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“We Just Kept Bursting Out Laughing” | Cooper Raiff, Hal & Harper
Still from Hal & Harper. 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?
The most memorable day was the day Mark, Lili, Betty, the whole crew—especially the camera operators—and I started laughing and couldn’t stop during a random scene. In the scene my character, Hal, tells everyone he got a job at J. Crew and they all are like “okay,” “interesting decision,” “why?” etc. And it just really got Mark and I laughing, then Betty, then Lili; then the camera operators, Alex and Danny, couldn’t stop laughing. We didn’t get through a take for about 30 minutes, which was insane because we had no money to make this show and time was precious. But we just kept bursting out laughing. Danny the camera operator, the most professional guy, ruined several takes because he’d laugh out loud. And looking at the dailies was so fun because I could see Alex and Danny were both holding so much laughter in because the camera would just violently shake every five seconds. It was my favorite day.
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.
