And sometimes…
You try to make a movie for 4 years and suddenly it’s made!
Well, not so suddenly and not without help.
(with our DP, Natalia Bougadellis, right before the very first take)
We wrapped principal photography for Ruth’s (actually, it’s The Book of Ruth now! I haven’t updated you in a minute!) exactly a week ago, and I’ve been doing a million little things since then (including launching an entirely new website for the film. coming real soon!) but I also just needed a little break.
This thing has been floating in my head for 4 years, requiring all sorts of levels of practical and emotional energy, and the last few months were really on a high gear. The minute our campaign on Seed&Spark ended we finalized casting and went right into a 2.5 months long pre-production process.
Insane amount of work is usually my comfort zone but it also means I was on a bit of an auto-pilot, no time to really absorb what was happening, and here we are, a week after we wrapped, and it’s no longer “will this movie ever happen?” or “when this movie will finally happen?” It’s happened. It’s happening (we’re not done just yet! There’s this thing called post-production…) And I find myself in the position of not wondering about it being made anymore, and it’s weird, and exhilarating, and very confusing!
(Becca giving Monica, Aleksander and myself some notes between takes)
So that’s why it took me a few days to write, but this started to feel like negligence, so here I am, to tell you that with all the hardships along the way, sometimes it’s about timing, sometimes it’s about finding the right people, and sometimes it’s about both.
Indeed, finding the right people isn’t always easy and often means finding some wrong people first, but maybe it’s the right set of people who also create the right timing, and boy did I have a bunch of right people, at long last.
Mostly women, many queer, many immigrants, or in other words, 100% my brand.
(First Assistant Camera Melanie St. Clair, Producer Caitlin Gold, and Natalia and Becca whom you met in previous pictures!)
I have so much gratitude in my heart for my crew. Becca, who joined this journey a little over a year ago and has been an incredible creative partner ever since, Caitlin, our fearless producer who swooped in right after a mini-crisis and made it all happen for us, Chris, my dialect coach who spent the months leading up to this shoot in sessions with me and then graced us with his presence on set, and a whole group of people (now on IMDB!) who gave this movie its life.
And then there’s our leading lady, the legend that is Tovah Feldshuh, who has been involved in this project for over two years and was a big part of its evolution. She made the schedule work, and she was gracious enough to accommodate our needs which even included a rehearsal at her lovely home. If the above glimpse of her wasn’t enough, here’s another one.
I also want to thank Vicki, our very kind host, who let us in into her magical home which was exactly what we were looking for and I’m still thanking our lucky stars that we found her and that she was lovely.
Lastly, I really do have to thank my incredible family who’s always so supportive from so far away. It’s quite bittersweet, but there’s just no way I could’ve been here, literally and figuratively, without them and there won’t be a movie without them, and I love them very much.
I’m very curious to experience the last leg of this journey. Naturally, I’ve been in front of the camera the whole time, so there’s this excitement in the sense of re-discovering the work we did from a whole new perspective. I’ve learned so much from this process, and I intend on keeping doing so. And I want to thank my team again, and all of you who followed and contributed, who made it possible for this thing to happen, and by extension allowed me to learn and evolve and improve my craft so that hopefully I can keep telling stories in the future.
More updates sooner rather than later I hope!
Cheers,
Chen
Pics in this post by Photojuice Photography