of without the context of the complete script, but Mary gave it her all. She'd put some care into selecting her wardrobe, and had even grayed her hair so that she would look closer to the intended age of the character.
Mary brought the required serenity and gravitas to the character, intended to contrast with the craziness and immaturity of most other characters in the film. Of course, I've since seen Mary in several other local films in which she plays much more over-the-top characters, so now even this scene looks comically skewed to me.
I remember being a bit anxious shooting this scene, at least at first. I knew that my energy and enthusiasm for this movie was by now dipping dangerously low, but this was an important scene and it couldn't be done in a half-assed manner. Fortunately, I hit upon what seemed to me a suitably artistic way of shooting the scene.
Because this scene represented another character's memory, I staged the scene so that this other character (I'm not saying who) was only visible in a mirror. It was also helped to make a somewhat exposition-heavy scene a little more visually interesting.
Almost done...
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