Dear Friends:

A movie set resembles a circus. We set up, rehearse, put on a show, tear down and do it all over again several times a day. After the Director yelled, “Cut!” the first time my wife visited me on a set, we all went “back to one,” our starting positions, to do the shot again. She asked, “Why are you doing it again?” I told her we would do it again and again as long as the Directed wanted to. She was flabbergasted… why would we keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting something else? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Doing take after take of the same action without an end in sight can wear down most crews. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich in the New York Times, Matthew Modine talked about Stanley Kubrick’s reasoning behind doing endless takes for “Full Metal Jacket,”

I once asked him why he so often did a lot of takes. He said it was because actors didn't know their lines. And he talked about Jack Nicholson: ''Jack would come in during the blocking and he kind of fumbled through the lines. He'd be learning them while he was there. And then you'd start shooting and after take 3 or take 4 or take 5 you'd get the Jack Nicholson that everybody knows and most directors would be happy with. And then you'd go up to 10 or 15 and he'd be really awful and then he'd start to understand what the lines were, what the lines meant, and then he'd become unconscious about what he was saying. So by take 30 or take 40 the lines became something else. Stanley said: ''I don't know how to do it. People don't do their homework, the only thing I can do is spend time doing multiple takes while the people are learning what their job is supposed to be.''

Despite the monotony, the crew must stay focused on the story. It is a weighty responsibility making a film. Each shot, no matter how small, needs to help tell the story. The selectivity in filmmaking is astounding. Each finished film is as much the absence of the many takes you don’t see as it is a collection of the images and sounds you do.

Waking up each day and doing what we know is right is just like doing take after take on a film set. We have to stay focused on the end product, the beautiful story of our life in Jesus Christ and His glorious Kingdom. We know no matter what ends up on the cutting room floor the parts of our lives’ that will stay in the final film will be loving our families, our neighbors, and our enemies and loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Action!

Illuminating Understanding,

The Cinematographer
Stewart H. Redwine
C: 310-770-0448
E: sredwine@36parables.com