Tuesday 10 June
A lovely day. Cool and sunny, but to finish the exteriors we need cloudy days. Today we continue with the warehouse interiors.
Scene 78 – Int Ward C
It’s asphyxiating, claustrophobic, labyrinth-like. In this scene I begin to get a more conceptual idea of editing.
“The idea is that the image kicks you,” Marty told me a few days ago. “Film the action from different angles so each cut gives you a good kick as well.” In this scene a succession of kicks unfold before my eyes, an almost infinite succession of images evoking the notion of being locked in, the inner prison of the character.
Wednesday 11 June
Scene 78 – Int Ward C – second floor
Today we talk a lot.
“For me costumes are pure character,” Marty says. He considers costumes as being crucial to a character as an element that tells the story of a character. That’s why in The Departed, where there was nothing special about the costumes (it’s set today), he chose to concentrate on THE FACES.
After this chat I remember: Travis’ jacket in Taxi Driver, the tunics in The Last Temptation Of Christ, the dresses and suits in New York Stories, Rupert Pupkin’s suit in The King Of Comedy.
I also think of GoodFellas, Casino…
In Shutter Island, the character of Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley) smokes a pipe: that’s very good for the character who in some shots is literally hidden in a cloud of smoke. It gives him that aura of malice he needs in the film.
Thursday 12 June
We are in a studio outside Boston in a huge warehouse where one feels very small. It’s quite an off-putting place. Wherever you look there’s a set being built. I enter the set early in the morning.
When I come back out two or three hours later, I suddenly come upon a huge corridor that brings to mind images of a concentration camp. It’s a very shocking feeling; that corridor wasn’t there early in the morning. Before there was nothing there and all of a sudden this cold, gigantic, terrifying corridor appears.
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