An
Augmented Euphony in Paradise
A Film Adaptation of
Eugene O'Neill's
Before Breakfast
Dale and Yvonne
Sims
Langley, British Columbia, Canada
On October 07, 2007 Yvonne and I
celebrated our first
anniversary. Yvonne and I love adventure;
however we seem to enjoy it in smaller packets these
days. So you can well imagine my surprise
when, upon asking Yvonne to make a movie with me
as the composer, and depending on the script, perhaps
play a part,
without hesitation she said yes.
My
surprise comes from the fact that Yvonne has never acted
in any sort of play, skit or
joke before in her entire experience. Yvonne spent most
of her school years taking music,
and by the end of high school had played her way to a
Grade Eight Level, Classical Pianist. After graduation
she married almost immediately and spent the next twenty
odd years raising her children and not chasing her
musical directions.
I, on the
other hand, found my way west
during the hippy migration in the late sixties into the
seventies, spending a couple
of years living on a beach on the west coast of
Vancouver Island. I soon stumbled upon the Vancouver
film industry and jumped right in, up to my neck,
fifteen to eighteen hours a day, wind, rain, hot
sun, dark tunnels, tied up traffic and the rest. I spent
eight years on the sets of films and series as a
production assistant, learning
from directors everything I could learn from seeing, as
talking to directors without being spoken to was against
strict set etiquette rules. I never became more than a
production assistant, taking
out the garbage around the set. I spent my time rigging
up rain shelters for the actors, actresses, and
background performers, and
cleaning up the locations before we moved on. Working on
these sets did give me the opportunity to see what was
going on and that was enough;
it is in my blood. I can feel it when I read a script;
I can see it when read a scene. I managed to squeak out
three creditsbefore I left,
promising myself I would direct a film of my own one day
of an independent nature.
In the last couple of years,
I gained my own DVD camera and began shooting short
music videos of nature. I would use my DVD camera to
capture extreme close up video of animals,
flowers, bugs and things, then cut the film to music. I
soon learned about copyright (because of the music I
used) and that’s when Yvonne and I decided we would make
a movie of our own. So
I went looking for a suitable script for us to shoot and
Yvonne began composing.
Before Breakfast by Eugene
O’Neill was a perfect choice. One actress, one
cameraman, and one apartment. Our apartment was close to
the set provided by Mr. O’Neill, although the hallway
was an obstacle. A seamstress was difficult for us to
portray, where a waitress was much simpler. The
direction the film was to take was not decided until a
conversation we were having while shopping
at a thrift store for an apron
for Mrs. Rowland. We had begun to notice,
as we broke down the set, that symbolism,
as always,
was on the peripheral. That’s when the picture “Families
are for Ever” caught our eye;
what an irony. The introduction was formed by a series
of images of country, city and home.
Spending a week with a kitchen full
of stacked dishes and cigarette butts made eating out a
daily routine. We both knew
continuity would be an issue when we took on this
project,
with only the two of us. We found a lot of things we had
to just let go and let the story line carry the
audience. We did not take a lot of stills and we did not
prepare ourselves for the path ahead. We first attempted
to shoot from the original script and that was a great
learning experience. I then took the next two days to
break down the script and rewrite some of the lines to
suit our needs. Yvonne and I are both extremely guilty
for pushing Yvonne into a
situation she had no frame of reference for. She had
not spent her life as a
nagging house wife, and we had
had the script for only two days before we started
shooting. Composing the piece "Happy
Home" came natural for Yvonne,
a simplistic tune structured to the lifestyle they had
wrapped around themselves. A rousing melody helps the
audience keep alive the hope for a brighter future,
while the minor keys of a "Happy
Home" set the mood for how low
these two had sunk.
We have gained so much from putting
this short film together. Seeing how we have been
married for such a short time, putting this together
showed to us the levels of
communication, love, compassion and respect we have for
each other in the very beginning of our relationship,
that is profoundly based in the experiences that have
brought us to this point in time.
Yvonne and I can only hope that all
of you will enjoy our modest reproduction of a work by
such a loved and respected writer as Mr. Eugene O’Neill.
