Director's Reflection: Day 4
11th of April
A big shooting day! We started the day off with a bit of bad luck. Our costumer was rushed to hospital due to a pre-existing condition flaring up. Thankfully our lovely production assistants, Kayla Browne and Ruby McIntosh stepped up and into the role. We had all three of our cast in for the morning. I found this to be quote challenging to start off with as I had become accustomed to working one on one with the actors and now all three were meeting and working together for the first time. The crew became a little rowdy on set which also made it a little more difficult to concentrate but we worked through it. We shot the family scene and the last of the montage in the morning.
I found it a little difficult navigating working with all three of the actors as I found myself caught up helping John work through the scene but not be able to give Terese and Eliza (Mary’s actress) the same support. After some time, I revised the process I developed for John to allow for time to work with Terese and Eliza. As Terese and Eliza were both talented reactive actors, I was able to utilise John’s walk-through methods to encourage them to play around with their basic blocking and base their character quirks around reacting to John’s blocking.
Working with Terese and Eliza while John rehearses his blocking. Photo by Abbie Fisher.
After we got what we wanted from these scenes, it was a wrap for Kate’s actress Terese. After the break we reset for the next scene with Mary and Nil, changing up the set design into its second iteration. This was a fun experience as myself and the art team got to play around with messing up the set.
A wrap on Terese's character Kate! Photo by Abbie Fisher.
During the break, I sat down with DoP Simon, lighting guys Lochlan and Will, producer Joshua and writer Alex and chatted about the intention of the next scene we were to shoot. While we had the shot list and blocking sorted, we discussed purpose of the scene in regards to the film as a way to figure out where to place the emphasise in the camerawork to best convey this. As a creative practitioner, I wanted to hear the different interpretations of the scene and talk it out. For this particular scene, I wanted to hear the different interpretations of which character they believed to be the focus of the scene. This was extremely helpful as a director as it allowed me to take a step back and make informed decisions.
After the actors had had a sufficient break, we then ran through the blocking for the scene. With a lot of the physical movement coming relying on Mary, I was able to focus on both performances equally as John clicked very easily with his blocking. With the wrap of this scene, we said goodbye to the interior house set and began to pack down as much of the set dressing as possible. We then began to set up for the boat sequence ready to shoot the next morning.
Rehearsing blocking with John. Photo by Abbie Fisher.
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