The Forest Is Red - First Four Days Of Our Film Shoot

Jam in the big city. From "The Forest Is Red"

Yesterday we shot our fourth day of principle photography on "The Forest Is Red." Immediately when we began on the first day, the buildup of stress and anxiety in my stomach from the weeks leading up to the shoot evaporated and was replaced with the simple enjoyment, thought, and fair amount of work associated with any filmmaking experience.

Shuo Zhang and David Jakubovic.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red.' Photo by John Schmidt

Shooting a low budget, independent feature film is similar in some ways to shooting a properly budgeted, bigger studio film. Mainly in that you wake up in the morning, shoot some scenes, go and watch the footage, have a beer with the cast and crew and go to bed. The main difference is that the table at the bar is significantly smaller when you're shooting a low budget indie. But while the crew is small, the ultimate images are the same size on a low or a big budget film, which simply means, I guess, that they needs to look as good as possible. In the planning phase prior to shooting, I knew that the small (and therefore less costly) size of the crew allowed me to comfortably add a few days to the shooting schedule in order to have a bit more time to shoot each scene, and this has been useful: we are able to spend time getting each shot right.

Devin Harjes as Nathan.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red"
Photo by John Schmidt

This has been kind of a mantra for us so far on this shoot: spend the time to get the shots right. Even a "simple" close up - not just a complicated Steadicam shot. It's a small film and we want it to look great. We don't want to rush through a series of decent shots. We want to get the strongest, most solid images we can within our means. Because of this, I have to think in terms not of getting lots of coverage to have options in the editing room, but of getting the right coverage, the right shots, to make the scene. Being an editor has always been very useful to me on shoots I directed but has also been the occasional drawback: while I know what I need from the scene because I know pretty much how I'm going to cut it, sometimes I like to get extra coverage in order to be able to have more fun in the edit. But I am forcing myself not to think like a "modern-day," fast-paced editor on this. In this film, while some scenes will still give me a chance to "show off" and have that kind of high-pace fun I like to have when I edit, many other scenes are about the acting and about the story. And because we spend time on just the shots needed for the scenes and not much more, we find more meaning in the images, the images somehow feel more important, have more weight. It's a wonderful way to work - it's the high-budget way to work, where time is spent perfecting each shot, but on a very low budget.

Dora Sacer. ©2010 "The Forest Is Red."
Photo by John Schmidt

So far I am very pleased with the images, some of them are quite beautiful. The performers all look fantastic and New York looks great in 2:35 wide screen. The performances have been excellent so far and I trust they will continue to be so. In the first day we shot scenes with Virginia Robinson, a brilliant actress who told fascinating tales of entertaining soldiers in Italy during the war, and of touring nationally with Vivian Leigh. We shot 6 scenes with her. Because her timing was so sharp, quick and funny, I was able to simplify the coverage of the scenes tremendously - the dialogue that had the most shots planned to cover it ended up just being a single two-shot of Virginia and Devin Harjes (playing the lead, Nathan) with no cuts and no camera movement, and it works well. I like when happy surprises like that happen. You plan on spending an hour getting a few angles and then realize on set that it is absolutely unnecessary, because the actors are perfectly good in the scene and it is more entertaining to stay on the two of them and just watch them perform, than to cut back and forth.

Another situation where I've been finding it wonderful to just stay on someone, in a different way, is in Dora Sacer's scenes. In her role, even though it's a large and important supporting role, she doesn't speak much. Everything is in her face, in her eyes. And you can just stare at a great close-up when the emotion is powerful. Some camera coverage can sometimes be important in scenes like these, with no speaking, because it's easy to get lost in a powerful face when you are shooting the moment, and sometimes you might not notice if it's lingering a bit too long. In cases like these you need to know you will be able to make a cut if you need to shorten (or lengthen) the moment. So in one particular scene with her, one in which the performance is indeed powerful and all in the emotion of the expression, I shot a couple of extra angles. I think this will end up making the scene more powerful because the need to shoot these extra couple of shots brought out some very good images.

David Jakubovic and Nicole Sudhaus between takes.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red." Photo by John Schmidt

Tomorrow we shoot a scene in Bond Street Studios in Brooklyn - it's a photo shoot scene, with Nicole Sudhaus and Omer Barnea. One of the few scenes Nathan is not in. In order to make this scene feel different from the rest of the film, I am trying two things: first, it will be the only dialogue scene shot on steadicam (John Hockenberry on Steadicam) and secondly - I am purposely avoiding planning the shots for this scene in advance. I rehearsed the scene today (our day off) with the actors, and tomorrow, John Schmidt (DP) and I will figure out how to shoot it on the set. We have a general idea of it but we will figure out the actual blocking there. The reason for this is that I feel that the spontaneous spark that will hopefully arise on set will add to the different atmosphere I am trying to create with this scene - different from the rest of the film.

Devin Harjes on set.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red." Photo by John Schmidt

Thank you for reading. Till next time,

David Jakubovic