The shoot is proceding apace. Not every shot is coming out the way I want, but I'm learning to be satisfied with a moderate success rate. Howard Hawks used to say that a filmmaker should get three or four good scenes and not annoy the audience the rest of the time. I feel as if I'm annoying the audience fairly often, but I'm also getting the good scenes--we'll see which tendency wins out.
Dave Park and I have developed a pretty good, light-hearted relationship. He's come to accept that I don't like most of the visual flourishes that he gravitates toward, and we joke a lot on the set about my boring minimalism and his garish film noir expressionism. He's been looking out for my interests on the set, and I've been allowing him to influence my style--the film will contain more closeups and more wide-angle shots than it would have without him. Maybe this is a good thing--I do have this tendency to sit back and photograph the action from center field. We saw our first batch of dailies tonight, and Dave's lighting is quite beautiful, much more pictorial than anything I would ever have dreamed up.
My lower back hurts at the end of each day on the set. I wonder what I'm doing to bother it. Maybe standing all day is enough to cause problems at my advancing age.
Today's shoot, in the apartment of our friend Danny Kessler, was the last time that we had to invade anyone's home. We managed not to destroy anything, but I'm sure glad that we're moving on to less sensitive locations.
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