My Reelity

Crying on cue. Some actors do it with ease, some actors struggle with it. I think I belong to the latter. Last week’s shoot was the first time I did crying scenes and I must admit, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my own performance, especially with the scene in Day One.

As I had mentioned before, I was gonna try a new method. This method worked so well that while I was rehearsing my lines on my own, I just started tearing and would have burst into tears if I continued reading my lines. I was kinda spooked by it and stopped running through my lines at once, afraid that I might numb myself to the experience.

Later, when it was my turn to shoot, they decided to bring forward a scene again and the director wanted me to try crying in this one. However, I couldn’t really cry in this one, try as I may and luckily he decided in the end to not make the character cry. Actually hor, I think he had no choice, cuz I really couldn’t cry until tears come out. Sigh, so paiseh.

Note to self : For me, I find that it was really difficult to stare into empty space and then cry. Day one’s scene was also similar to this, where I’m supposed to cry all alone by myself. It could also mean that this is the limitation of the method. Whatever it is, I’m disappointed with myself because prior to this, I was confident that I could pull it off when the day comes. Then this shite happens. Sigh. I guess I shouldn’t be too disheartened. If anything, at least I know this is one area where I need to improve on.

Finally, we got to do a crying scene with my wife in it (I think my method needs some form of physical human contact). Because there was singing involved as well, the director asked us to rehearse to see if the song (or rather my singing) was ok. At the end of rehearsal, my tears were really flowing. Yay!! Success at last! The director was pleased that I could finally do it and told me to hold my emotions in check till we go for shoot. 😛 But we had to cut short the singing due to some copyright issues. Which also meant that I would have less time to do my emotional buildup before I burst into tears. Whoopee for me.

This scene took about four takes, with me crying in all four of them. I think I cried the best in the first two takes, and I was wondering by the third take if I had the reserves to keep on crying. By the fourth take, I think my eyes were quite dry liow. I guess I was fortunate we didn’t go for a fifth take. 😛

Note to self : One thing I also learnt from this crying experience is that its imperative to clear the nose once it becomes clogged with muscus. Somehow the lack of air impedes one from crying much further.

So that wraps up my tale on my first crying experience. I really hope it all turns out well in the final cut. They told me the series will start in mid October, which means this episode should be showing around mid November. Stay tune for more updates!