Late October. The leaves were turning, and the light had dimmed to a soft golden hue. My movie, and most of what I’d filmed so far, took place in the summer, but I still didn’t have an opening scene. I still didn’t have the sequence where we are introduced to Renard and his insurgents as they massacre a party of hapless redcoats.
I was eager to get to the climactic battle scene. I’d chosen the location almost a year before, a rocky section of coast near Sambro, a strip of exposed granite covered in piles of massive boulders. I’d storyboarded, in primitive fashion, the entire sequence, shot for shot. It was complicated and full of action, and I’d planned to shoot it all in one day. But as had happened so often whenever I’d arranged a shooting day, not everyone could make it. It was a Friday in early October, and Rob had to work. Everyone else, including Jim, Mike, Colin, Jonathan, and Cliff, was available.
After asking three people to play Marguerite and being turned down three times for various reasons, I gave up on the character. So now every one of my characters was a boy, which was too bad, because I’d wanted a little more texture. But it was too late to do anything about it. I gave her actions to other characters and eliminated her speaking parts.
