One Too Many Mornings - a new comedy.

In the process of writing the script to One Too Many Mornings, one of the main factors we had to keep in mind was very practical. That anything we wrote – we had to be held accountable for making sure we could actually pull it off. Meaning, if we decided to write a scene set on a sinking ship – it would be up to us and our friends to figure out how to 1. get a boat, 2. figure out how to make it sink, 3. figure out how to get it back out of the water for a second, third, and fourth take.

At the same time, if the entire movie is comprised of simple “two guys talking on a couch” scenes, we might as well stage it as a play instead of a movie.

The one moment in the writing when we decided to step out of our comfort zone involves a scene where the main character punches his fist through a window. When we wrote this scene – we knew full well that we didn’t know how to do this, and over the next few months – this was the one thing that we needed to figure out.

Last week, almost a year after we finished the first draft of the script, we still didn’t know how to do this. Two days later – Cindy and Michele, our bottomlessly resourceful production designers, had built a fake window frame, painted it to match the door, ordered 5 sheets of custom made breakaway glass, and basically, Saved Our Asses.

This moment is complicated further by taking place during a party, with many extras, and preceeded by a fist fight. In thinking about how to capture this moment with the camera, one option would be to get lots of sloppy, energetic, handheld coverage (Bourne Identity style), and cut it in a way so that it looks much more realistic than it actually is.

The more difficult choice, is to let it all play out in what’s called a moving master. Where the camera is on a dolly, and it glides around in one, unbroken take to capture all of the action. While the camera is not necessarily telling the audience to feel on edge, in a way it seems that much more harsh because there’s zero cinematic trickery.

The reason it’s more difficult is because everything has to go right. The extras have to hit their marks. The special effect of the glass breaking needs to be perfect. Because the camera is constantly moving, so do the focus marks.

Additionally, this is probably the most important moment story-wise as well. The entire crux of the movie hinges on us being able to capture this emotionally as well. So while everyone is running around worried about the technical aspects of the shot – we absolutely cannot lose sight of character.

We attempted this scene on Saturday night.

Sunday morning, at 5:30am, when my head hit the pillow, I slept soundly, knowing we nailed it.

Thank you to all of our patient extras, who kept up their enthusiasm take after take after take. Thank you to our new actors Ed Flores, Bridget Moloney, Daniel Casey, and Jeanette Baity, who were able to maintain a looseness, despite the technical constructs of what we were doing. Thank you to our crew, new and old, who rallied together to really Make It Happen.

In the last half a year we’ve gone under the bridge, over the river, down the hole, across the street, through the marsh, and into that tunnel that we can finally just now see that glimmer of light at the end of.

21 and 7/8ths pages to go,
Team OTMM

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.