Day 4 - Tuesday, September 30

3PM

Jess has strong chemistry with the T. rex. We're starting today at The Rock, Fossil and Dinosaur Shop, Alice's workplace and a location I've been looking forward to. The juxtaposition of odd roadside attractions - Club Castaway and the Dino Store chief among them - sitting on a stretch of Routes 5&10 that sparked the idea for Black Light. And more than Club Castaway, the store is irreplacable, so it was a relief when owner George Marchachos said yes almost immediately. As we shoot moments of a stoned Alice wandering around the store's impressive collection of large-scale dinosaur models, it's clear that the store is bringing out Jess' inner child. She's delightful as she caresses the T. rex's teeth before hopping aboard a triceratops, dubbing the beast "Lazarus" and commanding him to take them to "Dino City." I'd written the role to accomodate Jess' often-sarcastic demeanor, and I'm surprised to find she's not playing Alice sarcastic at all; wherever she's finding this sweet vulnerability, it's working.

As we stop to talk to a reporter from the Greenfield Recorder, Jess and Johnny (who, like Ron, will be helping us for part of the shoot and playing the part of Dan later today) go to the nearest convenience store to buy pipe tobacco for Alice's pot-smoking scene. I'd written the scene for the store's restroom before finding out that the store has two "mines" for kids to search for rocks and gems. I ask George if it would be okay to have Jess smoke in the mine. He asks me what she'll be smoking.

"Tobacco. But it's supposed to be - "

"Okay. Do what you've got to do. Hey, can I see the script?"

George peruses the script, and I wonder if we're about to be kicked out of the store. Jess and Johnny return, and we shoot the scene. The mine is perfect - dimly lit, with walls that absorb light so only the sand-covered floor is illuminated. A stereo system fills the room with an endless loop of wet, cavernous sounds - it's like being inside Alice's head. Jess sits in the center of the room, smoking a bowl and drifting, sadly and sweetly, into the blank state that every self-medicating stoner is after.

Apparently there are a lot of mosquitos around the store, or so I'm told. Mosquitos don't usually bite me, but one of the joys of directing is that everyone around me gladly fills me in on every discomfort, whether they're hungry, tired or itchy. I'm sort of immune to these conditions, partly because I'm so focused on the day that I'm barely aware of the periphery, and partly because I'm always sort of oblivious to the elements - I don't usually start wearing a jacket in the fall until someone asks me if I'm cold. I try to be sympathetic to my cast and crew's needs and accomodate them as much as possible; at the same time, they're kind of a pain in the ass. My shoot is much less demanding, time-consuming and uncomfortable than any of the ones I've worked on, the difference being, of course, that those were paying gigs. For some reason, when you ask people to work for a deferred payment, they act like you owe them something.

The toughest scene at the store, for me, is the scene between Alice, Meredith and Glencora. The idea is that Alice met Meredith and Glencora in school, doesn't like them but puts up with their patronizing advice because she's too passive to tell them to fuck off. Meredith and Glencora exist to tell us something about Alice; as they're more cogs in the story than fully-formed characters and are deliberatly uninteresting, I feel a little bad manipulating Lauren and Corrine - the very talented actresses playing them - to be as dull as possible. And in setting up the scene, I find it's hard to judge when the characters and scene are just tedious enough. I put Jess slightly in the foreground so that we can play the scene off her annoyed reactions and hopefully make it clear that these two are supposed to be annoying and irrelevant. After a few takes, we get it right, which is to say, boring. I think.

As we're leaving, Jess tells me, with a curious smirk, "I took a picture of Bella on the triceratops." I feel like I'm missing something; later, when Bella sends me the pictures, I get why Jess was smirking.

8:3oPM

Alice and Nikki's date at the Whately Diner, a grand old truck stop diner located just off 91. As we're setting up, I realize why Wong Kar-wai has so many scenes set in diners - the lighting is naturally gorgeous, and there are practically no bad angles. This is the scene where Johnny is playing Dan, a jackass who stood Nikki up earlier in the movie and who Alice confronts. Johnny took the initiative of buying fake tattoo sleeves and some shitty faux-bling, and everyone has fun upping the ante on Dan's douchiness. A toothpick, a pat on the ass of his date and some text messaging later, and Dan has become the embodiment of everything I hate in my own gender. It's a pleasure to watch Alice go Dirty Harry on Dan's ass before heading out to the parking lot and enacting a bit of revenge I won't reveal here. That moment, and Alice and Nikki's subsequent fleeing the scene with Dan in pursuit, are the closest thing Black Light has to an action sequence. I've been letting the performances dictate the visual strategy of the movie, so it's a challenge and also a blast to pretend like I'm Paul Greengrass for a little while. I'm helped immensely by Bella (whose spatial intelligence would be a great strength if she ever directed a feature) and Michael, who is operating boom and is spry as a fawn when we race backwards, following Nikki and Alice as they race to the car and peel away. This may be the most fun five minutes of the whole shoot.

10PM

Our next location is the Hatfield Pub, where Nikki and Alice meet. As we shoot the scene, I find myself fighting an odd sense of insecurity I haven't felt so far. I find myself second-guessing simple setups, and when my actors ask me questions about the details and logic of this and future scenes, I'm percieving a lack of trust in my abilities, which is ridiculous - they're working for free and offering suggestions to improve the scene, which is exactly what I asked them to do. I realize a possible cause - all day we've been shooting scenes about insecurity, loneliness, self-doubt and rejection, and it's weighing me down more than cold, hunger or bugs. I tell myself to snap out of it, to focus on the scene at hand. It's then that we start to find a working method for each scene - Bella, Jess and I talk about the scene at hand, the underlying meaning of the scene for each character and translate into terms that they can put into action. It feels like it did back when I was directing plays; I'm finding a method, and I leave the pub feeling energized.

11PM

I'd hoped to shoot the scene where a stoned Nikki and Alice eat fast food and get to know each other in the Taco Bell parking lot in Greenfield, but other logistical stuff prevents it. Bella and Johnny suggest the lot outside Diva's, a club in Northampton. We find a well-lit patch of grass on the edge of the parking lot; I ask whether it's plausible whether Nikki and Alice's first pseudo-date would happen in a dirty, nondescript lot, and Bella and Jess respond with an emphatic yes. This is our biggest dialogue scene so far; Nikki and Alice both talk a little about their lives, and it was tricky in the writing to let the audience learn a bit about the characters without it seeming like a shallow attempt to "explain" them. Bella and Jess make it work; they don't play to the camera, don't reach for the emotion, instead giving each other their attention. The scene feels honest, and the nondescript lot looks surprisingly good through the lens, even if it is infested with slugs (Jess and Bella both make sure that I know this).

This scene segues into a moment where Nikki and Alice dance in front of Alice's car. I was eager to cut this scene - I added it in the second draft trying to strengthen their connection, but I fear it's like something out of a Chris Columbus movie - but Bella asked me to keep it in, so I agreed to give it a try. It's fun watching Jess play the awkwardness of the moment, and Bella is sweet, playing the moment as though Nikki is urging Alice out of her shell. I'm still not sure the scene works, but if it does, it's because of the performances. We had one more small scene to shoot, but it will have to wait until tomorrow, as we have a good and surprising problem - we've run the camera's battery completely dead.

Moth Films Fund Drive

Let's talk about that "Donate" button to the right, shall we? Because I'm not really looking for donations, I'm looking for investors. Let's get down to brass tacks:

- The budget for Black Light is $10,502.46. So far we've raised the $5600 needed for principal photography, which we wrapped last week.

- We're in need of approximately $3500 to buy the hardware and software needed to edit the movie. Since we came in a bit under budget on our shoot, any additional funds towards up to $10,502.46 would be put towards advertising our early screenings. If we raise the $3500 but come up short of $10,502.46, the budget and investors' shares will be adjusted accordingly.

- Investors will be repaid first. When the movie turns a profit, investors will be eligible for a proportionate share of 50% of all theatrical and ancillary profits returned to Moth Films whether we eventually sell to a distributor or go the self-distribution route. For instance, an investment of $210.05 would gurantee a 1% share of all profits.

- Investors are also promised a credit in the titles, copies of the DVD and an invitation to our premiere.

All this said, I realize it's a brutal time to ask anyone if they can spare a few bucks for a high-risk investment. This is why I waited until after the movie was shot, so you'll at least know I'm not going to take your money and bet it on the ponies. The footage we have is strong, and I'm serious about finishing a movie that will make everyone involved proud and hopefully pay you back for your generosity. If you can throw in five bucks, I'll certainly count it as an investment. And if you make any sort of investment, make sure to write me at blacklight.movie@gmail.com with your contact info so I can send a contract and keep you posted on the movie's progress (you can also write me to ask for a copy of our prospectus or for more information). Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I promise this post is the only panhandling you'll see here. The production journals will continue soon.

Day 3 - Monday, September 29

5PM

We're at Club B-10, Mass MoCA's intimate performance space, shooting Jessica's cameo in the movie. Jessica is playing the acclaimed performance artist Vajj, whose most recent work is attended by Nikki, Alice and Alice's snooty college mates Meredith and Glencora. I suggested that Jessica rewrite Vajj's performance to accomodate her pregnancy, and now she won't tell me what she's come up with. Michael has also recruited his friend Aaron to play a jig during Jess' performance; because Aaron is also appearing in a different scene tonight, we've decided to give him a mask. Jess and Jessica went on a mission to find the strangest mask possible, and they've returned with a mask of a grinning old crone with a cap that reads "I Bingo." The sight of Aaron wearing the mask is completely terrifying - it looks like something that Conal Cochran designed to kill children. We have extras tonight, so I get to set the scene and give each audience member a bit of business. I'm enjoying the crowd control aspect of filmmaking.

I call action, and Aaron starts his jig. Jessica's performance is helped by her years of working at MoCA and navigating both the fascinating and ridiculous aspects of the art world. Vajj's act is like Oklahoma! by way of Ann-Sofi Siden, a demented harvest dance peppered with perfectly hamhanded symbolism. When Jessica finishes Vajj's act by mutilating a gourd, she taps into the kind of unchecked rage that only a very pregnant woman is capable of, emitting a primal scream before collapsing. She gets huge applause from the extras, and she's earned it - Jessica rarely gets the chance to show how far she's capable of going and how funny she can be, and I'm happy she made the most of this chance. A quick exchange between our leads, then we move on.

9PM

My friend Chris has gotten us a room at the mountainside resort he works at for our "private party" scene, which involves Nikki, at a low point emotionally, working at a bachelor party with her adversary, Czech dancer Nadja. Nadja is played by Kt Baldassaro, an actor and model whose work can be seen most prominently in the web series Without You, and is also an accomplished weaver. Kt auditioned in July, did strong readings of a couple characters but expressed a strong preference for Nadja - her desire to play the kinkier, less likable character intrigued me and pretty much got her the role. Right now, Kt's lost somewhere on Route 43 - understandable, given that the resort is as close to the middle of nowhere as one can get. Chris helps us direct her to the resort over the phone, and we check into our suite.

We realize when we get there that the room is missing one crucial prop: alcohol. Thinking out loud, I suggest that perhaps it would play funnier if the guys only had soda and popcorn to offer, but Bella cuts me off. "There's no way these guys wouldn't be already drunk and have booze to offer the dancers. Never happens." This is one of the reasons I wanted Bella for the part - someone to call bullshit on any details of my mostly-imagined script or the production - so I defer to her wisdom and send Ron and Chris to pick up booze. Bella also suggests porn for the TV, and happens to have a copy of Cum on My Tattoo #3 in her car. As we find a scene to play in the background, I realize that, if there was any doubt before, we have now definitely crossed into NC-17 territory.

Ben, an MCLA student playing groom-to-be Dale, comments on a woman getting penetrated in at least two orifices. "She doesn't look like she's having any fun."

"She isn't," KT responds.

Bella adds, "Actually, that's her husband."

Chris is sweet during the scene; he's never acted and is concerned about doing a good job, and he's afraid of what his wife's reaction will be. He does a great job as best man Tim, basically playing himself (that is, an easygoing dude who likes ladies). The latter fear is mostly unfounded, as there's little nudity in the scene - actually, what nudity there is mostly male, as a passed-out Tim and Dale are manipulated by Nadja into a homoerotic tableaux.

As Chris is stripping down to his skivvies and Ben goes full frontal, Ben tells Chris that "I'm glad I don't have a hard-on or anything. You might think I was gay."

"Yeah, I know," Chris says, "Me too. Ha ha."

Kt locates a wounded quality in Nadja that deepens her exchange with Nikki. What I'd written as Nadja's attempt to challenge Nikki's assumptions is playing as an attempt to relate with Nikki. She's easy to direct, knows when to embellish and when to stick to script, and it's a pleasure to read later that she's declared Black Light "[...] the cleanest stress-free shoot."

We then move into the bedroom for the scene between Nikki and Brent (the other character played by Aaron), a seemingly normal family man with a secret kinky side. I don't want to reveal too much about what happens between Nikki and Brent, but it's a scene that would be hard for any actor to get through without collapsing in defensive laughter. I play the scene in a master and a close-up on Nikki, which gives neither actor anywhere to hide. To his credit, Aaron is totally prepared to do what the scene requires, and it's fascinating to talk with Aaron and Bella about the underlying meanings of the scene and then translate this into action. The scene is as unsettling as I've hoped, but also darkly funny and - not sexy, exactly, but certainly carrying a sexual charge that surprises me.

At one point in the scene as scripted, Nikki confesses, "I'm a whore. I have no love in my heart." Bella says she thinks she should say more. I ask what else Nikki is guilty of.

"'I lie all the time,'" she adds.

"What was it Alice accuses her of? 'You don't make any sense.'"

"'I lie all the time. I don't make any sense and I refuse to change. I'm a whore and I have no love in my heart.'"

After, in the hall, we shoot Nikki leaving the party. The script has her breaking down, but that seems too big now, so we pull back. I call action, Bella opens the door and Chrissies it - in a few moments we see Nikki's exhaustion, confusion, misplaced anger and other areas that are Bella's to know and the camera's to guess at. We're done, and it's late - I think about hopping in the room's jacuzzi, but I fear I may not leave until morning.

Day 2 - Saturday, September 28

12PM

The first of four locations today is a gallery on Eagle Street in North Adams owned by Eric Rudd, a local artist and one of the primary forces behind the effort to turn the town into an arts community. Eric's gallery was met with some controversy when local, conservative business owners objected to the relatively tame nude portraits that hung in the storefront. Those same paintings are on the walls for our scene, along with art by Howard Cruse, our landlord and the author of the wonderful Stuck Rubber Baby, among other things. Howard's also appearing in our scene today as an impatient gallery owner (after demanding top billing - I promised him the prestigious "and" credit), and his husband Edward Sedarbaum agrees to be an extra right before we shoot. Howard studied acting in college, and he and Ed appeared together as extras in the Sidney Lumet film Daniel, which places them among the most experienced actors in the movie.

In the scene, Alice - stuck in a particularly antisocial phase - is interviewed by Dick Derby, a reporter from the Banner, about her work. I'm playing Derby, partly because I couldn't find anyone who did the part quite the way I imagined it, and partly because it adds another layer to a scene that is already self-depricating (it's surreal when we take a break so the writer from the Transcript can ask us questions like "Why are you doing this?"). I'm wary of giving myself cameos that could play as Shyamalanesque self-importance, and I have no desire to go the Silent Bob route of director-as-pop-culture-icon. So I'm playing a dork, and I'm surprised how nervous I am about it. Usually acting doesn't cause me any stress, but I'm concerned about giving Jess something to play off and I don't have a director. Michael, on camera for this scene, is kind enough to suggest where to tone down the mugging, and I have fun doing the scene with Jess. She suggested adding this scene, and she's great in it, rolling with a last-minute rewrite that forces her to find the scene's emotion in a more economical way. After we wrap, she tells me it was hard to act off me because I was making her laugh. I don't get called "funny" in a positive way much, so it means a lot to me.

4PM

After wrapping early on the gallery scene and taking a short break, we move to the Hub Restaurant on Main Street, where Alice has the dinner date from hell with Meredith, a joyless, pretentious Pottery Barn employee. Meredith is played by Jenna Hoag, an MCLA student who killed at Friday night's script reading. It's not easy to do deadpan effectively, and Jenna's found the perfect monotone, dripping with contempt. We're a little low on extras, so Michael calls in some friends from a play he's rehearsing. Jess, Jenna and I build the scene's unease with small gestures - a pregnant pause here, a sideways glance there. The light in the restaurant is warm and barely needs adjusting. Jenna has an awkwardly long and verbose line to deliver, filled with words like "phallocentric," and "decontextualize," and it's gratifying, after one or two takes where she's understandably tongue-tied, to see her nail it. And despite Jess' fears, she manages to get through the scene without laughing.

6PM

Well, it couldn't all be so easy. First, when I get to MCLA's radio station (which we've booked for a scene where Nikki is interviewed by two leering DJs), I find a freshman who hasn't been informed that we're pre-empting her show and refuses to leave. We agree to work around it but Jessica, who is both eight months pregnant and a born producer, arranges to have the girl removed by security. Jessica could hold her own against Harvey Weinstein.

Next comes my first (and hopefully only) big fuckup. As we're unpacking, I realize I've left the camera's battery at the previous location, which is now closed. Frantic phone calls are made, and we get the battery. My mistake is the result of a smaller-than-expected crew and the need to wear many hats; I think I can direct, but I'd make a terrible grip. Luckily, what crew we have is bending over backwards for the movie - Michael's even kind enough to give me a backrub at just the right moment, without my having asked.

So we're finally ready to shoot the scene, and the actor playing Cougar - the head DJ - can't remember more than two or three lines at a time. Worse, he's playing the part way too low-key, so that it's barely registering. I learned from one of my directors that if an actor is lost, it's almost always better to encourage than to snap and create tension on the set. This guy, however, will not take a single direction, playing every take with the same somnabulent tone - it was literally easier to direct four-year-olds. When he auditioned I assumed the deadpan, burnout approach to Cougar was a choice, now I'm horrified to find that he was playing himself. Rather than accepting my directions on how to recall the lines and bring up the character's energy level, the Cougar explains that, since he is also a "shootist," he assumed I'd be doing a different setup for every line of dialogue. After an hour of fumbling through it, even Ron, our AD, can cue the guy's lines. Rather than informing him that fucking Tony Scott would find that a bit frantic and distracting, I ask Bella to join me in the hall.

"I'm sorry," I tell her, "But this isn't working. We've got to figure a way out of this."

"These guys suck."

"I know. I kind of feel bad for them."

After getting one more take of Cougar and the Woodman stumbling through the scene, I shoot Bella's close-up, reading the lines myself offscreen and directing her to play her discomfort. She's well-prepared and I think I can make it work. The next day, Bella tells me how uncomfortable the scene made her, for the reasons she writes about here - having wanted my set to be a totally safe and supportive creative environment, I'm aghast at my own miscalculation. I'd heard the Cougar make a crack about having trouble focusing with Bella exposing her breasts to him, joking oh so wittily that she should just keep her top off the whole time. I cringed and said "Hey now," but having just met Bella, I was reluctant to play the alpha male lest I overstep my bounds with a very strong, self-possessed woman. I was naive not to realize that even the toughest women (and men) need to feel like someone's got their back. I write the Cougar - who was scheduled to shoot B camera at Club Castaway - and tell him we won't be needing his services due to his lack of preparation and disrespect to a fellow actor. He denies having said any of that, saying Bella was the only professional there and accusing the rest of us of being on drugs. Well, I wasn't on drugs, Ken, but I guess I can be pretty unprofessional - enough so to focus on the scene at hand despite numerous distractions, to give an unprepared actor multiple chances to salvage his dignity, and even to use my blog to make fun of a burnt-out cautionary tale who doesn't know how to treat a lady.

9PM

We arrive a bit late at our last location, Howard and Ed's apartment, which is doubling for Meredith's. It's a relief after the tension of the last scene to get back to Jess and Jenna, who in this scene are doing lines of coke. I'm sure it'd be amusing to an experienced cocaine user to watch three neophytes attempt to do this accurately (and with flour), but eventually we find the right off-balance approach to the scene. Jenna is shaping up to be Black Light's biggest scene-stealer, and with every take we make Meredith stranger and more mysterious. When we do Jess' close-up, she launches into a coke-induced stream of consciousness about polar bears, entropy, death and loneliness, managing to be sad and hilarious and painfully human in one take. When we made Chrissie we knew we had it after that first take, so it's a pleasure to turn to her and coin a new phrase. "Jess," I tell her, "We Chrissied it." The smile on her face is perfect. We do a few quick exteriors and wrap what has been a rollercoaster of a day.

Day 1 - Saturday, September 27

The first morning is spent converting our apartment into Alice's, which means clearing all baby-related items into the rooms we're not using and bringing in the many props found by Michael and Jessica, the movie's producers who took on the task of dressing locations (again Jessica is my wife/producer and Jess is the lead actress). After returning in the afternoon from a failed trip to find more pictures for Alice - who, in between getting high and bumming around at the dinosaur store, is a photographer - to find the walls lined with stacks of books and the floors littered with dirty clothes. There are also skis sitting in a corner, paintings wedged haphazardly behind dressers and other props meant to suggest that Alice has tried and given up on many things. Shooting at home means waiting until after Luna's nap to begin, so I make a cup of tea and sit in the yard in a futile attempt to clear my head. An overcast day, I think. Good cloud cover.

Bella arrives around 3:30; we're still getting to know each other and I want to start on the right foot, so of course I find my mom talking to Bella and Jess about my recent vasectomy. Good, so now we know each other. Luna wakes, mom takes her out to play and we turn our attention to Black Light. The main challenge of the day is creating an intimacy between two actors who've only met the night before. I'd hoped the first day would be devoted to more casual scenes, but juggling the availability of actors and locations means starting on a sequence revolving around pillow talk about pubic hair, leading into an impromptu photo shoot. While I'm confident the "bush vs. shaved" scene, which was inspired by a drunken debate between friends, will play, the photo shoot is meant as the one fully improvised scene in the movie. Anyone with improv experience will tell you about the high failure-to-success ratio, so I figure it's going to take some time to get it right.

When Jess and Bella get into bed and we start blocking the scene, I know immediately that I've found the right Nikki and Alice. Their chemistry is immediate - each brings out sweetness and honesty in the other, and most important, they're really listening to each other right away. I tweak the blocking, asking Jess to let her head rest on the soft spot just above Bella's hip - the most comfortable place to rest one's head on another person, I've found - which helps Jess find the right morning-after tired horniness for the scene. Bella asks if I saw Nikki as naked in the scene. I tell her I'd pictured a t-shirt and underwear, and she says she assumed she'd be naked. I admit that bottomless would work better, that the undies were one of several small concessions to a potentially less self-assured performer. But the t-shirt, I think, is sexy, so she throws on one of Jess' tank tops. I love having an actress willing to go as far with Nikki as I'd imagined, and I feel a strong sense of responsibility in deciding when it will enhance the scene and when it will be completely gratuitous.

The other challenge of the day is that my DP, a near-lifelong friend who has been involved with Black Light for a year, has flaked out without any notice. With no time to find another DP and a small crew to begin with, this means dividing my attention between working with the actors and lighting each shot (though my plan to use available light when possible helps). As I light the scene, Jess and Bella create a sequence of poses for Nikki to model as Alice snaps away. As we begin shooting the "bush talk" part of the scene, I find that the orange walls of Alice's room, which I feared would be two strong, actually work well with the Lowel and source lights to create an orange glow on Jess and Bella's skin. Coupled with their performances, the scene is shaping up as far more intimate than I'd imagined, an essentially comic scene given an unexpected erotic charge. When Alice orders Nikki to "Say 'pussy' one more time," a line I'd meant as a deadpan joke, Jess plays it as a turn-on of Alice's, and it's stronger and better that way. Maybe these moments of detachment that I'd written in were what I needed to talk myself into getting to this point.

When we get to the photo shoot - a scene I'd feared might be a bit thin, or too familiar - I see how far Jess and Bella are willing to go for me and the movie. Bella is not only aided by her experience and ease with modeling for a camera, she's also one of the most open actors I've worked with; as Nikki is submitting herself to this inexperienced, awkward photographer's directions, I realize Bella's doing the same with me. What she percieved as caution was actually gratitude - Jess is the only other actor who's ever given me this level of trust right off the bat. And as she takes pictures of Bella, directing her to strip, smoke, lie on her stomach, lie on her back, and finally pinning her to the bed, I see in Jess a confidence and sexual aggressiveness that I'd never seen before. There's a slightly surreal feeling to Jess pacing around the room finding shots of Bella as I do the same to both of them; Jessica told me this movie would be therapudic, and I'm starting to get what she means.

The next scene is a brief but important one; while I want the other love scenes to mirror the physical awkwardness and immediacy of the real thing, I wanted to give Nikki and Alice one movie moment. The plan is to push in on Nikki and Alice, veiled in blue light, locked in a stylized embrace. The clouds prevent enough exposure from the moon, but Alice's tv casts a flickering blue light across the room.

Jess asks, "So what do you want us to do here?"

"Well, Nikki and Alice are kissing, and I pictured them in a sort of formal position."

Bella adds, "What kind of position?"

"Well, like they're locked in together."

Bella laughs. "Scissors!" Jess shakes her head no. After a few tries, they find a comfortable pose. I decide, rather than pushing in, to pan across the doorway, beginning and ending in darkness. I call action, and for two takes they kiss and touch each other. Bella will later tell me that she was just relying on a standard porno pose, but the camera read it as something different - hungry and even compassionate. As I review the footage later, I wonder to myself where attraction ends and begins - where Bella and Jess are able to connect Nikki and Alice's scenes to their own experiences and where it's pure acting. It's the sort of thing that's best left unspoken between a director and an actor - it's too much like talking during sex, in this case quite literally. But this ambiguity is one of the reasons that I'm a director; in real life I'm too polite to ask about such things, but the camera allows me to wonder.

One day down, eight to go.