DAY 30 – September 26, 2009
I got some more cutaways shot today. Meredith Powell, who I'd acted with in at least five previous film projects, made an onscreen cameo, and also provided voice-overs for three offscreen characters: Laurel's boss from Day 15, a cheery newscaster, and an adult film actress.
After this, I headed to Writers & Books to reshoot the audience reactions from Day 13. I'd made a decision that now seems curious in hindsight – I screened the entire rough cut of the movie (there were still some castmembers who hadn't had a chance to see it yet) in the performance space I'd rented, then quickly filmed the audience footage for the scene involving Terrance's play; the extras had now watched the scene in question and understood what their response was supposed to be.
The audience footage was much better this time – not only technically, but in terms of the performances, as this time I was taking the proper time to direct the actors. Renell Edwards, one of the breakout stars of Liz Lehmann's film Fury, gave the most memorable performance as a particularly disgusted audience member.
I then moved the actors outside so that they could double as other characters in a brief crowd scene. Although the specific setting of this scene wasn't hugely important, Writers & Books has the shell of a red British phone box as an objet d'art outside its building, and I was kind of hoping the scene would look like it took place in England. This scene was supposed to take place at the same time as other scenes set in eastern North America during daylight hours, so in the finished film I would darken the footage a bit in order to make the time difference less glaring.
As the day's shooting completed, Renell gave me a huge compliment when he asked, incredulously, “Why haven't I heard about this movie before now?”
Showing posts with label writers and books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers and books. Show all posts
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
25 Months Ago: Day 13
DAY 13 – July 10, 2008
Karyus and I went shopping for some more last-minute props. We went to Pier 1 for set dressing for Professor Mbaye's office, and we also went toy shopping for the opening money shot of the main cast – in younger, happier times – goofing off at work.
Today's shoot started with the office set for Professor Mbaye, allowing Jahaka to complete his three remaining scenes in the role. Two of these scenes co-starred Reuben as Terrance, and both he and Jahaka – like other actors on the shoot far – soon started bouncing off each other, although I couldn't use many of Jahaka's ad-libs as Mbaye is supposed to be a serious character.
We then captured some shots of the main office, now dressed with ridiculous toys (and handmade flyers), and it was license for the main cast to go wild. They did not disappoint.
A very fun day of shooting so far, and I thought the day couldn't get any nuttier. Wrong.
Next, we returned to Writers & Books to shoot a flashback scene in which Terrance humiliates himself by performing a bad one-man play. From that description you might instantly assume that this was a comedy scene. In the script, however, it was written as a traumatic experience for Terrance, one of the few scenes in the script that is meant to be deadly, gravely serious.
This was not to be.
For this scene, we had rented the main performance space at Writers & Books. While we were setting up, someone (I blame Karyus) discovered, hidden away in a corner of the room, two big tree branches. Why they were there, no one can say. But then the suggestion was made (perhaps with the knowledge that the director of this opus was easily amused) that Reuben should brandish these props during his “performance”.
This was another scene where the audio was to be covered over with present-day narration, so it didn't matter what the dialogue was. Reuben was given full rein to ad-lib whatever he wanted. Whatever he said, I didn't expect it to be heard in the film. Neither, I imagine, did Reuben.
What came out of Reuben's mouth, as he waved those branches onstage, was such surreal comedy that I had to use it. As with the record store scene, I kept the camera rolling, figuring that I would stop taping only when Reuben stopped being funny. But there as here, the longer I kept taping, the more bizarre the material became, until finally I had to ask, “Who are you, and what have you done with Reuben?”
I'd planned to film Reuben's performance only, and to capture the audience's (disgusted) reaction another day. As luck would have it, a class was going on in the room next door, and Jahaka – who accompanied us to this shoot – knew someone in that class, and invited the class to be extras. I filmed them as they gave disgusted reactions, then stomped out en masse in what also turned out to be a humorous moment.
I left that shoot with a heady mix of delight and concern. After a week and a half of shooting, I had observed that all the actors – even those who only appeared in one scene – were eager to sink their teeth into the material and contribute their own wacky additions, making almost every scene bigger and bolder than I'd envisioned. To see the same absurdity envelop a more serious scene, and to see myself happily going with it, gave me pause. What kind of movie was I making here? What had been written as an edgy balance between comedy and drama was rapidly mutating into weird comedy throughout.
Of course, a different director would put his foot down and say, “No, that's not in the script,” or “No, that's too ridiculous.” Actors said, or did, or held, or wore, absurd things on camera because I allowed it and even encouraged it, even if I wasn't conscious of doing so. There was no way I wasn't going to use the extra material that the cast was giving me. I was happy to surf this rising wave of weirdness rather than attempt to tame it.
In that regard, I guess I lean towards the Terry Gilliam approach of letting actors and artists contribute eccentric ideas, and deciding which of these ideas are usable, rather than the Stanley Kubrick/George Lucas approach of sticking to a specific vision and forcing the actors to conform to it.
The footage of the audience turned out to be lit poorly – I hadn't expected to be filming the seats – and I would end up reshooting most of this audience-reaction material over a year later. The extras in that shoot would be directed to behave as the audience extras in this shoot had done.
Wendy and I went to Zebb's Deluxe Bar and Grill for dinner afterwards.
Karyus and I went shopping for some more last-minute props. We went to Pier 1 for set dressing for Professor Mbaye's office, and we also went toy shopping for the opening money shot of the main cast – in younger, happier times – goofing off at work.
Today's shoot started with the office set for Professor Mbaye, allowing Jahaka to complete his three remaining scenes in the role. Two of these scenes co-starred Reuben as Terrance, and both he and Jahaka – like other actors on the shoot far – soon started bouncing off each other, although I couldn't use many of Jahaka's ad-libs as Mbaye is supposed to be a serious character.
We then captured some shots of the main office, now dressed with ridiculous toys (and handmade flyers), and it was license for the main cast to go wild. They did not disappoint.
A very fun day of shooting so far, and I thought the day couldn't get any nuttier. Wrong.
Next, we returned to Writers & Books to shoot a flashback scene in which Terrance humiliates himself by performing a bad one-man play. From that description you might instantly assume that this was a comedy scene. In the script, however, it was written as a traumatic experience for Terrance, one of the few scenes in the script that is meant to be deadly, gravely serious.
This was not to be.
For this scene, we had rented the main performance space at Writers & Books. While we were setting up, someone (I blame Karyus) discovered, hidden away in a corner of the room, two big tree branches. Why they were there, no one can say. But then the suggestion was made (perhaps with the knowledge that the director of this opus was easily amused) that Reuben should brandish these props during his “performance”.
This was another scene where the audio was to be covered over with present-day narration, so it didn't matter what the dialogue was. Reuben was given full rein to ad-lib whatever he wanted. Whatever he said, I didn't expect it to be heard in the film. Neither, I imagine, did Reuben.
What came out of Reuben's mouth, as he waved those branches onstage, was such surreal comedy that I had to use it. As with the record store scene, I kept the camera rolling, figuring that I would stop taping only when Reuben stopped being funny. But there as here, the longer I kept taping, the more bizarre the material became, until finally I had to ask, “Who are you, and what have you done with Reuben?”
I'd planned to film Reuben's performance only, and to capture the audience's (disgusted) reaction another day. As luck would have it, a class was going on in the room next door, and Jahaka – who accompanied us to this shoot – knew someone in that class, and invited the class to be extras. I filmed them as they gave disgusted reactions, then stomped out en masse in what also turned out to be a humorous moment.
I left that shoot with a heady mix of delight and concern. After a week and a half of shooting, I had observed that all the actors – even those who only appeared in one scene – were eager to sink their teeth into the material and contribute their own wacky additions, making almost every scene bigger and bolder than I'd envisioned. To see the same absurdity envelop a more serious scene, and to see myself happily going with it, gave me pause. What kind of movie was I making here? What had been written as an edgy balance between comedy and drama was rapidly mutating into weird comedy throughout.
Of course, a different director would put his foot down and say, “No, that's not in the script,” or “No, that's too ridiculous.” Actors said, or did, or held, or wore, absurd things on camera because I allowed it and even encouraged it, even if I wasn't conscious of doing so. There was no way I wasn't going to use the extra material that the cast was giving me. I was happy to surf this rising wave of weirdness rather than attempt to tame it.
In that regard, I guess I lean towards the Terry Gilliam approach of letting actors and artists contribute eccentric ideas, and deciding which of these ideas are usable, rather than the Stanley Kubrick/George Lucas approach of sticking to a specific vision and forcing the actors to conform to it.
The footage of the audience turned out to be lit poorly – I hadn't expected to be filming the seats – and I would end up reshooting most of this audience-reaction material over a year later. The extras in that shoot would be directed to behave as the audience extras in this shoot had done.
Wendy and I went to Zebb's Deluxe Bar and Grill for dinner afterwards.
Monday, August 2, 2010
25 Months Ago: Day 5
DAY 5 – July 2, 2008
Wednesday. Odin's Day. Hump Day.
Today was the first day shooting in the Tobey Village space, which had a large open space, several smaller offices, and a bathroom (for which I bought supplies today).
I'd gotten one office set up as Dr. Garrison's campus office, which was the location for a dialogue scene between John Sindoni (as Garrison) and John Karyus (as Bert). After this, John S. put on some makeup so that he could also play a younger Garrison who appears in an old TV interview.
After this, Karyus and I headed to Writers & Books to film a faculty meeting scene in a classroom. (Karyus, though not needed on-camera, helped with the boom mic.) Wendy and Jahaka were the established regulars, while Roberto Petrilli, and Dana and Fran Paxson, played additional professors. When writing the script I hadn't envisioned that these professors would be characters who appeared elsewhere in the film (Roberto, Dana and Fran had already been featured in scenes shot on the two previous days), but this worked out well as a nice bit of continuity. It also meant I didn't have to find more actors.
Whereas other scenes I'd shot so far had been partly or mostly comic, this was one of the more dramatic scenes, and I shot it with a roaming handheld camera for a fly-on-the-wall feel, since Wendy's character, Aymee, is an observer in this scene.
This scene was exposition for the scene we shot on Day 2, and needed to be adjusted slightly to tie in with the on-the-fly changes made during that shoot. My creative energy was already starting to flag at that point, so I found myself describing the broad outline of the scene and encouraging the actors to improvise additional lines. The actors rose to the challenge, particularly Dana, who is a writer himself; and Roberto, who is a professor in real life and thus seemed to take some of the scene's themes to heart.
As a writer/director, I try not to be precious about my own dialogue. Sometimes I will insist that a line be spoken as written, if it's something that I took great care to construct just so – a particular joke, or a tricky piece of exposition – but otherwise I've learned to allow actors to rephrase the material in their own words, as long as they're still conveying the same points as the written dialogue. It tends to result in more interesting performances, and when time is tight it's simply easier for the actors to do.
In this case, there were not one, not two, but four actors ad-libbing and bouncing off each other, producing a mountain of additional, unscripted material that was challenging to edit. Some of it was so good that I substituted a lot of their words for the scripted lines (which I'd also filmed). But this scene was stubbornly overlong in most early cuts of the film, and it took a lot of effort to whittle it down.
Wednesday. Odin's Day. Hump Day.
Today was the first day shooting in the Tobey Village space, which had a large open space, several smaller offices, and a bathroom (for which I bought supplies today).
I'd gotten one office set up as Dr. Garrison's campus office, which was the location for a dialogue scene between John Sindoni (as Garrison) and John Karyus (as Bert). After this, John S. put on some makeup so that he could also play a younger Garrison who appears in an old TV interview.
After this, Karyus and I headed to Writers & Books to film a faculty meeting scene in a classroom. (Karyus, though not needed on-camera, helped with the boom mic.) Wendy and Jahaka were the established regulars, while Roberto Petrilli, and Dana and Fran Paxson, played additional professors. When writing the script I hadn't envisioned that these professors would be characters who appeared elsewhere in the film (Roberto, Dana and Fran had already been featured in scenes shot on the two previous days), but this worked out well as a nice bit of continuity. It also meant I didn't have to find more actors.
Whereas other scenes I'd shot so far had been partly or mostly comic, this was one of the more dramatic scenes, and I shot it with a roaming handheld camera for a fly-on-the-wall feel, since Wendy's character, Aymee, is an observer in this scene.
This scene was exposition for the scene we shot on Day 2, and needed to be adjusted slightly to tie in with the on-the-fly changes made during that shoot. My creative energy was already starting to flag at that point, so I found myself describing the broad outline of the scene and encouraging the actors to improvise additional lines. The actors rose to the challenge, particularly Dana, who is a writer himself; and Roberto, who is a professor in real life and thus seemed to take some of the scene's themes to heart.
As a writer/director, I try not to be precious about my own dialogue. Sometimes I will insist that a line be spoken as written, if it's something that I took great care to construct just so – a particular joke, or a tricky piece of exposition – but otherwise I've learned to allow actors to rephrase the material in their own words, as long as they're still conveying the same points as the written dialogue. It tends to result in more interesting performances, and when time is tight it's simply easier for the actors to do.
In this case, there were not one, not two, but four actors ad-libbing and bouncing off each other, producing a mountain of additional, unscripted material that was challenging to edit. Some of it was so good that I substituted a lot of their words for the scripted lines (which I'd also filmed). But this scene was stubbornly overlong in most early cuts of the film, and it took a lot of effort to whittle it down.
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