When you first step onto a set, no one tells you anything. 

All knowledge I felt I knew [about life, or anything for that matter] got bracketed in that silence that comes while filming and, especially when filming something you don’t have access to. It was an indoor scene: shot between false walls and obscurtent* (a night scene shot in broad daylight, false space-time).

You don’t have access to the screens and are hesitant to ask anyone to see what’s going on inside. All the doors are closed. The wait for a real word, a sound that doesn’t seek to be recorded. You hear nothing, but even if you do, the sounds only seem to reinforce the idea that everything, even you, is standing still.

The stillness you feel is visceral. You always have the impression that someone has died in there, in the house, or wherever they’re filming (they say that the photographic image, the film, immortalises).

The night may pretend to be infinite (“I can feel the stars and the lonely hearts”), but it cannot. Each take of the same sequence stops it moving forward and then sends it back to the beginning. We’re all trapped in the same space. We approach the set, take a look, and are then asked to go back, back to our positions. The world – a micro mechanism.

Even buses passing on the street may be lost in the endless night.

Being on set feels like lying on the operating table [a slab]. Everything pink and glossy and unfamiliar. At least that’s how it feels every time you hear [RETAKE]. The actors go back again to their starting positions, and again and again they step on your nerves.

At least there is a small deliverance (cure). To look at something that is infinite. Like the sky.

There must be only one route to be followed on the set, and if that is decided, no detour is permitted, no lingering in places where people don’t tread, or no remaining alone.

As you enter the mansion and climb the stairs, you can see the world (your existence) as two veins. On one, you follow the dust-cleared footprints of the steps that have gone before, demarcating the trajectories, you see the electrical wires, containing in themselves a different reality. On another different materiality. You notice it when you reach the end. 

All roads lead to an ocean floor, when you’re looking for the set, I believe.

When following a precise route, objects seem not to want to be touched. You may not believe me, but I saw a guy, a coworker of mine, stop in front of me, which immediately caught my eye. He was looking at one of the objects (a painting) and deciding whether or not to touch it. Just as you would if you were in a museum. I thought he wouldn’t do it (I wouldn’t have), but he reached out his hand and ran his fingers over the painting. He withdrew it immediately, as if the cold painting had repulsed him (like an electric, eel-like shock). I did not touch the painting.

(silence burns)

The very symbolic [BLOCK] is shouted out loud before the sequence is filmed (yes, sure, there’s talk of staging the actors, lights, and no one is to enter the frame). But it feels like a shield, albeit a fleeting, unpleasant one. So all you can do is get out of the way and avoid the frame as best you can. Moments here are longest, and silence is lowest.

You stay on set so much that you end up… but no, I’d rather say that later…

Rehearsals are more bizarre than filming. Here, everyone is welcome to listen, but few usually do. Some hold the script in front of them and (pretend to) care about what the text says. 

The silence that’s required for the actors to concentrate is illusory.

[cut poorly cut]

People eat peanuts or drink espressos and tell stories outside the barriers. People seem to be more preoccupied with their real lives than usual. 

I find myself in the middle of a sentence on the script, my eyes gliding over the yellow wildflowers, or doodling something with my pen in the corner of the page, or checking my pockets and wondering things I won’t remember later. [I’d rather remember the dust on the route and that terrible pizza brought to the craft.]

You get this shaky feeling in rehearsals, that everyone wants to go home, but you know they won’t [money keeps people on set]. 

You always wonder if the people crowding the street during the shoot see you, even though they are constantly staring at you. They all look happy, confused, or surprised. The barriers between life on set and the life buzzing outside are more transparent than ever. Something funny happens, though. Suddenly, you see someone stepping into our world beyond the brackets. She asks one of the crew members: “What’s being filmed?” The director has delayed long enough. He stands up and yells at the person to get out of the frame. [Ma’am, ma’am, GET OUT OF THE FRAME.] 

New parentheses are being created around us. The director has given an indication. The person gets startled and walks away. A couple of steps later, still on that sidewalk, she realises that it’s part of the filming route. And lingers on.

Filming and life briefly intertwine, but only for an instant.

*[The lighting guys were always inventing something to create illusions with the fake light, so I’m inventing this word.]