[Cerres]

Длинный английский текст. Я вспомнила, что где-то у меня валяется рассказ о тяжёлых импровизаторских буднях в БСГ. Кусочек интервью режиссёра 209й серии, как он снимал тот отрывок с Лорой и Коттлом. Ох тяжёлая это работа на ходу сценарий перестраивать.
Нет, я понятия не имею, почему вдруг вспомнила

I'll tell you a story about my first scene with Mary McDonnell in the first episode I did. I had shot a couple of days, but I hadn't worked with Mary yet. I don't think I had even met her yet. So this is my third day of shooting and my scene with Mary McDonnell is coming up. I'm a huge fan of Mary and a friend of mine, who was involved with New York theater, was telling me of her legendary status as a Broadway actress. So I was really, I was so, I was kind of awed by her. I wanted very, very much to be the director that she deserved to have.

Her scene was the third scene that I had to do that day. I went as fast as I could through the first two. I made them very simple and got them in very quickly so I would have extra time with Mary. So I didn't have to show up and make my first scene with Mary McDonnell one of those, "Hey we're doing episodic television. Stand here. Let's shoot. Let's go." I really didn't want to do that. I bought myself some extra time so we could sit and think and play with the scene. It's a scene where she comes into sick bay because Doc Cottle has done a series of tests and he has the results about the advancement of her cancer. It's a two and a half page scene and it's all technical, medical jargon. It's about the cell count and how it's metastasized and how it's moved through her body. And it's just Doc Cottle talking for two and a half pages about medical things. We come to the set. We read it through a couple of times. And it's just a horrible scene. Not to take anything away from the writers, but it's just, you know, it's just blah blah blah blah blah on and on and on and on and on in Doc Cottle's deep stentorian, somewhat soap opera-y voice with all of this exposition. I'm thinking, "This is my first scene with Mary McDonnell and it's the worst scene I've ever shot. This is horrible. What am I going to do?" So I have them read through the scene a couple of more times, not because I need to see them read through it, but because I need time to think. I figure out well, I have to make it visually interesting.

So we set up a light behind one of the translucent screens, like there's a curtain around each bed. These blue curtains that are semi-transparent. So I have Steve McNutt set up a light behind one. I go to Mary and say, "Now Mary, you're getting some heavy news here. If there's a time during the scene where you want to step away from him, go behind the curtain, take a breath and collect yourself and come back out. I'll be able to see what you do back there because it will be silhouetted. Your shadow will be thrown against the curtain. I'll be able to see you in silhouette." She liked that idea. She said, "Okay, good." So while we worked out the digital blocking, she comes in and we realize that she's the president and he's holding this clipboard with all of her information. She reaches out and takes the clipboard and she looks at it. And as she's starting to get the bad news, she kind of takes a few steps away from him. She puts the clipboard down on the bed that's now between them. Then she goes behind the curtain and we see her kind of fall apart a little bit, take a breath, collect herself, become the president once more, come back out, shake his hand and leave. I'm starting to like the way it looked. Mary McDonnell is starting to like the way it feels. But there's still this page and a half of blah blah blah blah blah. It's just horrible. It drags everything down. So I said, "Let's try something. Do the scene one more time. Just do the blocking. Nobody says anything. There's no dialog in the scene anymore. Nobody opens their mouth." "Okay, we'll try that." She walks in and we know what's going on. We know that she's had the test. We know he's got the results and he's holding the clipboard. She walks in. He stares at her. She takes the clipboard. She looks at it. She puts it down on the bed, takes a couple of steps away from him, goes behind the screen, takes a deep breath, comes back out, shakes his hand and walks out. And everyone on the set just got like this chill, that's the scene.

You don't need to say a word. But I'm thinking, the producers were not around at that point, I'm thinking, "Okay, I know that this is better, but if I hand in dailies and I don't shoot any of their dialog, they're going to fire me." I know it's like day three with a new director. I can play with the dialog but I'm not going to like eliminate it. I can't take it upon myself to eliminate it. So I just thought okay. I got Mary and Donnelly together and said, "Here's what we're going to do. For every shot we'll do a take with the dialog and we'll do one silently, just to cover ourselves." So they were all down with that and it was great and I was like Mary McDonnell's hero. I mean we sat there until the scene worked. Then what happened in the cut, what turned out to work the best was actually some of the dialog. We took out all of the exposition. She came in, took the clipboard, looked at it, put it down, stepped behind the curtain, comes back out. She says, "How long have I got?" He says, "Four weeks." She shakes his hand and says, "Thank you." and walks out. That worked the best. I was actually glad I covered the dialog as well. So yes, I guess I'm answering your question do we ad-lib and stuff, yeah. To the extent of throwing out everything, we ad-lib.
(c) Michaеl Nankin