The Scene That Completely Changed Once I Saw the Location

The moment the set stopped being imaginary

That’s the beautiful thing about filmmaking. “There’s the film you write, the film you shoot, and the film you edit.” (Did I get that right Monty?)

I had the conversation between Liz and RJ set in an innocuous bar—until I saw the pictures of the actual bar where we’d be shooting—and I fell in love with it.

The Red Couch.

Something about the tiny room with the red couch and the red velvet curtain screamed TWIN PEAKS.

We had some cool locations. The Red Couch in question is located at Unit B—a vibey jazz bar in Santa Fe. But all of a sudden The Red Couch became all I could think about. It became, or rather had been all along? The fulcrum for the whole film.

There is the film before the red couch and the film after the red couch. There’s also pre-red-couch Liz and post-red-couch Liz. It makes sense then I guess.

I’m sure seasoned filmmakers know this, but it was news to me. All I knew, before TRC, was that it was hard to envision every single scene for the storyboard. There were scenes, and there were scenes. Scenes I could envision. Scenes that had inspired the entire doggone project I could see in my head. But not all of them. Not until Monty sent me shots from location scouts, and then the dialogue scene (which was where I tried to show off the dimension I’d written into the characters,) finally came alive.

It wasn’t just that the red couch reminded me of the infamous red room from our dearly departed, it just…fit.

I don’t know how much about the film I should reveal, or what constitutes a spoiler. Let’s just say that the guilty characters in question would totally have a red couch and a red curtain and they would totally use them to do guilty things.

IYKYK.

And if you wan’t to know, you’ll just have to watch it when it comes out.

Photo by Esther Miller