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 Cassavetes
milked the "shot on the streets of New York" rubric for all
it was
worth in the film's press coverage, giving the impression that
filming was a cat-and-mouse game between his merry gang of pranksters
and
the police. However, the facts were that he avoided shooting on
the streets as much as he possibly could.
The main set for the
film was built on the Variety Arts stage by McEndree and a few of
the actors. The stage (which can be recognised by its large columns,
exposed pipes, high back windows, and brick back wall with peeling
paint) was used for all of the scenes in the livingroom and dining
room of the Carruthers' apartment as well as for the scene in which
Lelia dances with Davey Jones. Several other sets for scenes which
did not make it into the final edit were also built on the Variety
Arts stage: another livingroom set; a bedroom set; a set made to
look like a corner table in a coffee shop.
Dave Simon, who had
been an electrician before he decided to become an actor, ingeniously
rigged rudimentary lighting over the workshop stage by covering
the ceiling with aluminum foil and stringing 150-watt bulbs
every
few feet. The lighting scheme unfortunately backfired, proving
to be too bright, flat and "filled," and creating
a washed-out look
in many of the shots in the siblings' apartment. It was too overexposed
for even Paoloni to correct. It didn't help that Kollmar's
light
meter was left in a bar early in the filmmaking process, so that
he had to eyeball his exposures after that.
The "rock-and-roll party"
that appears under the credits was created in one of the small
rooms
off to one side of main stage space. As an indication of how Cassavetes
employed psychology to motivate his actors and crews, he deliberately
included as many people from the workshop as possible in the scene
to build morale. The entire acting group crammed themselves
into
a 7 x 10-ft. storage room, Cassavetes positioned the cameraman
on a ladder against one wall, and simply told Ben to "find a
way to
get to the back corner."
Many other scenes were
shot in cordoned-off indoor locations. The rehearsal hall sequence
was shot in an actual rehearsal hall on 8th Avenue near 48th Street.
The nightclub scene was shot in a real basement nightclub, the Bal
Tamborin, where Tom Allen worked as a comedian and obtained permission
for Cassavetes to use.
Shadows, Published
by the British Film Institute (London, England)
Distributed in America by
the University
of California Press at Berkeley
ISBN: 0-85170-835-8
88 pages; thirty illustrations
This
page only contains excerpts and selected passages from Ray Carney's
writing about Shadows. To obtain the complete text as well
as the complete texts of many pieces about Cassavetes that are not
included on the web site, click
here.
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