July 11, 1996

The morning was eaten up by a logistical snafu that I probably should have anticipated. We had to take four shots of Dylan rowing in a boat with Edith swimming beside him; I had assumed that we could secure the boat by the shore and merely pretend that it was in the middle of the lake, but Dylan's rowing didn't look convincing in a stationary boat, and it proved too difficult to keep the direction of sunlight consistent. Frank wound up fastening two boats together with a bewildering maze of clamps and rods, and eight or so of us took the bizarre vehicle out on the lake to get the shots. This operation took many hours, but it was fun to leave our crowd of wellwishers and paddle off as if on a tribal hunting expedition.

At dusk, we shot a difficult scene, a conversation between Edith and Dylan at the water's edge, filmed in one long take of two or three minutes. By the time we lost the light, I still wasn't completely happy with the shot, and I'm determined to redo it at a later time. This is the first time that I've left a scene for reshooting, and hopefully the last time, as I used up a lot of film stock and threw off our schedule. Still, the actors got quite involved in the scene, and both say that it was a turning point in helping them understand their characters.

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