Jamie Adams shot She Is Love in just six days
Jamie Adams‘s latest film, She Is Love, stars Sam Riley and Haley Bennett as an ex-husband and wife who coincidentally bump into each other after 10 years. He is running a boutique hotel and she books a room there – and naturally, old wounds are reopened during her stay.
During the romance drama’s premiere at the London Film Festival, Adams opened up about his unique filmmaking process, revealing that he shot the movie in chronological order in just six days and takes could sometimes run for as long as 45 minutes. He devised the scriptment (an outline of what happens in each scene) with his actors, they ran through some improvisations over Skype before the shoot and then he let them roll with it on the day.
Here’s what he had to say about his input during those lengthy takes:
“So I let the first pass go as far as we can without saying anything, I just try to watch and take in what’s going on because really they’re showing you what they think the scene is in that moment because we don’t talk about it too much (beforehand). I mean, there’s a brief paragraph about what we think it is and what the narrative beats are (in the scriptment). Then on the second pass onwards, and we go until I feel like we’ve got something good out of it, I’ll always (interrupt and) say, ‘Hold it there… maybe rewind it back to this part… Maybe go make a cup of tea’ or whatever it is. It’s just really basic sort of things but it takes things in different directions and different rhythms start to emerge. If I really feel we’re not getting anywhere then yeah, it’s ‘cut’ and we talk about it, but I try not to say ‘cut’… we don’t have the time for everybody to start trying to reset and do their thing so just keeping them in the moment is my main job really.”
– Jamie Adams
Even though they created a scriptment together before the shoot, Adams likes his actors to disregard it during each take as he believes the magic happens when they don’t think about what beats they need to hit.
“We aim for the surprises. I say it before we go into any scene: ‘Don’t try and remember what it is that you read that I wrote (in the scriptment)’… They go on for 45-minute takes sometimes and when I can see that they’re exhausted and they’re not thinking anymore, that’s when the magic happens.”
– Jamie Adams
This is such a unique way of working – no wonder Riley and Bennett signed up for the challenge!
She Is Love is in cinemas from Friday 3rd February (read my review here)