Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546229
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 6 I 9 — continued on page 10 The handheld camera came around from the master, pulling Jamie up to get the emotion on their faces in a two-shot. He folds her into him, but she doesn't want to be sweet-talked. She wants him to leave his family, which he won't do. We'd run the scene through from each angle. My DP, Pawel Edelman, had to light for a 270-degree view with practical lights because of how we were moving the camera around the room. We were dancing in a limited space with a ceiling, and we were able to get a few lights behind the camera, but it was a subtle and challenging job. We accentuated colors when Ray could see as a child, but as the film evolved, we started desaturating. By this point, the color is bleach bypass, so that the blacks were very black and the colors were muted. 3 This is her POV, and you can see the smile on Ray's face as he starts playing "Hit the Road Jack," directing her to use her anger. Jamie is playing for real, and it's their voices singing. She's pouring her anger and pain into the song. We were shooting long days in the hot summer in New Orleans and Jamie would stay up until two in the morning practicing Ray's fingering. You feel the rawness of their voices in this really bent environment, with them going down the drain together. The sound design is quite silent — just that electric piano and their two voices. It's personal. It's the dying of a relationship. I wanted that reality to be the soundtrack. 5 They've locked themselves in, the blinds are down, their life is turned inward and they're fighting. There was a lot of love, a lot of passion and a huge amount of creativity that's all going up in smoke. She says, "From now on, it's strictly business between you and me." He's going to channel her anger into singing "Hit the Road, Jack." I knew I was going to cut from this dark, personal scene to them singing the song in the big showroom, where she affects that same gesture. The camera is down low because Ray's POV is from the piano, but I wanted to accentuate Margie's power. Regina's small, but she's got a huge heart and incredible force as an actor. Here, she's standing up to Ray and will no longer be dominated by him. Her point is accusatory, but he's using it creatively to put the fire in her for this song. 4 We do a hard sound cut from an intimate scene with two people coming apart in front of you to a live scene in a supper club, where the band is playing hot and they're totally professional. I used the original Tom Dowd recording — the quality was so good it felt live. There's fire between Ray and Margie in the hotel room, now translated into this performance as she expresses her incredible anger. Ray has progressed from playing roadhouses to elegant supper clubs like the Roosevelt Hotel's Blue Room, so this sequence tracks both the trajectory of his career and his relationship with Margie. We shot in the real Blue Room in New Orleans. It's still bleach-bypassed but the room had lights Pawel accentuated and it sparkles. Costume designer Sharen Davis designed and built a lot of the wardrobe. Her work was accurate to the period but expressed each character. 6