Wakeful dreaming and Nightmare sequences

We've had some very exciting days lately. We went back to the Hollywood video rental club to shoot a scene of when Paola comes back to return the rentals and henry sees her blue hair. Diff is also in the store, and later on there is a brilliant scene in which henry is doodling a picture of paola, spills some carbonated beverage on it, and smears the blue green colors and then vamos en un viaje as the sparkling water dilutes the colors.

The twins were at the video club earlier that day, adding colors to 70 photocopies of the pictures of paola. They were very stressed out as they frantically prepared all the copies. They needed so many because they didn't know how many takes they would need. But honestly? 70? It ended up taking 3 or 4 takes to get not only henry to spill it naturally (it was really funny when oscar made it look really purposeful that he spilled the drink...) but also to make it spill beautifully so that you really go on a trip when the colors spread magically throughout the paper.

Rafi, the director, was outside directing through a walkie-talkie, and since we were only recording the image and not the sound, he started narrating a very sexual experience tha thenry should have with the image that he was playing with once the drink spilled over it. The camera man, sonnel, started making comments about how sexy it all was, and it was very, very hard for oscar to not laugh. Everybody else was laughing, but impressively, he only smiled a little bit... enough to make it look like he was really enjoying himself. i think the making-of crew got it on tape, so hopefully we'll get to see a repeat of that.

The film crew was also compiling films that they had all worked on together which they found on the shelves of Hollywood Video. some of them looked really crappy, and they told me that they were really crappy. But some of them apparently turned out quite well. One of them was bad boys two! :P

The next day we went to the fortress! if you have been READING (and not commenting to reinforce me) then you know that last time when we were at old san juan doing the Bar scene, my battery died and i couldn't get a brilliant picture of El Morro. Well, this time we went to san cristobal, which is not El Morro, but just as beautiful. I got a few good pictures, which I shall post on flickr. We were there to film the nightmare scene.

A make-up specialist came in to work on the faces of Jane and Paola who were to look like the walls of the fortress. Rocky, moldy, deathly, etc. Using latex and other materials, he created the illusion that their faces were peeling off. Very, very impressed. Apparently he had worked at some drag shows doing the make-up for performers, and even performing himself! He had worked on Isla films previous production, Manuela y Manuel, which was about a guy who always felt like inside he was Manuela and not Manuel, but then marries his best friend who got pregnant during a one night stand and now needs to face her family. Checkiado! (i'm learning some genuine spanglish here.)

We filmed Paola running down the halls in a white frilly dress, screaming and being frantic, and then a shadow of her ex husband with a huge knife, trying to kill her, but being a shadow, he couldn't really permeate the barrier that exists between represented and representation: human and human's shadow.

sadly, at the time when they were filming that, I was cutting long red strips of fabric, and so I didn't get any pictures of the shadow play, although I sneaked a peak for myself. After that we filmed Jane being murdered by the ex husband of Paola! Very abstractly, Jane was dancing on a pedestal, and samuel comes and stabs her with the knife, pulls out a red satin sheet from her stomach. At first it's agony, but Maine (who plays Jane) said to Rafi before the shoot

"I think Jane enjoys the death. At first it hurts a little, but she's such a free spirit and she's lived such a full life, she's okay with it, and it becomes like a sexual ecstatic feeling, sorta like 'que buenooo!'"

Maine was amazing. The control she has over her body was really impressive. I guess she is a dancer and performer for a living, and that's what she do, but damn girl. Anyway, enough colloquialism.

The art department showed some real teamness when setting up the flashback sequence.



We created two versions of the same room. One nightmare version, and one erotic bohemian version.

Apparently Henry and Paola are hanging out when they fall asleep to enter this nightmare sequence. I think all of this is henry's nightmare. In our fictional, non-dream world, Paola has jane's guitar, doesn't want henry to play it, henry asks why she keeps it around, and paola says she doesn't want to forget Jane. Henry asks to hear about this jane character. When he falls asleep he walks over to the bed, pulls the sheets off, and finds jane and paola canoodling under a see-through sheet. they pull him in, and then he is trapped! oh noo, he can't get out of the see through sheet! very dramatic, very dream-like.

He runs naked down the hallway. and his mouth is also sewed shut.
He got so dizzy doing the scene where he had to look like this. breathing was hard, he couldn't talk. he had to breathe really hard because he was scared in the dream, and breathing hard and fast for a few takes made him hyperventilate. Another trooper moment :P


I'm not sure what else there is to tell you. I've had today and yesterday off and I have been chillaxing on the beach. I did a body drag on my cousins kite board today, and played ukulele on the 15th floor of a beach side condo. And I had pizza. Grreeat. I get up in 7 hours to... i can't remember to do what, but my first challenge is getting up at 7am.

We only have 7 more days of shooting. It's going by really quickly. I can't wait to be home, though, even though i wouldn't mind my new home being Puerto Rico.

Here is my picture of the day. Angel, our scenic painter, was goofing off and I took a picture. He complained about people with camera's and how you have to be careful around them, and for that reason I am posting him on the blog to broadcast his goofy moment to the world.