Talking, talking, talking and even more talking.
Explaining an idea is hard enough, but communicating a visual idea is even harder, imagine how difficult it is to explain an emotion, a thought, and an impression. However, mostly through a dialogue I was able to communicate everything which was in my head and on the screenplay pages. I realized how powerful and important is the ability to talk clear and simple to the point where from few concrete words the person in front of you realizes, understands and gets insight and becomes excited. Neither of these were happening easily to me. I was using hundreds of words to express myself and to try to explain myself. I went over analyzing the scenes, the characters motivations, their desires, their backstories, their fears. I felt so emotionally and physically tired after every scene in the movie that I felt that I wasn't directing properly or I wasn't communicating it properly. When I am watching the BTS footage from Who is NoOne I see how hard I am trying to explain the scene or some actions inside it to the cast and crew. One of the reasons for this was that I didn't do the general and most important introduction of the film's visual style and the visual grammar with the crew and cast.
I was speaking to Toni and Hristo, the camera crew about film references, I told them prior to film to watch several films which had the same or very close mood and visual style. However, when we started the shooting I found out that I had to start from scratch.
My intention for this project was to create a film with high production value, in terms of sound and visual quality. I felt that I had the experience and the knowledge to make a picture with very little money but to look as if it was produced with a standard budget for an European film. I knew how we can trick this, by filming the talents in a specific way, a very intimate approach using lots of close ups and mid close up shots, using very aggressive and attacking editing, plus using very intelligently and with context the sound design and music.
It was quite difficult for me to explain to the crew my idea, this slow paced psychological drama to be narrated as if we are shooting an action film, or a very dynamic drama. Later on I would find out that the real dynamics and tension in a movie is not happening on its surface but in its unseen on the screen actions and reactions. But for this realization I will speak later on, when I am going to talk with you about the editing.
Thankfully most of the guys and the girls managed to catch up with my unorthodox approach. I was speaking very often about how this film will be told through editing and montage. Actually I was cutting the film in my head during the shooting. I was seeing the transition shots, the links between scenes, I was seeing in my head every possible cut in the scene.
Another thing which I wanted to achieve with NoOne is the entire film to look as one big piece of puzzle, with very fluid and non disruptive flow of scenes and sequences. I imagined how every transition will link the previous scene with the next one from the beginning to the very end of the film. That's why I was using lots of detailed close ups and massive wide shots of the location and the nature. I wanted to stretch out the audience's experience extending it from under the water way up high in the sky. This was done with only one goal, when the audience's experience is placed high above the earth, under the water, on the characters' face , his skin or eyes, or on the ground, the audience feels and experiences this huge macro cosmos and micro cosmos of interactions and emotions.
As you see working with cast and crew means most of all working and talking to yourself. This is the real directing job, to find firstly for himself or herself every answer or even better every question which needs to be asked in this film and story. To set up the right film needs the right questions – WHY this story and this character? How to tell this story about his character? What's happening in this story to that character? Where and When it is happening?
Of course a filmmaker might decide that she wants to go and explore the story and the film trying to find the answers for all of those questions. There are many films made by this approach, however from my standpoint of view and my experience. A micro-budget filmmaker needs to know quite precisely the answers to the questions written above. Why does he need to know it? Firstly because by knowing the story and its main characters, what is happening, why it is happening, where and how is happening he would know immediately if this story is possible to be produced with micro-budget. Secondly this filmmaker will know exactly what to tell to the cast and crew so the creative process to be fast and precisely focused on telling the story which has to be told.
Why am I telling you all of this? I found out that everybody who has read the screenplay becomes a film director. So suddenly one simple screenplay becomes in the imagination of all of those creative people their own film. Every actor or actress begins to develop the story from her character's point of view, the camera operator starts to imagine another film, the producers have completely different films and so on and so on. Here is the crucial part of working with the cast and crew, that all of these creative people have to collaborate on the same film. Ideally for a micro-budget film with crystal clear answers to those main questions which are understood from the most important people in the creative process.
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