Our last post was about praising actors for creating characters. If we were talking about how a good actor can take an okay character and transform them into a great one, well, a great actor take a great character and transform it into one of the greatest. During our latest shoot we had what one might consider a rather taxing scene. It's a controversial one, sure to raise eyebrows and upset people, but the entire point of our story (and of a certain characters arc) hinges upon the sequences coming across believably and the upset that comes from a scene of this nature.
So, it is without a hint of irony or sarcasm that we must all put our hands together for all the actors involved in this weekends shoot. It's been a hard one, much like the scene itself things start off well before devolving into chaos of the worst kind. The film most certainly has its own bleak outlook tested here, and because of that the atmosphere on set was one of bleakness as well.
But this is all worth it for the performances. I may try to find the best shot, working closely with out DoP to make sure the film looks as good as it can on our budget, but nothing prepared me for how great the film could be by simply pointing the camera at the actors. We have been blessed to have some of the best actors working in the South West join our crew, and all of them have been absolutely, definitively terrific.
Our lead actors may be carrying the weight of the story, and they may be feeling that weight by now, but they are doing an amazing job. You often read or watch behind the scenes interviews where the crew gushes about the cast and vise versa, but here I cannot praise them enough.
On a more technical point, we had a bizarre issue I have never faced before. While most of this shoot so far has been contending with the good old English weather, things being blown back and forth, rain soaking everyone through like a shower, sound being impossible to capture, wind literally moving the camera from its fixed position, this weekend we had to contend with something far more deadly and horrific that all of those things combined.
Yes, this week we had to contend with the sun!
Because of the bleak nature of the film, we have been almost lucky in that we have had some pretty bad weather. It might be a pain to shoot in (actually, not might, it is. It is a pain to shoot in, it's horrible and I don't recommend it at all. Even if it does work for the narrative) but it's lent a certain darkness to the movie that couldn't have been captured otherwise.
So when, during this weekend, the sun decided he'd pop out to say hello for no good reason other than to ruin my shot, we were all put out. Oh no! The weather is too... nice! That's a new one.
So here we find ourselves with a little bit of a problem. We're shooting a scene that's very sensitive in nature, it's a dark scene with dark connotations and our actors (especially the incredible Daniella Faircloth) are giving it their all, the performances of their life, and then the sun comes out and is rather nice and warm, complete with blue sky.
For the first time since Empire Strikes Back I found myself rooting for the dark side (come on, you know you rooted for the Empire too), only this time in an all too literal way.
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