July 3, 1996

We've managed to shoot six days in a row without falling behind schedule, which completely astonishes me.

Today was our closest brush with disaster. Rain was predicted for our outdoor shoot in Central Park, but we went ahead with the shoot anyway, mostly because we didn't have a location we could switch to easily. During the second half of the day, the weather went crazy, sidelining us for hours and ensuring that none of our shots matched the others. On top of everything else, we accidentally exposed a roll of film that we'd shot that day, losing hours of work. Finally, the sun came out at 6 p.m. or so, and we reshot the entire scene quickly in the beautiful afternoon light. (We shot that scene three different ways: in overcast light, in the rain with umbrellas, and in the sunlight with umbrellas. Poor Robin is going to have a terrible time sorting out the footage in the editing room.) While the craziness was going on, I was actually enjoying the challenge, and I felt a lot of satisfaction at snatching the scene from the jaws of defeat. But afterwards, I realized that my goal had become merely getting the scene, as opposed to getting a good scene--I had barely exercised any control over the actors as we rushed to get our footage. Oh, well. There have been a lot of moments in the film that I've loved, and there have been a lot of others where I've taken what I could get because of various limitations. One hopes that it all balances out.

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