First day over and ok... that was hard. Not like The Times crossword hard. Harder. Yesterday we did a full days shooting of the "family" scenes and boy, I learned a barrel-load about filming and acting on camera. I now know what a "wild track" is, how to "cheat to camera", what "rushes" are and an inkling of the vast vast difference between stage and screen acting. My brain hurts from being stretched to accommodate all this new information.
The day started with message from the director saying I had a wardrobe call at 2. Me. A wardrobe call. Next I'll have a trailer! Wardrobe consisted of trying on my increasingly embarrassing costumes to ensure they all fit. Unfortunately, they do.
Hair and makeup are next and for spoiler reasons I cant explain why I look like i've been on a No-Drama all night bender...
I met some of my co-actors, Aoife (who quite coincidentally plays my wife, Aoife) and Paul who plays my goth son, Cahill. We also met Chris who plays Father Leonard. Introductions over, and getting past the ridiculousness of our respective makeups and costumes, we started rehearsing in earnest. Len has done a great job of casting I must say.
Paul transformed from a pleasant affable 20-something into goth teenager with ease and he really has a talent for acting. I cant wait to see him in the other scenes. Aoife is more then a match for me and I had to up my game considerably to avoid being the weak link.
Ok, so the first thing I learned is: this isn't stage acting. Its simultaneously both easier and harder than stage work... lines are learned almost on the set, rehearsals are practically non existent compared to the mountain of work you do for a play. But you have a million more things going on while you are trying to act and a billion more things to think of and consider. On stage its you, your fellow actors (and because of rehearsals you almost know their lines and actions as well as you know your own) and the audience. That's its, its absolutely pure. No distractions.
On set you have several cameramen, a lighting guy, a props person, a sound boom guy and the director. At least. And most of these people are doing things while you are acting the scene. That's distracting enough but the golden rule is YOU MUST IGNORE THEM. You can so much as flick an eye over to the boom that is hovering just above your forehead. You cant look directly at the camera regardless of how much the camera man is stuffing it in your mug and don't look at the director when he's giving you off camera cues.
Your movements on stage have to be expansive, lingering, dynamic. You have a big stage and people expect to see you fill it. Subtle doesn't work on stage, everyone is too far away to see "subtle" so you learn to be subtle, writ large. On camera its the opposite, movements have to be definite, small, short. A slight lift of an eyebrow, the narrowing of eyes in the beginning of a wince, the pursing of lips can all convey a huge amount. Too many and you start to look like William Shatner.
This is where I confess to feeling out of my depth. Now, i'm not exactly easily intimidate. I've done a lot of odd, strange or downright weird stuff. But yesterday was very close to my limit. We shot the first scene over and over and over, changing little things, correcting things, reviewing things for stray reflections and errant noises. Anything can blow a shot and force a reset. Once we had bagged it, I felt a huge relief and got up to get changed for the next scene. Oh no... my idea that "scene = shot" was quickly corrected while we did about 5 more shots of the same scene from different angles and close ups, all of which have to be acted in exactly the same way as before in order to make the editing and splicing of them seamless. The realisation dawns on me... we are in for a long night...
A word about the crew... They are legends. This isn't an easy shoot, that's clear. The budget isn't there and everyone is double and triple jobbing. The days are long (they had been shooting since early morning yesterday before we arrived) and things are being pulled together by the seat of Len's pants. But they are brilliant. No complaints, no bitching or moaning, setups are done fast and they work well with each other the way people who really understand their jobs work well together. Its awesome to watch.
Its also intimidating because, quite frankly, I'm a greenhorn at this game. I've done a little bit of stage work and training and some radio experience. At first I felt like a fraud, a shyster. I thought at any moment one of the crew is just going to stand up and point at me and say "hey, this schmuck doesn't know what he's doing" "Len, I cant work with this idiot", and I would be forced to admit they were right and leave, shunned by people who were correct to expel me from their clique of expertise.
But they didn't, in fact they simply worked harder to accommodate me. Little directions and tips here and there. A word of advice slipped in between coffee's. I lapped it up like a starved pup. At the end of the shoot, just after midnight I sat in my chair elated that we had completed the first day and Len was happy. I was shattered though. Mentally exhausted, and decompressing from the extended period of focus on every little thing you have to remember and consider. The cameraman was packing his stuff away beside me...
"sorry we over-ran, I'm way out of my depth, still getting the hang of this", I grinned, weakly.
"you joking?" he says earnestly. "You knocked it out of the park."
"Ah, that's very kind of you to say."
"Mate, we got some great footage today. I'm well impressed with you." With that he hoist his bag onto his shoulder and left.
Christ, I needed to hear that.
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