August 2, 2010

It's a Wrap

Our shoot wrapped after just nine days, at which point the director dashed off to his next project. He probably won’t even think about this movie again until the premiere, since he plays no role in the editing process. His job is basically to tell the camera when to start and stop--he didn’t even know the stars of the film until he showed up to shoot.

I thought I had finished all my scenes, but when we were on location at a mall yesterday the director called me over. He realized we needed a scene where Gary’s friend learns about the pregnancy, so we sat down, improvised some dialogue in about 15 seconds, and started shooting. We did a total of three takes: a medium shot, Gary’s close-up, and my close-up. It would have all taken less than five minutes if a woman hadn’t interrupted and insisted she owned the chairs we were sitting on. The director had to negotiate, but fortunately she didn’t want anything other than to meet him and shake his hand. The complications of on-location shooting…

2 comments:

D said...

so, yesterday I met a guy from Harvard who appeared to know smth about Nollywood. He told me that most of the movies involve the pregnancy theme. So, is that true?

Cole Paulson said...

it's ALL pregnancy. I actually think 9/10 of the movies I've seen feature some scene in which a girl suddenly rushes off to the toilet to vomit. This is the "accidental pregnancy" reveal.