CraveOnline: I thought the love scenes were shot very sensually. How did you approach the composition of those?
Hannah Fidell: I think we wanted to make it not pornographic and were really trying to respect Lindsay and Will when we were shooting.
Of course it’s not pornographic, but there are films that don’t achieve that with their love scenes. I mean it as a compliment. WIthin those boundaries, is there anything more to how you portrayed the passion of this relationship?
Hannah Fidell: Well, I think the passion of the sex scenes is about change throughout the film. Just in who’s the aggressor, who’s on top, who’s on bottom, blah blah blah, all that stuff, so we kind of changed the choreography to fit the change in mood and tone and emotion of the characters.
Lindsay Burdge: I think also, the order that we shot them in was pretty conducive to that, in that the intimate scenes that should be a bit more awkward or uncomfortable we shot earlier on. One of the very last scenes that we shot in the film was the scene between us in the car where we’re fooling around in the car. I think at that point, that was meant to be sort of a more lighthearted rendezvous I think. Since it was the last day, everyone had sort of a bittersweet feeling so that sort of lent itself to that scene.
For example, that last love scene that we have that’s very emotional was one of the later things that we shot also so by that point we were very comfortable together. We weren’t even really thinking about the fact that you were doing an intimate scene. You were just thinking about the emotions of the character. That enabled then Andrew [Droz Palermo], our cinematographer, to feel like he could get much closer to us. He’s literally on the bed with us at times and we wouldn’t even notice he was there. That was weird.
What was the toughest scene for you, Lindsay?
Hannah Fidell: Yeah, what was the toughest scene for you, Lindsay?
Lindsay Burdge: There’s different kinds of tough I think. I think that that scene in the bedroom was definitely one of the most demanding and challenging in the sense of just all the different shifts that she goes through. At my house when I’m trying to get him back. That was very challenging in some ways just because we really wanted to get it right and so actually at the end of one day, I was like, “I don’t think we got it quite right.” We actually came back and shot it again the next day. Hannah did a tiny little rewrite and we redid it which was awesome that we had the luxury to do that because it was such a small production that we could get away with that.
Then other things that were hard, sometimes working with Jennifer Prediger because she’s so funny and I really genuinely just love her. She played my roommate and I would be having such a good time with her that Hannah would have to be like, “Okay, Lindsay. More depressed. You’re depressed.” So different kinds of challenges.
Do you think about what comes next for Diana?
Lindsay Burdge: Yeah.
Hannah Fidell: Oh, I think about it a lot. Does it matter? For us in this context…
Lindsay Burdge: I think about it though. I mean, I think she thinks about it in those last moments. She’s thinking about what’s going to happen to her.
Hannah Fidell: It’s also interesting because people come up after screenings and they say, “Does she kill herself?” or “Does she go to jail?” It’s interesting that people put their own…
Lindsay Burdge: Spin on it.
What doors have opened for you since Sundance?
Hannah Fidell: Lindsay just got done shooting two movies.
Lindsay Burdge: From people I’ve never met before.
Had they seen A Teacher?
Lindsay Burdge: One of them had. One of them had seen other things I had done. Also just we both have some nice representation.
Hannah Fidell: Fancy agents and managers.
Lindsay Burdge: Who introduced us to cool people. [Laughs]
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
