"You weren't supposed to DO that!"

Scene 31:  After their nice "get reacquainted" dinner, Marissa and Larry adjourn to the "piano room" where Marissa tries to get Larry to "try the game."

LARRY:  But it wasn't real.
MARISSA:  We thought it was real.
LARRY:   We were little.  Little kids think Santa Claus is real!
MARISSA:  That's because adults tell them he's real. 

Larry is unconvinced but Marissa is undeterred and proceeds to "read" the piano bench.

The whole first part is one long take.  The O/S shots we did to insert were over the 180 line so they were not usable at that point [SEE: handy "Glossary," tabbed above, if need be].  It feels a little slow, but it's also okay -- symbolically, it's unifying.  It works symbolically not to cut until Marissa announces her "discovery" that alienates Larry.  Then we "separate" them visually to match the emotional truth.

I decided to try a little 'Homocide: Life on the Street' technique there:  Fans of this bygone, "revolutionary" TV show will know that they regularly edited scenes with certain moments/dialogue repeated or with intentional jumps in smoothness (a character might be to the right of a desk, then suddenly "jump" to behind the desk through a discontinuous cut).  Since this is the moment that their world turns upside down -- an "inciting incident" in a way -- I chose to represent this by making the world seem disjointed and rocky -- to model visually the instability and "shocking" nature of the event.  I repeat a couple lines of dialogue and put in a couple jumps.

Now, we didn't shoot it with this idea in mind, and it could be that someone with more experience with this sort of editing could do a more effective job than I (for example - I'm wondering if I should put in a flash frame somewhere, but I'm not sure how) -- AND this is the Rough Cut, so I'm calling it "DONE."

This means that I have supposedly "edited" 9.5 pages in three days.  Being ahead is going to be key because I'm sure that I will lose some ground on some of the more cut-heavy scenes.  Gain ground where you can!

Today I will try to do Alan/Down-and-Out-Man's "You're f-ing nothing!" scene, but I'm realizing as I look at the script that I was going to have another montage there -- the "montage of pain" -- as Marissa notices him and experiences his loss and struggle, etc.  Dunno exactly what I'll do about that.  Might need to ask someone with liquor bottles in their house to shoot a couple images for me.  Could this be YOU, invisible reader??  I have a great website for transferring the video...