Working with actors

Previously I discussed my collaborative efforts with those outside my team. Primarily though, my main form of collaboration was that between myself and the film’s actor: Ildiko Varga. The main contributing factor to her suitedness was the fact that she lived nearby where I wished to film. Over the course of the collaboration, I received an insight into the empathy and technique needed to get the best out of an actor. An example of one of the logistical aspects of the acting-directing experience was that the freezing mornings that we often shot in required the car to be nearby for Ildiko to retreat to with the heater on constantly. This was just one way by which an effective collaborative experience  and well-being was achieved on set.

Another interesting part of the filming process was the use of a dog as one of the characters. This posed quite a number of challenges. The greatest of these was trying to motivate the animal. In the first scenes I wanted to appear as if it was chasing something, and in the ending scenes, I wished to create a sense of it leading its owner back. the solution to this issue was found in the form of a tennis ball we threw ahead of the dog for it to run after. Indeed, in the first rough-cut, the ball is visible in some of the concluding scenes of the film. The ball is destined to be erased digitally for the final cut.