A Trilingual Short Film in a Winter Panorama

Two weekends ago I was at the Hudson river near Dobbs Ferry shooting a short film. A very short film – we got all shots in half a day.

The film is called “Sunset on Hudson”. The very small crew consisted of writer/director Julio Valenzuela (center), director of photography Adrián Treviño Durán (left), the actor playing “Anna”, Julia Gizzi (right), and me, the actor playing Mr. Scaturo.

I shot some footage of the ice flows on the Hudson. A photograph alone doesn’t quite capture the feel of the ice flows streaming down river.

This video goes wider, and also captures the Mario Cuomo bridge up north.

The Mario Cuomo Bridge.

This is me practicing one of my lines as Mr. Scaturo. In trilingual triplicate.

After I got cast, Julio sent me the script and I saw then for the first time that the dialog was written down in English and in Spanish. That’s when Julio asked me if I could do the lines in Spanish – he was willing to do it just in English but thought he’d ask; then he might edit an English and a Spanish version of the film (Mr. Scaturo is the only character who speaks in this mostly dialog free film). I told Julio I don’t speak Spanish, but as there were not many lines I figured I could learn how to say them phonetically. And then told him since I speak fluent German, how about also we make a third version in German.

So below is a video I made of me practicing one of the lines in all three languages.

Adrián (above) and Julio both speak fluent Spanish, so I had expert ears close by to monitor my Spanish pronunciations.

Mr. Scaturo is an elderly man remembering his long lost love, Anna. Here Adrián is shooting one of the flashes of memories Mr. Scaturo has of Anna reading a book. The memory is of warmer days, so the close-up will avoid showing all the snow.

Some more pics of the Hudson River by Dobbs Ferry. Looking south, you can see New York City in the distance.

A young girl in her Quinceanera dress was being photographed in the sun-drenched snow by the river as we were leaving for our next location.

There are many shots of Mr. Scaturo driving his car, seeking out a view that reminds him of Anna. Adrian filmed me driving one of the two cars we had on our way to our next location, Wampus Pond, below.

Here is where Mr. Scaturo watches the sunset.

This is where we shot me saying “You would have loved the view” in three languages. Mr. Scaturo also gazes at the old photograph of Anna and him in younger days. Julio used photo editing tools to combine a younger version of me (one of my first headshots) with a current picture of Julia.

The beard certainly makes me look even older, which suits the character, which is why I brought it back after also recently growing it for the grandfather I played in December. Next week I shoot another short, for which the director also asked me to keep the beard. That’s three bearded characters in a role. Are we establishing a pattern?

Maybe. After next week though I think I may return to clean shaven again…

As Mr. Scaturo drives away from the perfect view he is startled by a ghostly vision of a woman appearing beside the road. He stops the car and approaches the woman, who reminds him of Anna. This is where I had the majority of my lines, all being spoken in one take. We shot it in Spanish, then English, then German.

As Mr. Scaturo realizes what is happening to him, he takes Anna’s outstretched hand and walks into the night with her. The final shot of the film reveals his lifeless body still in the car, the photograph of him and Anna slipping out of his grip onto the snow outside the open front car door.

I have pics of shooting the moment Anna reaches out to Mr. Scaturo, but not of the rest of these scenes; being in all the other shots kinda prevented me. And everyone else – the light went dark very quickly after sunset and we all had to hurry and focus on getting those final shots while we still could.

Afterwards Julio treated us all to Pizza.