I’m helping my friend Tall Vince make a low budget, Tall Vince produced, written and directed feature film. Others are helping out of course. Mostly I hold the aubio boom and order lunch.
Yesterday we were shooting a scene which calls for an actress to cry (the character learns that her friend has ‘fucked’ her husband/boyfriend). We set up the shot and the actresses rehearsed a bit. When all was ready, crying actress left to “work herself into an emotional wreck.” A few minutes later she returned, ready to go, on the quivering edge of tears. The actresses gave their lines (“I fucked him.” “But why?”) and the tears and sniffling rolled out. “Cut!” yelled Tall Vince. “Ladies, perfect. Perfect. Except we have to do it again because the boom is casting a shadow across the table.”
Oops. I re-arranged myself and the boom and the shadow and the actresses tried it again… but no tears. “Cut!” Once again. And again. No tears.
Another actor who’d been watching from behind the camera stepped into the scene. He looked at the non-crying actress for an overlong time. She looked back at him.
“What’s blocking you?” he asked.
She continued to stare back at him.
“What’s your block? Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Are you sure?”
And then, from nowhere, from wherever inside the actress the words were meaningful, the tears came. They glistened first under her right eye, rolling down, then from her left. Tall Vince yelled “Action!” and the actresses played the scene. Tall Vince yelled “Cut!” and the crying coach came back into the scene and gave the crying actress a tight hug. “Fantastic,” he said, “fuck yeah.”
“Fuck yeah,” she said, laughing. “Did you get it?”
I stood beyond the edge of the scene, in the shadows with my audio boom in my hands, holding onto a thought about craft and what some people are willing to do to themselves to execute it.
“Marks, ladies,” said Tall Vince. “I wanna get this next shot before the tears are completely dry.”