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“There was Time to Know, Already, I’ll Remember This.” | Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding
Still from Rebuilding. 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?
Rebuilding was shot in the San Luis Valley, the oldest part of Colorado. It is a great desert plain cut through by the high Rio Grande. The San Juan Mountains mark it to the west. They are old, eroded, and gentle. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains line the Valley to the east. They are young and rugged and steep. To the south: the ancient volcanoes of the Taos Plateau. From the center of the Valley, where we shot much of the film, these mountains make a ring of weather for a hundred miles all around. One of the gifts (and occasional curses) of filming is a hyper awareness of light and clouds, sunrise and sunset, dusk, darkness, thunder, and wind. The San Luis Valley is the greatest place to witness weather in the world.
The day I will most remember from the shoot we were filming music. Binky Graphite was playing his silver dobro in a field of sage brush. The camera rolled for a very long time and the whole crew gathered to watch. As Binky played the sun began to set. A pink star of light appeared, circled by a rainbow, over the sacred mountain Blanca Peak. And through whispers the whole crew agreed: it’s the prettiest sunset we’ve ever seen.
Later that evening, at the very end of dusk, we filmed two of our local actors, Nancy Morlan and Kathy Rose, singing “In the Sweet By and By.” The shot was too wide to record sound well, so after the camera cut we recorded them singing wild—no camera, just sound. Josh O’Connor knelt in the soft dust holding the lyrics for them. The night became very quiet. There was time to think of the sunset, and the place we were in. There was time to know, already, “I’ll remember this.”
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.
