Day 14 Shooting- Love Scene

This scene involves Bethany and Derek making love in bed, but then Bethany moves Derek’s hands to her neck, encouraging him to choke her.  He resists at first, but she keeps moving them there and he finally gives.  After a few more moments of thrusting, Derek stops altogether and stares off into space.

"What," Bethany asks, clearly annoyed.  Derek moves off her and sits on the edge of the bed.

"Are you okay," she asks.

"Yeah," he answers.

"It’s okay, I wanted you to."

"YEAH…I know.  I’m going to get some air."

He takes her keys and leaves.

So I tried to  be business-like as possible about the love-making scene, I didn’t require any nudity from them, but I had to decide on Alex’s nightgown- or just bra- and so on.  She looked pretty damn sexy- she had this skull underwear too.  Anyway, I didn’t really put myself into THEIR shoes and I didn’t even consider the fact that they might be a little uncomfortable at first, but they were.  Then I remembered how I have a hard enough time taking off my shirt in front of people and I think Mike felt the same.  We’re all kind of pudgy- grotesque to Hollywood standards.

I think part of me was like, "Hey, I did a nude scene in a bathtub once, you shouldn’t have a problem."  all cocky and self-congratulatory.

So Alex got on top of Mike, they did a horrible first couple takes- laughter and terrible bouncing.

"We’re not on a kiddie playground."

I was fucking around with lighting forever.  Ended up looking really cool though- metal haunted house lit up with candles and casting an interesting shadow on the wall.  The cobweb mosquito net was lit too, so the webbing cast a shadow as well and moved across the wall when the fan blew it.  Then I drenched the glow-in-the-dark stars in some powerful light right before every take, so that when we were rolling the stars looked radioactive.

They really got into it and it looked convincing.  Nothing like Red Shoe Diaries- the physical motions were real, even though they were pretty much covered.   It looked so dark, but I knew it would like brighter once I put the footage on my monitor, but it was a real struggle to trust the dark- I kept toying with the iris and focus was always difficult.  I have a bad habit of tweaking the focus during a take- like I don’t fully trust my eyes.

I was also afraid of the actual choking not translating in the dark- could you tell what she was doing?  I’m not fully convinced even now.  I should’ve had her make some sounds.  I suppose I could add sounds.

I talked to Mike earlier about doing a possible nudity shot where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, completely nude, but his legs would hide his package and the lighting would be minimal.  He agreed, but when we got to it I decided it was totally unecessary and would be an obvious "looks at my actor’s willingness" jab to the audience…or maybe not, but we skipped it.  Derek puts on a shrit before he exits and unfortunately my actor went with a bright red Adidas shirt with a more than obvious logo, so I kept trying to move the camera before you could see the logo fall on his chest.

I looked at the footage and it looks great.