Rabbits Out Of Hats: Five Basic Steps to Improvisational Indie Moviemaking From White Rabbit Director Daryl Wein

Don’t Shoot Against the Tide

The lessons I learned from the experience were manyfold. It is important to not get too bogged down in planning. It’s easy to become obsessed with a pre-conceived notion of how something should look or feel in the film. You’ve dreamt about it for months, and the time has finally arrived, so you’ll do anything to try and make it work the exact same way you saw it in your head. What I’ve learned is that that way of thinking can backfire, because you may be pushing against an energy or idea that has recently presented itself that might be even better. Instead of getting frustrated with those types of new obstacles, I think it’s best to try and embrace them in whatever way possible. Otherwise, you risk crafting a scene that can feel a bit like a mish mash of concepts. An element can feel forced, which throws something off, or a performance can feel artificial.

For instance, we went to the beach to shoot a scene. I really wanted to be in the waves with our lead actress. But of course, when we arrived, it wasn’t calm enough. As we were testing it out, my co-DP actually got soaked and lost his iPhone. So we switched it up and went with a 200MM long lens from the beach to film her floating out there in the sea. It ended up being this beautiful contrast to our B-camera, which was a little closer up, because it juxtaposed our character’s two identities—one being a bit more disconnected, almost cerebral, and the other totally in touch with her core emotions. The camera being further away from the waves felt almost like a voyeur in a dream, and helped us to tap into this idea we were trying to capture, which was basically her letting go of a part of herself.

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