Caroline Fourmy

I've mentioned before how, when I was little, my dream was to go into film directing and be the next Steven Spielberg.

As part of that, my parents would take me to hang out around film sets, and, being near Chicago, there were generally a fair number of them to see.

One of the first that I remember was an independent movie filming out here in the suburbs, where I not only got to watch them shoot a scene, but I actually got to help them do it.

The scene was of a car driving down the road, when the driver lost control and crashed.

The shots of the car on the road and the crash had already been filmed elsewhere—here, they were just shooting the closeups of the car's driver and passengers while the physical car sat in a garage.

This was my first taste of real vs. reel, so to speak.

Since the scene took place at night, they didn't need to worry about greenscreens or composting in scenery or traffic outside the car's windows. The darkness in the garage was realistic enough.

To simulate the headlights of passing cars, they set up a novelty rotating police light with the colored cover removed, leaving just the rotating white light. When positioned in the right spot, the rotating light would, well, rotate, giving the illusion of a light approaching their car, hitting their car, and then, finally, passing their car, just as a passing car's headlights would.

Having the car appear to be moving, especially as it seemingly careened out of control down a bumpy hill, was another bit of subterfuge (and where I came in). Along with a couple of crew members, I pushed down on the trunk of the car with increasing frequency to simulate the bumps they hit as they grew closer and closer to their doom.

The last bit of the scene was on the actors. As they'd record, the director would yell “LEFT!” or “RIGHT!”, and the actors would throw themselves left or right, as though the car was throwing them around.

On the monitors, it looked realistic. Especially in the final cut, edited together with wide shots of the actual car headed toward the tree, it looked far more like occupants of an out-of-control car than a few people hanging out in a garage for a few hours.

On another occasion, I got to watch them film a Christmas movie in downtown Chicago with an open set.

It was chilly out, but nothing even close to “cold”. So they faked it, with a sprinkling of fake snow and even a fog machine for that vapor you get from storm drains when it's cold.

I wouldn't have thought of that fog machine—in fact, I probably wouldn't have thought of any of that if I hadn't seen it.

Once I had seen it, I started to wonder what certain scenes in TV shows and movies actually looked like during filming.

That includes the audition scene in Pitch Perfect, which is linked here, if you haven't already seen it.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I'm rocking out to my favorite songs, I have parts I like to sing as the song plays: sometimes it's the lead and sometimes it's the backing.

But I can't do both at once. (Many who have heard me would say I can't do either & I should leave the singing to the professionals, but that's neither here nor there.)

As we discussed in the interview, if you watch that scene carefully, you can see (and hear) Caroline doing both at once, hence my wondering what filming looked like.

I really enjoy interviews where I get to explore that side of things, even when it's a fairly simplistic, common-sense answer.

I also really like when my interviews tie into my other interviews.

In addition to talking to Frank Monteleone around this time last year about his work filming in New Orleans, I've been really interested about regional differences in theatre, coming off my recent interview with Jeremy Herrin.

It was great to be able to bring Caroline into both of those discussions, because she comes from the baseline of the Chicago stage.

Needless to say, she didn't disappoint.