On the production of episode 3 of Kissing in the Rain
This episode was kind of a wild, self-contained adventure in behind-the-scenes production, apologies in advance if this gets long.
Sequentially, it was the very last episode of the series that we shot. We had originally planned on shooting this at our Day 1 location, but ran out of time and had to push it to Day 3. Though it’s not totally obvious in the episode, we actually filmed it on the porch of a treehouse I had previously used for my last short film, Irene Lee, Girl Detective:
This new location kinda threw a wrench in the works for my originally planned scene, which involved a 1950’s couple walking home in the rain from prom. The treehouse is located at the top of a very steep hill (which becomes dangerously slippery when you spend hours spraying it down with movie rain) and the porch is extremely narrow, which made for logistical fun times.
I didn’t have time to rewrite this episode between Days 1 and 3 because we had been working non-stop throughout. So on Day 3, during a lighting setup and a wardrobe/makeup change, I pulled out my laptop and rewrote the scene about two hours before we had to shoot it. I printed the new script for episode 3, finished shooting episode 7, and then handed the revised pages to Sean and MK as they rushed into their last wardrobe/makeup change.
In case it’s of interest, here’s the original script and here’s the revised script. I rewatched a crap-ton of Joey/Pacey clips of Dawson’s Creek right before rewriting. I think the scene became much angstier and better for it.
Meanwhile, Zack (our multitalented DP) told me that 1) we couldn’t bring the tripod up because the hill was too slippery for heavy gear, so we’d have to shoot this episode handheld and 2) all our other memory cards were full, so we had only 1.5 memory cards at our disposal for this last episode. That meant we had about 6-8 total takes to get 3 shots of coverage for the entire episode: a wide profile, Sean’s close up, and Mary Kate’s close up.
For the record, I usually average between 4-6 takes per shot, so when we did the math my brain started to hurt a lot. The number of vitally necessary takes changes depending upon how complicated the lighting setups/camera moves are/what part of the scene it is/amount of actors’ improv, etc. – but you usually want to budget at the very least a throw-away first take, your great take, and a safety take. Which we did not have the memory card space for at all.
We’d also been shooting fairly locked-down for the rest of the series, so I was nervous about Zack shooting handheld without any kind of shoulder mount or steadicam. It also meant that I couldn’t check the camera monitor with Zack, so I had to direct the scene picture-blind. So this was a Wild Nutty Filmmaking Challenge and a Half.
I still don’t really know how we managed to pull it off. I just remember somewhere around our third take, it was after midnight, I was totally drenched, our actors were soaking wet and dead tired, a neighbor’s dog was barking non-stop, and I asked Zack, “Should we just call it quits? Is any of this even usable?” Then he showed me a camera still of this shot of Sean and I said something like, “HOLYCRAP that looks too good, okay, let’s finish this.” I think we ended up shooting about 2 takes of each closeup, 1 of the wide, an extra half-take of the scene post-title smash, and had just enough memory to shoot the close-up on the flowers that opens the episode.
For about a month afterwards, I kept waking up from bizarre fever dreams where we had to shoot/reshoot this episode and only the production stills would remind me that we’d actually wrapped. I will add that this episode is an incredible testament to the grace-under-pressure of our production team and the trust we have in each other’s work.
The song in this episode was composed by my good friend Paul Sprangers (who’s in a pretty cool band called Free Energy) with his friend, Scott Barber. We had two really awesome fanmixes that were canonized for this episode, one of which was a playlist for James to get the “romance of the scene”. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this post.)
I loved that fanmix especially because this episode’s temp track seemed like it would fit perfectly on that playlist. (A temp track is the original musical track directors give to editors and composers so they have an idea of the editing pace/musical tone we’re going for.) For this episode, my temp track was Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love With You. The whole scene is partially inspired by the song It’s Raining on Prom Night.
Because we shot this episode handheld instead of locked-down and the score was by a different composer, I decided to attribute the movie in this episode to a distinctly different director’s voice. In my personal headcanon (some of which made it into my companion drabble for the episode), this movie was a first feature for a younger indie filmmaker, who probably was able to work with actors of Lily and James’ caliber because he was friends with one of them. I’d guess Lily, since James is a little out of his element at the wrap party. Maybe they made a short film or webseries together in college or something. But I feel like friendship/loyalty would be the only reason Lily would risk catching bronchitis for a film, anyway. (I assume that’s why seanpersaud and marykatewiles did for me, thanks again, you guys are the best.) #non-canon headcanon.
Apologies for the lengthy technical commentary this week, I promise I’ll be more concise next time! Let me know if you have any more production questions specific to this episode, my ask box is open and I also answer quick questions on Twitter. As always, thanks for watching and commenting!
Much love,
Yulin
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Please don’t ever apologize for making these commentaries longer. Longer is always better.
Except I guess that means the apology-including version is automatically better (because longer).
Okay, new version: Please don’t ever apologize for the length of these, unless you promise not to let the apology actually work its way into your thinking such that you actually make that or a subsequent commentary shorter. In other words, please continue to apologize, but don’t mean it when you say it.
In other words: Please lie. At length.
