bloggie blog

After three progressively longer days of shooting in Calabasas, I’m on a break from Look in the Mirror, and will be back on set next week.

This chunk of shooting ended very late, and on quite a high. We wrapped at 2:00 am after many takes of a long scene.

In film and TV work, you end up doing lots of little takes, or longer takes that get edited into little moments. But every now and then, there are long, uninterrupted scenes. Some are quite famous, like the opening scene of A Touch of Evil. There’s an amazing, long scene in the middle of Factotum with Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor.

In plays, on the other hand, you always end up working towards something that lasts for many minutes without interruption. Once you start, there’s no turning back. So when you shoot a long scene, it feels like a play. Except it’s not. The environment and rehearsal process are so completely different on set. In other words, you make a scene that’s only a few minutes long, barely a fraction of the final act of Streetcar on stage, and you feel great for accomplishing something remarkable.

I hope what we did at 2:00 am was remarkable. Take after take was required. A mistake in dialog or lighting or anything at all could ruin it because you can’t just edit it out. No cut-aways to save us. Well, it could be done in post-prodution, but it would very much change the nature of the viewing experience. So, after the last “Cut,” and “We got it,” I was feeling very up, not at all tired anymore. Good stuff.