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FILMMAKING www.postmagazine.com 21 POST JAN/FEB 2021 that I wanted an instrument or song that kind of was each character's, and then all of those would kind of come together. Then, again, for the reasons I said before, it didn't work out that way." Tariq Anwar was the principal editor. How often would you meet with him? "Every single day. At first, I was about to shoot a film in Santa Fe, and so we set up the editing in Santa Fe. Tariq and (assis- tant editor) Naomi (Sunrise Filoramo) came to Santa Fe. And after I'd shoot, I would come in and sit with Tariq. He'd work all day, and I would come in and give notes and watch and work together. And we got about a week and a half to do that, and then the pandemic hit. But be- cause we had set everything up in Santa Fe already, we just all stayed there, even though the production got shut down. "Naomi was set up in one room and the editor in another room. They were able to remain separate. The facility that we were in was not over occupied. There were two productions that had just fin- ished, so we were kind of the only ones in the building, and I would just work remotely. Tariq and I would do a share on our computers and I would just watch there. I'm pretty sure it was an Avid." Which scenes were the most challenging? So much of the film takes place in the motel room. Was it tough to make it seem like this was all taking place over the course of just a few hours? "Specifically the scene on the roof, and then the one scene in the room. The roof was a 10-page scene, and in the room, there was one that was 14 pages, and another that was 16 pages. And so obvi- ously you are not going to get an entire 16-page scene in a day. It was a really major exercise for the actors. I knew that it was going to be difficult. We didn't really have a rehearsal period. So that is usually something that would be able to help you maximize your shooting time — rehearsing ahead of time. But we didn't have the time to do that, so some of our time that would have been used for shooting, we had to use that for rehearsing and blocking." How did you prepare for that? "I told the actors that I know this is not the conventional way you've worked be- fore, but you do have to know this script like a play, when it comes to the scenes in the room and on the roof, because they are so long. We don't have a lot of time and we are going to have weather challenges. We might have to jump back and forth from the roof to the hotel room just to get it done." The film is set in Florida, but you actually shot in Louisiana. Did that create any challenges? "We had weather challenges, but luckily our production designer had a great idea to build the rooftop next to our stages, so the roof is really just a bunch of ship- ping crates. That allowed us to be able to go back and forth from the stages to the roof, without having to get in cars." What can you offer in terms of hindsight from your first feature? "I think that I try to manage my own expectations, always, so I guess I like to keep expectations low, so that way you usually end up being surprised more times than disappointed. "I was so grateful that we were able to get to the finish line because we had so many challenges — so many things against us. And every project has that, but when you are doing it independent, for a certain amount of money, there is a second level of anxiety that comes on when you find out two days before that you lost a location. Those things that you know are going to come, but when they do, you have to be solution based and it's a little extra level of anxiety that comes with the solution-based thinking with an independent." Did the film turn out as you had initially envisioned? "I was very, very happy with the out- come. I feel like when we were starting to edit, at first I was like, 'Yeah, I think we have a movie.' And then, we were digging in more, I thought, 'Oh, this may be a film!' I say movie versus film because, for me, when something is a movie, it's just really serving entertain- ment purposes. The mistakes are forgiven because it's for entertainment. You're not going to sit down and have a long conversation afterwards. And then when you look at something as a film, you go, 'This might leave a mark in people's minds. They are going to remember it.' I guess that's what I feel the differences are. For a movie, it's great for the moment, but you don't always necessarily take it with you later." The film was shot using Arri's Alexa 65 and edited on Avid systems.