The Man In The Mirror

Today was, well, not a train wreck, but we fell two ENTIRE SCENES behind (on a 19 day shoot for a cable movie this is fairly serious.) Here were the highlights of what was conveniently at hand for me to blame for the delay:

1. The middle aged actress who in her youth was routinely named as one of the most beautiful women in the world today would not shoot any scene until she had been lit directly from the front by a huge soft light that took the DP thirty minutes to rig up. Plus she wouldn't do any moving-around blocking: she basically had to stay in one place where the beauty light was.

2. We shot two scenes with a fantastic sexy actress playing the slightly trashy rich sister of the hero in which she is wearing a tight white blouse over a bright red bra. At one point in one scene she takes off the shirt, revealing a jaw-dropping cleavage cupped in scarlet, and puts on a leather jacket, all while chatting away in front of her brother. Anyway we shoot the two scenes and suddenly one of the executive producers (a friend and somebody I love) runs in and says "The network called and they aren't approving the red bra." So we had to reshoot both scenes with a less thrilling beige bra, because there would have been a matching problem.

But screw all that. Directors routinely shoot six pages in 12 hours and I barely got through 3 today. And there are ALWAYS delays. The problem runs deep. The problem is that while all of this is going on I'm writing my excuse story in my head instead of facing the problem. The problem is that I'm not leading strongly enough on the set. I'm not demanding quick transitions, I'm not studying the plan carefully enough before it's launched, I'm not being the Captain. And while I have lots of little ideas and am working fairly well with the actors, I'm not really drawing strongly enough on vision.

And there's more than that. I did my first movie, the HBO one that did not go well, in a distracted and unspiritual state. I made my second movie, that went like a dream, in a focused and prayerful state. This time I'm somewhere in between. A director friend of mine said to me while I was making my second movie "God does not want us to make movies." To which I added "Without him."

I have to remember that now. I no longer feel the presence of a Big Guy up there watching over me. But I sure do feel the presence of Something. So right now I'm going to get down on my knees, quite literally, and pray to that Something for help and guidance in getting my movie back on the smooth track to beauty.

BTW, the network was very happy with the first day's dailies. This is good. They had a couple of notes on the over-intensity of a couple of performance beats and they were right on every count.