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“We Did These Sensual Slow-Motion Close-Up Shots with Our Actors” | Addison Heimann, Touch Me
Olivia Taylor Dudley in
Touch Me. Courtesy of Sundance Institute Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?
There are so many memorable and important days throughout the process that I hold near and dear to my heart, but I think the wildest one was within our first week of filming. Because of the nature of our filming schedule, we had a light first week and then an extremely heavy three weeks after. So, one day, I believe it was the first Thursday of shooting, we weirdly found ourselves with three hours of free time (our next scene had to be filmed at night).
So here we are like, “what are we going to do?” And all of a sudden, an idea hit me like a lightning bolt. I could literally see the lightbulb above my head when I turned to my DP Dustin Supencheck and went, hey, “what if we cleared out my bedroom”—we were filming at my house)—”and set up a, like, photo studio to do some slow-motion rainbow glamor shots of the actors.” He was like, “for what?” And I’m like, “I think transition shots, I’m not sure exactly how or why yet, but I think we’ll need them.
So we set up a little studio in my bedroom, blacked out the windows, and had rainbow lighting as we did these sensual slow-motion close-up shots with our actors Jordan Gavaris and Olivia Taylor Dudley. And. They. Were. STUNNING. We were still developing our visual palette as it were, but after doing these with Jordan and Olivia, we knew we had to do it for Lou and Marlene as well. And then, of course, on our alien practical effects day, we did it with the alien puppet. So much of this footage exists in the film now. It’s used in so many ways throughout the run time, and if we didn’t have those three hours free, a huge stylistic choice in the edit simply would not be in there. It just wouldn’t be the film we have now.
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.
