On Friday and Tuesday we did a few little test reshoots for Fair Game. It’s something I do at this stage of production: I mock up different ideas if I think that a little bit of additional photography is necessary. I’ll either animate storyboards or I’ll shoot on video, depending on which would be more effective. With this process we can actually complete a cut of the movie, even though there are only storyboards or mocked-up footage in certain places, just to give ourselves a clear idea of what the final cut might look like. If we like the way the film is flowing with these temporary bits of footage, then we go shoot these last few pieces for real, knowing exactly what we need.

So there’s basically only one scene I was not happy with during production — which is a shockingly high batting average for me. But I haven’t worked with a script this strong and actors this great since Swingers and Go. I’ve worked with great actors and not had a great script, but to have both things again was great. In the case of Swingers there were no reshoots, and in the case of Go I reshot the ending (with that film, it was a script problem I knew I had going in).

Basically, for Fair Game‘s temporary reshoots, we needed a five-foot-five Indian guy to beat up — to see if the film would benefit from that added footage. The actual actor we worked with, back during principal photography, lives in Mumbai, India, and given how far away he is and given that there are immigration restrictions, it’s a big deal to get him into America for a proper reshoot. So we really want to make sure this will work.

We shot the original scene over the summer on our second-to-last night of shooting in Kuala Lumpur, and it was just not clicking. What was amazing about my producers on Fair Game is that when I said to them, “I need to reshoot the scene we did yesterday,” they said, “If you feel you need to reshoot it, we’ll find a way to squeeze it into tonight’s work.” We had two insanely busy days scheduled for Kuala Lumpur, just insane. That night was the last night of the movie, and usually on the last night it’s like a catch-all — it’s already way too much stuff — but you don’t mind burning your crew out because it’s the last night. If these had been the producers I had on The Bourne Identity, they would have told me to F off. But these Fair Game producers were just great. So, our last day I think that we started at noon, and we finished at like 9 a.m. the next day. Normally our days were 12 hours, so this was a looong day for us. Unfortunately, even with the reshoot, I still didn’t get it right.

Saar Klein, the film editor who cut The Bourne Identity, is now working with me on Fair Game, and he came up with an idea of how I could fix the scene. So that’s what we’re trying now. As the movie opens, Naomi Watts, playing an undercover CIA operative in Kuala Lumpur, is infiltrating the network of an arms dealer who traffics in dual-use nuclear components. The scene we did the test reshoot on was one in which the CIA abducts the arms dealer’s nephew to try to get him to turn on his uncle. So we found an Indian actor in New York as a stand-in, and the poor guy shows up and we’re like, “OK, let me put a bag over your head, drag you down the hall in the basement of my office building, and stuff you in a wooden crate so you can be shipped.” That guy was a professional actor, but our CIA paramilitary team was played by an unlikely pair, an office intern and an assistant editor. The intern, at least, had the build for the part; he was Craig MacNee, a 30 Ninjas writer whose office nickname is The Muscles From Scotland. The editor, Peter, on the other hand, is Canadian, and he is definitely not The Muscles From Canada.

It was not the most glamorous of shoots, but it cost us almost nothing, and after it’s cut in, we’ll be able to tell if this fix will work and whether we need to fly the Indian actor in from Mumbai for a proper reshoot. It’s all part of my normal process. At this point on Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I had stand-ins playing Brad and Angelina in just the same kind of test reshoots.

More Doug Posts:

Read — Will Jake Fit In With a Roomful of Astrophysicists? Hell Yeah, And Be Better Looking!

Read — Ladies and Gentlemen, the Captain Has Turned Off His Sense of Caution. Feel Free to Cower in Your Seats.

Read — “Previsualizing” a VFX Moon Rover Chase

Read — Moon VFX Shot by Shot, and When the “I’m an Artiste” Argument Gets Jettisoned

Read — Editing Fair Game: Freedom in a Locked Room

Read — Of Hurricanes and Dinghies: Misadventures with Captain Ludwig

Read — Screening Fair Game for the CIA, and Why Cheney Is like Jaws

Read — Science Fact: On the Moon, You’re Superman

Read — Mountains, Cliffs, and CGI: Envisioning the Moon

Read — Obama Stole My Hangar, But Can’t Touch My Hot Peppers

Read — Chicken Coop Editing and Stark-Naked Script Meetings

Read — Doug Liman Blog — Running With Jake Gyllenhaal

Read — I’m Getting Hitched: Making a Commitment to Untitled Moon Project

Read — I’m An Action Hero?!!?! My Hudson River Rescue: Birthday Pie with a Side of Boat Crash

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Doug Liman Blog — Complete List Of All My Fair Game Posts
• Doug Liman Blog: The Time is Now — Previewing Fair Game for a Live Audience
• Doug Liman Blog: Editing Fair Game — Freedom in a Locked Room
• Doug Liman Blog: Fair Game and Covert Affairs Collide in DC
• Doug Liman Blog: Screening Fair Game for the CIA, and Why Cheney Is like Jaws
• Doug Liman Blog: Previsualizing a VFX Moon Rover Chase