My “wild” ride in “Lemonade”
I was thrilled to be cast in this short film in which my character, who is 6, learns to deal with her parent’s divorce. The audition with Mr. Egozy, the director, was fun because he asked my dad and me to improv together to show the different emotions I could put into a line. Mr. Egozy wrote the script and won a grant from a New York arts organization to fund the film. Mr. Egozy and my mom have something in common: they both graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
My scenes were filmed on a Tuesday and Thursday in the last week of February ‘09. We shot first in a beautiful home that had deer in the backyard. The front yard was great, too, because it had a tree house and swings which me and my fellow actress Maddy (age 5) had fun playing on.
On day two, I saw the kind of technical wizardry which goes into film making. I played a scene with my on-screen mom (played by Zerah Beckman) where she had to pretend she was driving. The car was actually being towed by a U-Haul truck. The crew took great care to mount the camera onto the car’s hood and rig it for inside lighting and sound. I also saw my first “jib”, a long piece of tubular steel which the camera is attached to so it can go high and far in the air. This is just the kind of thing my grandpa Derek used to make in his steel fabrication shop.
Zerah was great on-screen mom; she’s been acting much longer than me, and she gave me lots of tips on how to be my best in front of the camera. On the last day of filming, we did a bed-time scene. I was in my pajamas drawing a picture while Zerah tells me “5 minutes more before bed.” Then I got to say in a whiny kid voice, “But I don’t wanna go to bed”; that line was pretty easy to deliver! Zerah liked the picture I drew so much she asked me if she could keep it and get my autograph on it because one day she knows I’m going to be a famous actress.
Mr. Egozy was a terrific director, always patient and nice. He didn’t even get mad when we did a rehearsal in Zerah’s car and he got tons of dog hair on his jacket. In addition to giving me more on camera experience, Mr. Egozy paid me for my work. That was great, too, because now I can buy that new Pokemon game for my Ninento DS.
Movie Time
Here I am getting ready for the “moving” car scene, having just rehearsed my lines with Zareh and Mr. Egozy. I make the crew and my dad laugh when I say I’m playing the lead role in the movie.
Here, the crew preps the car, mounting the camera on the hood, installing interior lighting and wireless mikes for sound. The Subaru Outback was hitched to a U-Haul truck which Mr. Egozy drove no more than 15 miles per hour as the action inside the car was filmed.
I’m inside the car now ready to do my lines. The sound man yells “Speed” and the director calls “Action” as the hitched Subaru starts its slow way down a quiet residential neighborhood in Lafayette, CA.