Director's Reflection: Day 2
9th of April
Today was a good solid shoot day. In the morning we shot another two scenes with our lead actor John before shooting the death scene with our very talented, female Terese. I found today much more relaxed and breezey. In the morning we shot the first of our internal house scenes with just John. Having the time to work out the lighting set ups and walk through the basic blocking with the camera and lighting team the day before meant the crew exact what needed to be done and how to do it. After breaking the ice with the scenes on Wednesday, I found my rhythm directing actors. The speedy set ups meant John and I to be able to properly sit down and talk about the emotion behind the scene. I worked out how John operates and came up with a process that would help get his best performance.
John (Nils Gibson) and I breaking down the scene together off-set.
Photo by Joanna Yi Fan Zheng.
Coming from a theatre background, John would fall into the habit of exaggerated movements, designed to be readable to audiences in the back row, but on film it came off as overly dramatic. During our rehearsal time, I would break it up into four section- emotional intention, physical blocking, flare and flourish, minimise. To start off, John and I would sit down off set and just talk about the scene, its purpose and the character’s intentions. We would then go enter the set and together walk through the basic blocking of the scene. This would be as simple as ‘Nils needs to walk two steps to the window, light his pipe here, then throw it on the table’. After we walked through it a couple of times a couple times together, I would take a step back and just watch quietly while I let him work through the action, adding the flares and flourishes in movement that personify the character. This is when John would take on the mindset of Nils and begin playing with his emotion performance. I would then jump back in and we’d the break down each of his added flourishes and devise a way to minimise them whilst still retaining the same intention, focusing on subtlety. As there is no dialogue for the actors to work with, we rely heavily on the use of subtle acting to convey the complex emotions of the story, this is a big ask for the actors so I am extremely proud of myself for I finding a way to help the actors through this.
BTS stills taken on-set by Joanna Yi Fan Zheng.
In the afternoon we shot our first scene with our leading lady Terese (in the role of Kate). Due to the constraints of the studio space we were only allowed to use the fog machine during office hours meaning we would lose access to it over the coming two days. As a result it meant we had to call in Terese to shoot this one specific scene. This again was another blessing as it meant we had this time to take it slow and discover our flow and rhythm with this new actor. During the audition process I was fortunate enough to spend some time workshopping with Terese this particular scene but the theatrics of shooting vs rehearsal is just so wildly different, it was still a big leap off the deep end for us. This scene was also quite demanding for the camera and art teams due to the particular coverage and set up but we were able to work through it quite seamlessly.
Myself and Isobel Dew (Production Designer) preparing the bloody scene with actress Terese. Photo by Joanna Yi Fan Zheng.
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