Floating: A Swim in the Woods: Come, Feel the Noise

"Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment"
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

We were shooting just miles from Walden Pond, on another pond, and the image above, and Thoreau's commentary on it, are what comes to people's mind when they think of that part of the woods.

Nature. Beauty. Listen closely, and what will you hear?

A distant bird's chirp? The crack of a branch as some small critter crosses it?  A breeze rippling along a pond? Maybe.

An airplane flying overhead? Dogs howling? Construction? Music blaring from a neighbors party? More likely on our shoot.

We were about 10 miles from Hanscom Air Force Base. Most residents owned at least one, if not more, dogs. It was Fall, and most of the local residents were doing repairs and additions to their homes before Winter took over, and also getting in their last chance to hold parties in their backyards.

Added together, we had about as much chance of getting a quiet take as one would in Times Square.

I particularly remember one touching scene between Van (Norman) and his father (Will). Their relationship was contentious, but this was that special moment when they really connected, when they felt each others' pain, when they put the past behind them and moved forward.

It's not a scene you want to do twenty times; there are only so many "special moments" in them. Sure, we could get coverage, but we wanted one. nice, beautiful master shot, which meant we would need quiet for at least 3 and a half minutes.

By that point, we had a rather complex system in place of PAs stationed by folks homes, where they would bring in their dogs during takes as well as hold on use of construction equipment while we shot. For the most part, they were very polite, friendly and accommodating.

The Air Force, needless to say, was not about to work around our shooting schedule, nor were they about to give us a timetable of flights.

We were about 45 seconds into a take when I heard a dog barking. Was it loud enough to ruin our take? Could we fix it in post? All of my senses were alive, my "spidey-senses" kicked in, as I watched the take and listened to this dog, wondering if this was a good one.

When the director called cut, I immediately sought out the sound mixer, who was not in my line of sight during the take, a take that was absolutely perfect and heart-wrenching.

"Was the dog a problem in that shot?" I anxiously inquired of our sound mixer.

"No, the dog wasn't a problem," he said in the calmest of voices. "The plane drowned him out."

We had been dealing with these sound issues all along, and our mixer had long ago come to accept that this was just the way it was going to be.  Meanwhile, I was so fixated on the dog barking that I had completely missed, well, the airplane. "Spidey-senses," indeed!

Yes, we had to shoot it again. It worked out great in the final scene (which I don't want to show here, as it will be lost when you see the movie - and you should see the movie).

What it does remind me of is this, from Living in Oblivion, the Tom DiCillo film that inspired the title for this blog. Somehow, on that one perfect take, something affects the shot....




Sound was not our only struggle, and in the next post, too much time in the water, and a scene too close too home.

Floating: A Swim in the Woods - A Preview

"A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the Earth's Eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

-Henry David Thoreau

With the following series on the film Floating, on which I was the First Assistant Director, I am breaking with one of the tenets of this site; namely, not using real names (no pun intended).

A large part of what made the experience of making this film memorable for me was working with two, then, young actors: Chad Lowe and Norman Reedus (much more on both to follow). A few other actors from the film also went on to notable careers.

It would have been awkward and inconceivable to transmit the experience of working on this film by creating pseudonyms for the two leads, and referring to them as "Actor A famous for (x)" and "Actor B famous for (y)." While I allow my posts to digress at times, cumbersome references are to be avoided.

Norman and Chad were great, and both endured a lot working on a physically demanding film. As the AD, if anything, disagreements with either had to do with them wanting to do too much (again, more later).

The relationship between a 1st AD and a director is always a tricky one, and, on this production, it was not best fit in the world. For various reasons, Bill, the director, and I got off on the wrong foot and the relationship just got worse, being saved in the end by a line producer who came aboard that I had worked with in the past and who I really respected. Having named the film, it's pointless to try and keep the director anonymous. Understand that in keeping with the tone of this blog, any negative comments regarding that relationship are offered with no malice toward Bill. I wish him nothing but the best, and, I'm sure he would agree, there isn't a chance in Hell we would ever work together again.

A little background.

The film took place in Concord, Massachusetts, on a small pond not very far from idyllic Walden Pond made famous by Henry David Thoreau. We filmed in the early Fall of 1996. Those who have followed this blog know that I have worked on a few films that shot in the Fall in idyllic settings, and the results were not always the best.

Floating is an emotionally brutal coming-of-age film on many levels, and features Van (Reedus) as a teen dealing with difficult circumstances. His alcoholic father is responsible for a car crash that killed his mother and left his father an amputee, dependent on Van for everything. Van, an accomplished swimmer, finds true friendship and someone he can relate to in Doug (Lowe), but even that friendship produces problems, as Van, Doug, and Van's friends try to find a "perfect life" in a place where everything seems perfect, but is far from it.

The idea of doing a film with actors in their late teens and early twenties in remote woods in the Fall left me with images of hormones gone amok, a woodsy version of Spring Break. That turned out not to be the case, though the surroundings had other challenges.

At 39 years old at the time, a number of features under my belt,  Floating was a film that had a lot of lessons in store for me. One of them was that while you bring all the tools in your bag, you have to learn which ones to use when, and just going to the same ones isn't always the answer. At that point, I was doing more UPM and line producer work than AD work, and putting on the AD hat, and being quite a bit older than most of the cast, a lot of the crew and the director, I sometimes fell into the role of "Dad," which was not always the best role as AD.

It was probably the first production where age really hit me. The terrain was uneven and difficult, which was a challenge, being a bi-lateral amputee below-knee. Flex feet work best by doing what a real foot does, transferring energy from the heel to the toe as you walk. That works best on flat, solid ground. On Floating, I was dealing with hills or walking on sand, neither of which are strong points for flex feet.

Add to that being older than most of the rest, and that first time you feel the aches of age (any of you who are approaching, or have reached, "middle age" know what I mean). It was my first sense of mortality since my operation.  Up to that point, I had been able to meet every physical challenge and feel great, and while I did on Floating as well, it was now not without drained energy and those few aches.

This is a moment we all hit, a place we meet differently. Like an athlete who has physically lost a step, you start to put your experience to use, getting a good jump in the right direction to make up for that lost step. You start to rely more on experience than dealing with things by the seat of your pants, although there is always plenty of the latter on a film set.  For better or worse, you start to anticipate.

A little of the "depth of (your) own nature" Thoreau noted.

In the next post, an introduction to the cast and crew, as well as prep on Floating.

N.B. - You may have noticed that my posts on Floating are not quite in sequence with other films: Man of the Century and 1999 happened later. Frankly, the issue of how to tell this story took me some time, so I put it off until now. I hope you will find it worth the wait.