Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Making Of

New endeavors introduce you to Things You Never Knew You Didn't Know.

I know I don't know anything about filmmaking;
but it didn't occur to me that I also know nothing about applying eyeliner.

Luckily Stefanie has acted on stage, so she's more familiar with makeup than I am. Here she is, below, transforming herself into The Narrator, a la Irene Papas.



Humbling as it is, stepping on the pedal of inexpertise can be fun:
it goes from zero to sixty very, very quickly.

I learned a ton working with an experienced actor for an afternoon: watching her turn on a dime, for instance, when I asked her to change a comic tone to a Greek Chorus drone.
I saw it would help if I were clear from the beginning about what I want.

I also saw that I need to ponder lighting, as the light bounced off Stef's makeup in a way that may render much of the footage unusable.
I only need a few snippets, though, and we got that.

Possibly the best was Stef laughing after flubbing a line, and then screaming,
"You Achean bastard, you killed my daughter!"
Not The Narrator's line, but she nailed it.

Whether Orestes and the Fly ends up as a viewable movie only time will tell;
but a top-notch Making Of... documentary is surely in the works:
The Making of a Filmmaker; Or, a Beginner Puts Her Friends through the Wringer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay! So, that bit of my face is passable! What would that be, the upper right quadrant? Hmm...muchas gracias por no showing me in my undies...however, I do see product placement in the pic you picked: Gore/Crest Glide brand dental floss, which is the only one I've found that my molars don't shred to hell and back, but is incredibly expensive, and the wonderful and relatively healthy ingredient-laden Xylodent toothpaste, which I recommend if folks want to squeeze their dentifrice out of a tube not loaded with toxic waste and not pay 6 bucks a tube at the co-op. Hey, I'm glad I took the co-op/organic stickers off the pomegranates/granadas before you shot them. Yeah, I was wondering if you were going to be able to do something about the make-up glare..after you left, I realized that I had no powder to dust with. I'm pretty sure even for stage make-up there's a matting process to help deal with shiny-face. Oh, well, this was still fun. Please let me know if you need me to re tape anything..including voice. Thanks for being loving and funny and patient with me. Enjoy your Sunday and the rest of this project!

Love and Keep Creating!

Stefalala

Fresca said...

Your whole face is gorgeous, Stefalala!

But little did you know that Glide is paying me to show the dental floss in your bathroom cupboard, so of course I had to center that.

I'll buy some face powder for the rest of the shoots, but rewatching the stuff we shot yesterday, a lot is usable.

Anonymous said...

If nothing further should emerge from this project it's utterly worth it for this picture alone. It's *SUPERB*.

Fresca said...

Thanks, LP, I thought the two faces were superb together too.
I'm after images like that for the film, too. We shall see...

Anonymous said...

That is a great photo! Achieved in part by great editing, I'm sure.... a talent you will bring to making great films.