The Filming Begins Tomorrow. Holy Crap.

"The Forest Is Red" photo by John Schmidt ©2010

Tomorrow we begin shooting "The Forest Is Red." A 22-day shoot. I've edited films in the past where I was on location for five weeks, and one that filmed for eight weeks, and I've always found the constant flow of dailies amazing - "do they never take a break???" is what the brain automatically asks and of course - it's only natural to wonder about that when you are getting tons of scenes delivered to the cutting room at a pace that often feels like a series of real life jump-cuts.

But now I get to experience that madness from the more intense and stressful point of view of the director - more intense and stressful because the comfort of the editing room - where you sit, relaxed, on a large, leather chair, and drink your cappuccino in air-conditioned pleasantness, sheltered from the real-production-world except when you go visit during lunchtime - is gone! Hello, 22 days of independent film production in the full sense of the word. This should be - exciting, fun, stressful, eventful, interesting, exhausting, and hopefully not TOO humbling.

"The Forest Is Red" photo by John Schmidt. ©2010

The past few weeks have been filled with rehearsals, location scouts and a whole lot of organizing. Devin Harjes, playing the lead role of Nathan, has been practically living in the character for several weeks now, and this is not an easy character to live in. There is a lot of angst and social discomfort associated with this role, and he's been doing powerful work in finding, feeling and projecting the inner life of it. I have never seen such intense dedication from an actor. It's quite amazing. And entertaining - he shows up to rehearsal already in character. I see him from my window walking down the street towards my building - clearly in character.

The rehearsal process is extremely important to me. I try and go over every scene in the film at least twice with the actors, and those scenes which are impossible to rehearse properly in advance (a big fight scene, for example) I discuss and explain to everyone in detail before we go shoot. The reason is that I find it painfully wasteful to spend time on set rehearsing and discovering the scenes/characters, when all of that can easily be done beforehand. Especially on lower budget films with limited shooting time, the time on set, to me, is valuable and should be used only for execution of ideas that we already came to without the expensive crew and equipment laying around waiting. If any great ideas suddenly emerge on set that change what we've planned - that's fine, but because we have planned well, it is easy to change things in the last second. The last thing I ever want to deal with on set is discussing characters' motivations and backgrounds. Those discussions and the rehearsal process in general are extremely important work and should not be done with the stress of a crunch. I realize, however, the many times directors spend hours rehearsing scenes on the day of the shoot, and I believe this can lead to great, fresh results as well. I so far have preferred to not do that. Perhaps one day I will try that method as well.

"The Forest Is Red" photo by John Schmidt.
©2010

Location scouting has been a very cool experience. John Schmidt, the DP, arrived here from LA a couple of weeks ago, and we spent days wandering through the city finding spots to shoot. Late last night we walked around the financial district a few times - a really great area to shoot at night because it's almost deserted, yet impressive and large-city-ish. We spent five hours a few days ago walking through Central Park picking locations. Having only directed shorts before, I never had to find such a huge amount of locations for a project. Not being able to afford a location manager, we just did it ourselves. A fun way to rediscover the city.

Anyway, that's all I have time for right now. I will write more as the shoot progresses, I'll post pictures and experiences. Ciao,

David Jakubovic