Breakfast Club

Watched all the tapes from the breakfast scene last night. Relentless coverage. Two plus hours of nearly coninuous shooting. Very interesting to see where actors connected to something, where they forgot about the camera and where they 'acted'. All of which has a time and a place that's appropriate.
I liked the bits where the actors tried to tell what little of the story that they were aware of, especially when I wasn't in the room. There was a scene with Tara telling Rose about something that happened the night before. Tara was clearly playing along as her character. With special emphasis on playing. She wasn't acting or turning something on, but simply having fun with the circumstances of the story that had unfolded so far. Everybody did this, very impressively most of the time.
What's really cool about this type of working is that the actors would venture into telling the story very realistically. For instance, Tara was having trouble working the microwave to which Rose resonded something about 'if your father would update the kitchen ...' and she let it trail off because it wasn't something she or Tara was responding to. In effect, she was throwing the line away. An excellent skill that is very difficult to master that came out of Rose's connection to the moment-to-moment work in the scene. She was really in it - connected to her lack of connection rather than forcing a connection to the text.
Likewise with David and Joey who were both having a blast navigating the relationships and situations. Which is what people do in life - we tell our stories continuously in minor and major keys in order to discover who we are. People that tell you who they are effortlessly are bombastic, static blowhards. So to see David try to find out who the visitors are and likewise himself in the face of their presence rang very true. David the actor was struggling to find, shape and hold onto his character much as David the character was doing the same. The bulk of his reactions, affectations and mannerisms read as if they're of a human trying to play the part of a man, father and fiance rather than an actor trying to create a character.
It was fun to watch him unravel. He tries to hold his own with the hikers and get some breakfast. Finally after an hour of total domestic chaos, he breaks down and screams for some cereal.
This wasn't scripted or by design. Had Rose, Joey and Tara been able to come up with something better than coffee, two tiny bowls of instant oatmeal and a few slices of toast in an hour, the scene would have taken a different course. A course that we would have made serve the story. But as it was, there was this huge, well-equipped kitchen and three people in charge of cleaning it and preparing breakfast. For whatever reason they couldn't get it to together. I don't know if they were being lazy, waiting for direction, confused or if they were either totally incompetent or acting as if. I don't want to know, nor do I think anybody has a clear and truthful answer. It doesn't matter, it was perfect.
We'll probably cut that scene later on in the edit. There's so much raw material there that we can make the scene support any other ideas or limitations of surrounding scenes.

nc

Indian Summer

Man, this weather is perfect for shooting our final scenes. But we aren't. Schedules are not meshing. Time to get motivated again.
I have an idea for the bank manager character in the bank robery scene that should be fun.
We are continuing to prepare the film for cutting. And we have begun the task of compositing the green screen scenes which look like they'll be as good or better than expected.

More later,
nc

Tapes, Tapes, Tapes

Jordan and I have begun the process of digesting the footage from Made Crooked in script order. We've been bringing it into the system since a short time after wrapping principal, but I needed to step back from it and watch tapes without thoughts of cutting. Especially with this style of filmmaking - the strange hybrid of intentional, improviastional and documentary.
Personally, I like to let footage sit as long as possible before looking at it. It helps reduce my expectations of my original mental picture of what the film will look like. More often than not a director has to let go of his or her vision and adapt to what was captured. It is especially true in the case of Made Crooked as we are commited to not reshoot anything. We can't afford to open that can of worms for financial reasons primarily, but it also defies the spirit of the attempt to accept whatever happened as valid. This has been as much an exercise of trust and letting go as a filmmaking endeavor for me and, hopefully, the others involved.
Often when watching the tape I will start to express frustration at a camera angle or an actor's behavior. I quickly calm down and look at the possibilities, often finding that what is there works on a level more profound than my immediate expectation of meeting convention. Yet another case of only through limitation can there be creativity.
An example of this is that I would have a very specific idea of the scene in my head and in the script. But I didn't show the script to anyone aside from Jordan. I would then be in the scene as an actor. In the hot tub scene I have my back to the cameras, have made a choice to remain in one place and have communicated the blocking in such a way as to acheive a rough outline of what I wanted but left much up to chance. To compound the randomness, I assigned one camera to another part of the house. In my mind, that other camera would capture interaction of the family as they came and went outside to the hot tub. What we got was a lot of empty kitchen with the occasional passing through of a single family member. Watching it I had to suppress thoughts that I wanted it to be more chaotic and random. By dismissing that futile wish, I immediately saw the chaos of the separation of the family via its intense isolation. Their coming and goings were very random, which will be easily underscored by the intercutting of the exterior hot tub scene.
I discovered something else last night that has been pestering me for awhile. When David is in pajamas he wears glasses. The first night that the hikers stay, David searches the house for his children and fiance at bedtime. It turns out that he is alone in the house and that his family has gone outside with the strangers. He stands at a window and watches one with the kids. Then he goes to another window and sees the other with Rose. I was very drawn to this image before we did it, but even more so once seeing David through the camera. It had to do with his face and his glasses.
I also had this expectation of David to be more ruthless and tenacious. I didn't direct David in that vein, but I mentioned my surprise to him a few times. In the end I think the way he crumbles yet struggles to put a face on his fall from grace is wonderful. Still I had this more sinister impression nagging at me. Until last night when I realized that David reminds me both physically and thematically of Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success, one of my favorite films. J.J. Hunsaker wears horn-rimmed glasses and he's always sternly observing and finally spying on his sister, with whom he has a twisted protector relationship.
It really comes as a relief, as I'm finally able to throw off the subconscious association that has been been a hiccup in appreciating David's choices.
It's a very strange sensation to watch scenes from without that I experienced so intimately from within. It will be interesting to see how this affects the edit - whether things I felt within the scene but that didn't end up on camera will play. If the absence of something can thereby be communicated if given the space but not necessarily the specific image.
More will be revealed.

nc