Soon the shooting began. Most of the first shots went well--particularly one filmed in the eerily lit bedroom, as Steven (Tommy) wakes up with a sudden jolt in the middle of the night (after which he goes to the living room and discovers the ghost of Eleanora). This was a grim take, but every once in a while, someone tried to lighten up the room of shadows with a smile or a joke.
Tim sang a song, "The Real American Folksong is a Rag," while Eric adjusted the lights. "Who wrote it?" he asked as he finished. No one knew.
"George and Ira fucking Gershwin, that's who!"
Tommy yawned from the bed. He was in just his underpants, and his exhaled breath was frosty.
"Making films is very boring," said Tim. "Hey, do you want to go back to football, Jones?"
Tommy, who is a Harvard senior, is a member of the football team and also an actor, having played a major role in 3 Sisters and Coriolanus in last year's Loeb production. But he is a jock and not an actor when he is not working at it.
Later, around nine, when we started filming in the living room, he became merely another shadow in the cold room. We were doing takes of the lines he speaks to the ghost of Eleanora after he had discovered her. He stood by the fire, waiting for Tim's directions in stone silence. Only occasionally when he was off-camera did a smile take over his face (Nora says,
"There's nothing like a Tommy grin.") and the loud vocal mannerisms of Texas (Where he grew up) infect his speech.
But he--like the other four--let no humor find its way into the filming, once the real work had begun. Often, between takes, he reached for the bottle of burbon, took a gulp, gargled with it and then swallowed it down: all without comment from him or anyone else. (The bourbon was cheap and awful; Prophetic Pictures' production budget is $2000 -- most of which goes for minimal salaries and prop rentals--so there is little room for extravagant extra expenses.) While Tommy worked, drank, worked, looked over his script, drank, no one spoke. Eric and Tim might say something about technical matters, but mostly: nothing. The rest of us sat around, separate from each other, smoking and gazing, sitting in the periphery of the lighted area around the fireplace--half in light, half in shadows; half in warmth, half in chill.
PHOEBE quietly recorded the details of the filming on the log, to be used in the editing later on. She also held her clapboard in front of the camera before each take and announced the scene and the number of the take. Then she sat down again on the sidelines and smoked--or stared at the fire. Sometimes, but not consistently, those not involved with the shooting looked at the actor being filmed.
It can take a long time to get a scene right. The week before one speech had been done 21 times before a take worked. (Hunter shoots on a professional ratio; from about 30,000 feet of film shot, the picture will be edited to 3000 feet.)
Almost anything can kill a take: Eric's mike can get in the way of the shot; an actor can muff a line, or not perform it to Tim's satisfaction; something can go wrong with the tape recorder or the camera; the lighting can be off a bit.
Now, Friday night, one speech, less than a minute long and delivered by Tommy at the fireplace, was filmed over and over again--from just before ten to just before midnight. The amazing thing was that, as Tommy did his speech over and over again, no frustration--not even any slap-happiness--crept into the atmosphere. Rather, this sad speech ("Eleanora. I promised you all my life and it only lasted a year. Why did it go away? IT wasn't supposed to go away."), chanted over and over again in this island of black and white and shadows and bourbon, became a presence in itself, the first identifiable ghost. Steven's words merged with the blackness behind the glass doors; they touched everyone and everything in the cabin.
TIM plodded on and on (Nora said, "You're always in the land of your sordid little story."), calm and assured. Not pleasant, but rarely irritated or upset either. When he finally got around to the shooting involving Nora (her first lines after her appearance from the dead), he discovered that her costume was stained, the lighting for the scene was going to be difficult to arrange, and Nora herself looked exhausted. He decided to put that shooting off until the next night, after returning from the day's exterior filming, some difficult shots that would require Tim to shoot from the hood of a moving jeep.
With the night's shooting over, Tim seemed somewhat relaxed. He sang "Duke of Earl" and Tommy backed him up with the chorus. The group talked quietly about the sleeping arrangements for the night. No one was enthusiastic about sleeping over in the cold cabin for the first time, but it was important to get an early start if the filming was to be completed the following day. It was decided that Nora and Phoebe should share the large bed, with the rest of us stretching out in sleeping bags by the fire.
Nora did not like the idea at all. Standing in the shadows at the side of the fire, she turned towards me. Her large dark eyes betrayed momentarily a bit of the tremor that creeps into her gentle voice. "How would you like to die in that bed," she asked, "and then sleep in it?"
Steven's speech, chanted over and over again in this island of black and white and shadows and bourbon, became a presence in itself, the first identifiable ghost.