Yesterday, a very high-quality camera was filming a close-up of my chest hair. Movie-making is weird.
The movie I shot this summer, Reclaiming Friendship Park, is in post-production. And as they were editing it together, they realized the transition into the scene where you first meet my character was really awkward. There is a grammar and rhythm to shot selection in film that, whether you realize it or not, becomes sort of second nature; and if you subvert that by omission rather than design, you really can trip up your viewers in a way that they won’t be able to articulate.
The scene starts when I arrive home to my apartment, and the main character surprises me and introduces himself, trying to make friends. Right now, the first shot is my point-of-view pulling into the driveway, seeing him. Then it cuts to my surprised reaction as I panic and try to get away from him.
That reaction is the first time my face is shown in the movie; so it’s just a little bit bumpy because the audience takes a second to think “who is that?” and then their focus is out of the scene and it takes energy to get them back. The solution, they decided, was to get a couple of shots of my character driving home, so the audience could “meet” me, as it were, before my encounter with the main character disrupts my world.
So, they asked me if I would come back to San Pedro for about an hour or so to get a few shots to build into a “driving” sequence. It was just me, the director, the DP, and a borrowed pickup truck. Of course, it was a stick-shift, which I have almost no experience driving; so we spent a lot of time lurching and stalling along side streets in order to get a few seconds of smooth motion. One aspect of Meisner technique in acting is to focus on an action so that the conscious mind doesn’t get in the way of natural humanity in performance. I don’t think “trying to remember my character while also trying not to destroy a kind stranger’s truck” was what Meisner imagined. The unused footage is going to be hilarious.
Dale doesn’t want to know his neighbors
They sent me a still from the scene a week in advance, so I could track down the wardrobe I used and get my hair re-cut. The barber looked at the picture and said “You look weird like that.” I told her it was part of the character, but I think it still made her professionally uncomfortable to make me look odd on purpose.
My character has some funny ideas about masculinity, which motivated the chest hair shot.
The DP had the previous cut of the scene on his iPhone – because we live in the future – so I got to see myself in a feature film for the first time. And actually, hard as it is to step outside myself, and hard as it is to discern character comedy on an iPhone, I think it played really well. That’s exciting. I asked them if they could send me whatever they’ve got of Dale ASAP. I’m on the verge of finally having an on-camera acting reel; and for anyone looking to cast an oddball, I’m going to have good credentials.