In addition to Seeking a Friend, she wrote the fantastically funny and charming Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, as well as episodes of Children’s Hospital and Dana Fox’s beloved but short-lived Ben and Kate she’s also directed several episodes of New Girl, which was created by her friend Liz Meriwether.Īlthough it was my fandom of Lorene that first compelled me to watch Coherence, I was utterly swept away from its first frames. I first met Lorene when I interviewed her during the press tour for her directorial debut, the seriocomic apocalyptic romance Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (you can read the transcript of that meet-cute Q&A romance here). Full disclosure: my primary interest in the film initially was that it costarred my pal Lorene Scafaria in the role of Lee, a Skype executive co-hosting the dinner party in the home she shares with her husband Mike (Nicholas Brendon). Personally speaking, I had no clue about Byrkit’s improvisatory filmmaking techniques until well after I’d seen it. Over five nights, the actors lived through a devolving nightmare that brought out perfectly nuanced performances and more unexpected story twists.Ĭoherence would be a compelling narrative by any standards, but its accomplishment as a filmmaking experiment renders it all the more extraordinary. Byrkit kept the story on track with the aid of a detailed treatment, outlining crucial character conflicts, story progression, and plot reversals, developed with co-writer Manugian. The result was an improvised, real-time experience done without rehearsal or camera blocking. With this unique process, each actor had a general sense of what they needed to accomplish, but had no knowledge of what the other actors had been told. Actors were presented each morning with individual cards that explained their character’s motivations and stories to share for the upcoming night’s shoot. COHERENCE was shot consecutively over five nights without a screenplay. With surprising results at every turn, the filmmakers realized they were on to something quite extraordinary. Producer Lene Bausager signed on and the experiment was launched. What if a story had twists, reversals, puzzles, and existential mysteries… and the actors had to figure it all out as the shoot unfolded? What if there was no one present during filming except the camera operators? What if all limits were removed and the performers could go anywhere, do anything their characters needed to survive the experience? The elements in question were basics such as “crew,” “budget,” “script,” and “time.”įilmmaker James Ward Byrkit began brainstorming the idea with collaborator Alex Manugian as a way to test the limits of the improvisational process. From the press notes:ĬOHERENCE evolved from an experiment to see just how little traditional movie elements were needed to create a compelling and narratively ambitious project. Just as fascinating as the movie itself is the approach Byrkit took to making it. The feature-length filmmaking debut of James Ward Byrkit, Coherence‘s buzzy success is due in part to it being the kind of movie about which its fans can only say, “I can’t really tell you anything about it without ruining it but JUST TRUST ME AND SEE IT!” A nifty, ingenious gem of a mindfuck, it is ostensibly the story of a dinner party between eight guests that is disrupted by a comet passing by overhead, an astronomical disturbance that has unforeseen consequences for the gathered friends. An unforgettable indie thriller by the title of Coherence has emerged fairly out of the blue as one of the summer movie season’s word-of-mouth hits.
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