Shooting a fight is like shooting any other scene. You have to tell a story using a very specific choreography.
If a female actor is not comfortable with how a scene is shot and says no, it means no. They should not go ahead with the scene.
Sight gags had to be planned; they required timing and mechanics. Occasionally, spontaneity would arise in the shooting of the scenes.
Things like that become a blur - shot at some soundstage, somewhere - that's as much as I can remember.
We shot every scene of mine in the entire movie in five days. All my coverage, everything. I left. They went back and shot everybody else around me. Insane. The part [Billie in Crazy Six] called for a handsome, coiffed cool guy romantic lead, and I showed up like you see him in the movie. And they let me do it.
As an editor, you're constantly dealing with the best way to convey an exchange between two people. So when I'm shooting that, I'm just aware in the back of my head what an editor might want. And also, the problems editors run into when trying to edit performances - it helps me head that off at the pass a little.
For The Truman Show, I worked for a few weeks, do my gig, then I was done.
We just started filming, and after every scene was shot, we had a rehearsal for the next one.
The first thing that goes into shooting a scene is understanding whats on the page.
Most films, when you finish as an actor, you just go home.
We were on a fairway shooting a scene in 'The Dogleg Murders' when I was asked by the cameraman if it was safe to film from where he was standing. I said, 'Yes, it'll be fine.' I then managed to slice the ball 90 degrees into the camera.
Like behind the car or in the pub, to do a scene, a proper nice dramatic scene, it's always a treat. And they're usually shot as one, so you've got a big chunk of dialogue to learn, and you feel like you're working.
The running across the field thing, that was the first scene we shot in the movie. We asked the audience to stay for the scene, and 37,000 people stayed.
Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he's an editor himself - we cut together. It means he's constantly thinking about my problems while he's filming.
I wanted to be in 'The Emerald Forest.' I chased that one for six months before it all came about. I wanted to work with John Boorman!
It's never the practice to shoot the scenes in the proper order. Sometimes you shoot the final scenes of a film before you've even started the beginning. So you get good at it because you have to sort of just eliminate the memories of something you've done as an actor, which you haven't done as the character yet. But it sometimes is a bit of a mind-f**k.
I feel like if you shoot one scene all day long or you take two days to do a scene, that scene is going to be stale.
Soap operas are like boot camps for film actors, so I really learned a lot. It was a masterclass in working for camera. I made myself watch myself every day. I would sort of try and be objective about it and critique myself a little. There's a lot more skill set than people realize in soap operas. They shoot, like, 35 scenes a day.
You could do a scene that takes 15 hours, but in the movie, it's only 10 minutes. The scene where they put the sauce poisoning in; it took eight hours.
The rehearsal period is so far away from the time when the scene will actually be shot that very little is remembered.
During my third season of 'Zoo,' I was picked up by a car to go to work. We had this huge scene to shoot that day, but the traffic was just gridlock. My transportation guy got a call saying, 'Where are you? We need to start shooting.' So I got out of the car and just took off running by all of these cars that weren't moving an inch.
Memorising my lines is actually something I do fairly well. I look at it a few times and it is pretty much there. When your shooting on TV, they do it in such a way that it is pretty easy.
Being on set is just a unique and surreal experience, and it's one I always dreamed about having. And then I had it.
I love working with the Farrelly brothers. I'm a big fan and feel very lucky to have gotten to work with them a few times. One thing that I learned while working with them is that you have to keep your cell phone off when filming scenes, or you owe them a lot of money!
Performing in front of the camera is a different thing, and shooting a whole film is another.
