Notes from a film shoot

They say that no book or a lecture on film making can teach you what a real shoot will teach you. I agree. My first real foray into the world of film making happened recently. One of my friend, Paul Landriau, a young filmmaker, shot his ten minute short French film, PROLOGUE, last weekend. He had asked me more than a month back if I would like to play a role in the film and, even though I first panicked and balked at this idea of me being in front of the camera, I still agreed to act; I thought that what better way to build network for my own future film projects & also to learn from the whole experience for free. This is Paul’s third short narrative film & the film is shot with a digital video camera (Panasonic AG-DVX100). Paul is making this film primarily to sharpen his directing skills further & to build his repertoire. In terms of its target audience, the film will be sent to some film festivals and Paul also intends to hold some free public screenings. The story of Prologue, from whatever I understood, is about a surreal dream of a budding actress. In the dream, actress is auditioning for a role in a film & I’m playing the director who is auditioning her. We first discussed about this role more than a month back, followed by rehearsals with the full cast before the final shoot with the camera happened. The following are my notes and observations from the shoot of my part which happened last Saturday.

1. The shooting took place in a studio cum theater; I was told that my part, which will play for no longer than 3-4 minutes in the film, would still require 3-4 hours of shoot time. So, I arrived there, 15 minutes late (Yes, I have started behaving like a star ), and, after a quick introduction with the crew, was sent for the make up immediately. The make up artist was a young girl who has done make up/wardrobe for many other short films too. I jokingly asked her why would I need a make up as I’m not an actress. To which she replied that everybody needs some makeup when shot for film.

2. The people on the set included all the actors, the director, cameraman & his two assistants (to hold microphone etc), two people for lighting and finally one general assistant who also made me sign a release form. Our scene had three characters: Myself, the actress and a puppet master; puppet master is an imaginary character seen only by the actress. Before the shoot, we spent little over an hour rehearsing our scenes again. After each rehearsal, the director made comments on our performance and also pointed out mistakes, if any. Though the film is in French, my character speaks in English only. The funny thing was that each time I ended up saying my lines differently in terms of actual wording. But, the director was fine with that, as he only wanted the essence of the dialogue to stay the same & didn’t bother much regarding me changing the words or improvising a bit.

3. My whole scene, with 3-4 minutes of screen time, was shot four times, each time from different angle/focusing on different character. So, the scene was shot first time with camera focusing only on the actress, second time the camera was covering only the puppet master, third time the camera was focusing only on me and fourth time it was a wide shot covering all three actors. Then, there were of course retakes. In one particular instance, the light from behind was falling on me in such a manner that it was interfering with the camera lens. So, they asked me to lean bit forward while speaking the dialogue to counter that back light!

4. I think that just half day of real shoot taught me quite a bit. For one, I realized how difficult acting could be and especially so if your director wants you to stick to exact same lines/pauses as written in the script. Actually I realized this in the rehearsals only that if I force myself to say exactly the same words/lines as in the script, not only will it be very difficult to do so, but will also look forced and theatrical. So, I thought that if I change the words here and there, without really changing the meaning, and say the same dialogue as I will say it in real life, the performance will look more natural. Fortunately, the director understood that and gave me freedom to change my wording a bit. But still my respect for all the actors/actresses of this world has grown manifold after this first – and hopefully last- acting experience of mine; its so easy to criticize actors, but so damn difficult to actually do it. Second, it was an eye opener for me to see that how painstakingly scenes are shot & even a small disturbance can change things so much. Finally, I learnt that that more a director & the cast/crew is prepared before the shoot, better it is for everybody.

I wish Paul all the luck in finishing this film soon and hopefully it brings some laurels for him.