More on love

Okay, so last night, I directed my way through a love scene. We touched on it briefly the day before in rehearsal, but after much conversation with one of the actresses, decided that, last night, they'd have to just go ahead and do it. We did the rest of the scene several times, then I let the rest of the cast go for the night, and we worked on it.

I've got to say, it's weird. Directing a kiss is hard, because you've got to be aware of whether or not it's actually believable and 'hot', but at the same time, you have to be all technical and analytical and worry about whether or not the audience can see everything they need to see. It's also got this voyeuristic tinge to it, which is both good and awkward. I mean, I got to watch these two people kiss for the first time ever. I HAD to watch them kiss for the first time ever. And then I had to tell them what looked good about it and what needed to change.

The good thing was that these two actors have really good chemistry, so the kiss looked good. It looked hot. It looked believable. So all I had to do, once they finally got over the initial "uhh... we have to kiss... uhh... I guess we should go ahead... uh..." awkwardness was work on the technical aspects - how does he need to turn her so the audience can see the kiss, how should she put her arms so nothing is blocked, how can we get her up onto the counter without stopping and getting awkward? I'm really happy with the end result, and I'm hoping that they can remember all the blocking!

Now I've just got one more 'love scene' to finish blocking, but I don't want to do that until I actually get the bed. Yes, it's on a bed. We're calling it 'the angry sex scene' - there's no actual sex, but the couple has a fight, and the scene ends with an angry kiss and her unfastening his pants. I've got some ideas about how to do it, but we really do need the bed to establish some physical boundaries - I don't want to block something that's going to make someone fall off of the bed when they try it!