TUESDAY. 30 SEPT 2025

My first day of rehearsal, everyone else started yesterday. And we start today with a big shoot.

but first a recap of the work over the summer reheasal session

During the summer not so much video produced. some rehearsal footage which I thought we could later use on a monitor or so.

But now and again some nice images

Jule looks in the mirror

And then a test of turning Pia into the nancy character from Opening Night.

Nancy pleads through the glass.

Pia looks through the LED wall

Both come at us from an other worldly space. --> maybe I need a rain effect.

The theme of observing/ watching seems like it might play a part. especially because the video of peopel on LED wall seem to have a real presence. You feel them there in the space. It's quite cool

I tried some tests of Renato as the director watching

Renato, the director, watches from back stage, this is for the narrow LED screen

But mostly I shot the improvisations of the slap scene

Rehearsing the slap scene


And finally close to the end of the summer, we improvised a scene for live camera, (or pre-recorded maybe?), of Nancy breaking into Hannah's dressing room

Pia breaks into the dressing room


breaking in --improv for live camera

so back to

TUESDAY. 30 SEPT 2025

And we start today with a big shoot.

The idea/skizze, drawn up by Falk tries to build in the rewind idea we spoke about in the summer:

A COUPLE IN BED

WIFE HAS PANIK ATTACK

VIDEO TAPE REWINDS --> We see her shortly in mirror, we see her then, earlier on the phone

VIDEO GOES FAST FORWARD --> We're back int he Panik scene, only this time the Panik scene reveals itself as a movie.

After the rewind the audience finds out that this "panik attack" was actually a moment in a film shoot

We shot the scene again, but this time with other performers as a camera crew. Living in Oblivion was the first reference here.

But ideally it helps to re-enforce the idea that we are never clear what's in the performance and what's outside, whats a film, an dwhat is real life, and are we just performing our real lives.....

And just for a little extra we put the whole film crew in masks.

why you might ask?? Well it looked good...

zombies make a romcom

WEDNESDAY, 1 OCT 2025

Today mostly a rehearsal for the slap scene. I tried to find moments where a video could drop in.
Valerie, the wife int he panik scene interrupts the rehearsal to tell her husband she needs to go, bad news from home.
I imagine the moments before she enters, on the phone...
I imagine other moments surrounding the slap scene.
The actor rehearses his slaps, like Travis Buckel in Taxi Driver
I imagine a movie version of the slap scene, where the slap really happens.

THURSDAY 2. OCT

a shoot with the Valerie character in the Morning. A telephone scene. Maybe something that we see in the set spin before the slap scene

Valerie hears the news.

Falk and Jule did an improv at the regie tisch. Set up was Jule confronts the director over the political/ non-political quality fo the text, wheter there is enough text or not, about how it deals with the question of aging.
I filmed some of the discussion

Falk liked the Table Talk Doku. I only sent him a minute but the idea is clear.

For me the question is.. do we do it exactly like a film it, or do we re-create it, a layer of being produced or created
I can image Ruth saying Jule's text, or even Kay.

Or even Alina saying this is a text she wants Jule to say.....

MONDAY 6 OCT. 2025

Tuesday 6. Oct.

In the morning I shot something with Kay. He rehearses the slap scene. Somehow I found somethign comic about an actor rehearsing how to slap.

We started with him in a chair at he make up table going over text and "air - slapping".

My plan was to work up to the Travis Bickel scene, "you Talking to me."
But before we got there I had Kay slap himself over and over again.

I found it tense and wierd and distrubing and let it go on. Kay got more and more physical, which was good, but he smacked his head on the makeup tisch, screamed, and fell over

For a moment I thought it was a performance, and it was a pretty good ending to the shot.

but it was real

we'll use this clip

eventually we did get to a Taxi Driver like scene

This coud be good for for the narrow LED wall.

for the narrow LED wall.

Today we had a scene between Pia and Jule, Pia as make and/or costume person based on a mixture bewteen the character of the dresser and spirit girl in opening night.

I'm wondering if this character coud be a camera woman...

Thursday 9 OCT. 2025

we rehearsed a scene with Valerie, sitting on the bed, talking on the phone.

She's in a hotel room. she says one the phone sarcastically something like, "The view here is super, I just see Tanks goign down the street."

Falk asked if I could put up an image of window with such a view

But I' kind of against using the LED's naturalistically as an illusion of a window.

But maybe i can reproduce the silver curtains that are already in the set, place a TV in front of them and she's watching dystopian news footage

Falk one day said that the feeling should be like they are all trapped in this one hotel, that there's no outside.

I think that's right.

FRIDAY 10. OKT.

today is the big slapping scene shoot. Not sure where this is going. It comes out of the combination of a few ideas.

1. The idea that the characters are constantly slipping in out of "performing", "rehearsing a performance", "being real", "being in a film", "shooting film",--> verschachtelung von reality, building a performance, performance..

2. The idea that maybe Jule is watching a slap scene from a movie to get inspiration for her role as Hannah

3. My desire to make sometgn in the style of All About Eve.

In the end the concept for the the shoot was going through the history of Slaps in Movie from the 1940's to today

Andy organized a million costumes wigs etc... all fabulous

here some first images

We included the media artist -- shooting a making of -- the slap movies.

SATURDAY 11. OCT

Two shoots planned today, the first with Pia, she's the media artist. she appears to Hannah from behind the curtain. she's comming from another world.

We tried Pia peaking through the curtain, Andy had a couple of looks prepared we added fog.

The media artist peaks through

The media artist peaks through

The media artist peaks through

The media artist peaks through wearing red

The media artist wears blue and vanishes in the fog

The media artist in Hannah Beige.

The second shoot of the day. Jule spins in the spinning set.

We've all noticed that when the set spins, and the we the set spinning as well on all the screens its quite cool and trippy.

Falk has mentioned a few times that we need to get some shots fo the spinning stage, and I imagined a moment, after the scene where Kay refuses to stay in Hannah's bedroom and leaves her, that Hannah's world begins to spin. Maybe she's drunk. Maye it's the room speaking to her.

I mentione shooting a spinning scene to Jule and she said the set woudl feel like a ginat Hamster wheel and she was trapped in it

Perfect visual metaphor. So today we shot the Jule/Hannah stuck in a hamster wheel scene with loud music and fog.

Hannah is sleeping and suddenly the room begins to spin.

We shot it two times. The whole take each time is over 12 minutes long.

Improvised and choatoic

Daniel just sent me some music. Something he had been working on for a spinning moment.

He wasn't planning it for this spinning thing

Completly different gesture in the music than what we used in the shoot

A version he made of Arvo Pärt's "es sang für langen Jahren"

had to try it with Jule's Hamster wheel

THURSDAY 16. OCT

another shoot day -- more slaps planned

more contemporary costumes planned today. the 70's &80's

I'm not going to shoot with the LED screen as background today. It blocks the possibilty for bigger scenes with more movement

I'm goign to use the proberaum. make it a bit ore about us, and the situation we're in rehearsing this piece.

The makeup tisch.

The zuschauer raum

the staircase

the hallway

Then we tried somethig else

working with the 80s look, but witht he wigs removed, makeup still on, we improvised a Tisch gespräch

And then finally we worked a slap into the Tisch gespräch

Hannah gets over excitied

Martin feels things are getting out of control

....

Slap