THE MAKING OF THE 'DROWNING SEQUENCE'

As you probably know by now, there is a drowning sequence in the film that takes place in the ocean. We realized early on that the indie budget for I REMEMBER YOU wouldn’t be enough to shoot on location. The most ‘practical’ and ‘cost-effective’ way was to shoot on green screen in a pool and rely on vfx to bring that sequence to life. I’m not a big fan of shooting on green screen in general, but we simply couldn’t afford the expenses of shooting in the ocean: boats, lifeguards, state and county permit fees, extra security and equipment, etc.

To start, we needed to storyboard the sequence to then figure out how to tackle it - the number of shots had to be minimal! In order to pull it off, we still needed to find locations near Los Angeles that were extra challenging with a tiny budget: A beach with a pier and a large pool.

Here are some of the storyboards that we drew for the drowning sequence!

After months of scouting every single beach nearby – literally! – we heard about Ventura Beach. It’s a bit of a drive (about an hour and a half away from LA), but totally worth it! The Ventura film commission is extremely friendly and helpful and their permit fees are very affordable -  I think we paid $25 dollars to shoot there. Had we shot at a beach in the LA county, that number would have been in the thousands...

This is the Ventura Beach Pier - beautiful and not very crowded during the week which is perfect for a shoot!

We got extra lucky and a friend offered us to shoot at his house pool. It was smaller than what we were looking for, but it ended up working out perfectly since we then didn’t need a lifeguard. Overall the shoot was a lot more manageable with a smaller pool.

Here I am directing I REMEMBER YOU in the pool! We ended up using a 'black' screen instead of a 'green' one since it was DAY for NIGHT (which means we shot during the day, but it's supposed to be night time).

Leah jumping and saving Samuel was all shot in the pool! This is my favorite shot :)

So the scene at the beach with Samuel and his friends was shot in Ventura and all the ocean shots were shot in the pool. I was beyond thrilled with the end result! Could you tell that it was a pool and not the ocean when watching I REMEMBER YOU?