I had a day shooting some of the opening montage of Queen of Queen Street. In the stifling heat it took longer than anticipated. Camy Ting, the star, distinguished herself by not drinking any water and not fainting. She also acted while plastered in latex to make her look a lot older. Frankly, in that heat I was looking a lot older without any make up and I think I am going to have to reshoot some of this because the makeup looked too stagey. Close ups in HD are unforgiving of anything that looks stuck on!
I didn't get the shots I intended. Reality ignores story boards, shot lists, and frequent walks over the location. There is this assumption that preparation makes you immune to mishaps and brain death, but in my world I have discovered that just throwing something together at the last minute works just as well, if not better because you waste so much less time. However everyone else likes to think the director has a plan.
By the time we got to the last part of the day's shoot, the sun had gone down and I was shooting a day scene lit by street lamps. Will the story stand up to re-writing the scene as a night scene? I guess so. It had better!
Similarly, since the character is supposedly a cardboard collecting homeless woman, we discovered as we lived the part, that most of the cardboard collectors were not homeless, or necessarily that poor. The world of the Hong Kong scavenger increasingly did not look like the world the script assumed it was. It is a cut throat competitive world of women with their own turf that they defended as their own sources of cardboard. If you wheel a trolley into their territory, be prepared to fight to keep their hands off your cardboard! The warm hearted salt of the earth much beloved by scriptwriters, are often in reality willing to rip your face off if given the chance.
As we filmed and encountered more reality, my fictional downtrodden waif of a starring character began to emerge as a bit more heroic and hqrdnosed. Eccentric, yes, but not an obvious object of tragedy and missed opportunity. If she was, she would not survive in this competitive but low paid occupation. And that is making the ending look very different.
Does the audience want reality or fantasy? What will make this film work and get it some serious attention? The end result of this film is going to be as surprising to me as it will be to anyone!