There are times when I'm driving home after a day's shooting, thinking to myself, That scene would've been so much better if I had written it out.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I try to imagine the scenes as I'm writing them as if I were watching them play like a film.
I'll usually see a scene in my head, playing like a movie trailer. After I've written that scene, everything takes off from there.
The downside to making movies at a gallop like we did with 'Wish You Were Here' is that we're shooting four or five scenes in a day, and it's very exhilarating, but you worry at the end of the day that you missed some details because you were moving too quick, and you just gotta trust and be ready straightaway.
It's one thing to plan and imagine what you want on a film, but when you actually arrive and survey the scene, there's a moment of, 'Oh my God, what was I thinking?'
No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done.
When you are shooting in a conventional way, you put nets around yourself. It's very hard to fall and hit the ground. You can always manipulate things to make it not embarrassing. If the scene is a little bit bad, you can polish it or even take it out. You can hide your mistakes.
If you do a scene the right way, you can go home at the end of the day and really feel like you accomplished something.
You have twenty-one days to shoot a whole movie and sometimes you go into that thinking 'ugh, this could potentially be really, really difficult' and it turns out to be the most incredible experience.
When I sit down to write a scene, I have a plan in mind, and I'm thrilled when a character disregards my goals and takes the story to a place I hadn't imagined.
I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.