Shooting pickups...

This last weekend we shot some pickups, based on needs identified from the rough cut.  My fake Japanese "legend" became the basis for a new scene to replace some material we were less than happy with.  The scene it's replacing just did not quite work, despite heroic performances by the cast and lovely cinematography by Lisa Sherman.  The problem was my writing.

Sometimes it happens that you write something that just does not quite work, for reasons that are hard to identify.  On paper, it looked fine.   It had the right tone and pace, it said what was needed, and everyone seemed to like it.  But then it came time to shoot it, and we all realized something just did not seem right.

For one, it was hard for the actors to get the feel for the line readings.  Not their fault; the dialogue was just...hard to say.  It read fine, but it felt odd to the mouth and the ears. Still, we plugged on through multiple takes and setups, including a fairly complex tracking shot that looked quite impressive.

I found myself asking all the questions a screen writer should ask under these circumstances:

• Is it advancing the story?  Yes.
• Are things actually happening in the scene? Yes.
• Is there a dramatic subtext that makes sense?  Yes.
• Is it authentic?  Yes.

But, the most important question was the last:

• Is this working?  

Eh...no.

And no amount of playing with it in editing helped.

The story of the fake legend, though - that helped.  Because it has a dramatic arc, as well as information to orient the audience, if only in terms of telling us why we have Japanese Noh masks as a motif in an American domestic drama.  It also set the mood as a tragedy with symbolic overtones and a supernatural element.  In other words, working the "legend" into the script as a story being told by one of the characters serves to set the stage for what's to follow.

This is a dramatic technique at least as old as Shakespeare (Hamlet's play-within-the-play comes immediately to mind, as do the marionette sequences in Being John Malkovitch and The Double Life of Veronique, or the ballet sequences in Black Swan, to cite a couple of modern examples).

We also decided to go more abstract with the visuals; more dream-like. We took full advantage of having an ace Steadicam operator by choreographing a new version of the rejected scene - this time in slow motion, without dialogue, and running as a single, long take. It's eerie and beautiful, with the camera floating through a stylized choreography of movement with the actors as they go about a Halloween celebration. Played against the story of the tragic thunder demon, it tells us all we need to know.  Indirectly, of course.

I cut it together and slapped some temp music and stock sound effects in, then sent out the new opening - all three minutes of it - to the cast and crew. The reaction was unanimous: much, much better.

I agree, and it's due in no small part to the work of our Steadicam operator, Mark Vetanen of Event One Video Production Services. He did an amazing job.  If you need a Steadicam guy in the Portland/Seattle corridor, look him up.  Seriously.

Also prominent were the performances of our two leads, Thurman Kellogg and Holly Rose, an accomplished actor/director who runs the Rosebud Children's Theater.  Their performances were pitch-perfect as a married couple who tragically lose a young son in an auto accident. Put simply, the acting could not have been better.

Just a little more to go to wrap up filming.  In the coming weeks, I'll also start focusing on the post-production process - the editing work flow, the scoring process (with composer David Fick, who created a marvelous Christmas Album you can order on Amazon.com), and the special effects.  It's an exciting time!