TEN Principal Photography Day 9: December 13, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Day 9

We started off Day 9 by trying to take advantage of natural sunlight. It was pretty impossible to fully light the stairwell, so we hoped we could fill in some of the shadows with the little bit of exposure sunlight that came in through the windows along the back edge of the stairwell. We didn’t have a lot of time to work with, but it helped us get off the few shots we needed.

As the sun started to go down, we picked up a few additional shots that we couldn’t quite finish on Day 1 at the beach. It is, of course, nearly impossible to ever get the exact same sky look for any two shots done at different moments, but we got as close as we could and we’ll have to fix all the coloring for the opening beach scene in post (good luck to us!). We also did the last of a montage series of weird occurrences as the actress wanders through the house (we shot bits of these almost every day to make up a several minute sequence in the film).

Then, we returned to everyone’s favorite basement, retied Jade and Molly and got back to their interrogation scene. We talked about and practiced some safety moves before we lit them on fire. I burned the hair off my arm to show them that they wouldn’t spontaneously combust if flames came near them. (In reality, we didn’t actually light them on fire. We burned very small amounts of rope for a very short time. No one was in any actual danger and once again, apart from some burnt arm hair, no one got hurt!)
As promised when I talked about the basement previously containing horse stables, I am pointing out the giant salt lick sitting on top of the rightmost green boiler-type structure.
Interestingly enough, after the interrogation was shot and wrapped that day, we had a few more scenes that Karin was to be in, but she had to return to Boston for The Slutcracker. We had, of course, planned accordingly. The remaining two scenes showed Karin, 1. only from the waist down and 2. face down on the floor. Sure, Sophia might be 5 inches taller than Karin, but once she donned the skirt, jewelry, and wig, her resemblance was uncanny. So, we shot a scene with Dalya hiding under a shelf with Sophia’s stand-in legs.

And to complete the circle, when the shot went to a first person perspective, Dalya and Kelly could not fit together under the shelf, so Kelly donned Dalya‘s stockings and shoes and shot it with her own legs in the shot.

After that scene, we shot a scene in which Karin is passed out on the floor. I don’t want to share too many details regarding what is going on, but needless to say, Sophia did a fine job laying on the ice-cold floor without moving.

This was the last scene that we shot at the Beach Mansion. It was a long scene and we made a lot of on-the-fly decisions about it, including the use of an 8 1/2 minute (nearly) static shot. We felt like we had to make those kinds of shot decisions in order to best capture what we had and I hope they work out all right. We shall see!




The TEN days of shooting:

Overview
Day 1, December 4, 2012 – Wingaersheek Beach – Gloucester, MA
Day 2, December 6, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 3, December 7, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 4, December 8, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 5, December 9, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 6, December 10, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 7, December 11, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 8, December 12, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 9, December 13, 2012 – Beach Mansion – Barrington, RI
Day 10, December 14, 2012 – https://mjeml.michaeljepstein.com/ – Somerville, MA
Extra Inserts/Pickups Day, March 3, 2013 – Sophia Cacciola’s House of Wax – Somerville, MA

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