The shooting style - 2

I had written that scenes were conceived with a certain pace in mind. But in shooting during the workshop I found something else I could use: in the scenes the couple shared I created a pace for each of them that was often at odds with each other. For example, in the lunch scene it opens with her fussing about over the food, and he frozen there. When she sees his look, not understanding what it is about, she becomes despondent, and slows. He picks up his pace, begins eating, as if he could banish his thoughts by moving quickly enough.
What else can I say about the shooting style?
For every part of the story there is one shot. There is no establishing shot. Only one point of view in the edit you are not able to choose from this or that. You better get it right. This is where a producer would be pulling his hair out, if I had one. For of course there is no coverage.
One scene does not lead obviously to the next. This is not conventional drama. It is an open text. Why something happens is open to interpretation.
In effect the shots accumulate, add one on top of another. Since there is no establishing shot there is way to go back, so to speak. Only forward. This creates a momentum which would normally have been created by the plot, eg. he shoots his wife, now he is running from the police.
All in all I would say I am very glad I have chosen Haneke's contrivance for this experiment. It has helped clarify my thinking of the shooting style. That is how this whole blog started after all.

April update

Update
Where have a I been?
My regrets that I have not been writing these past few weeks. I just decided that if I had nothing to write that I was better silent.
I have not been idle. I have been busy developing the short film, Reconciliation.
First I have approached an actor to play she. We had our first meeting last week and she already asked me some tough questions, which I was not yet prepared to answer.
The questions revolve around a scene I wrote involving he, in the bedroom, as he packs to leave. His actions (that is packing) are detailed. This begins as one of the everyday scenes, of surface-reality. But then I needed some decisive action from this. In the last draft he fills the suitcase with precision, but then, without pausing empties it again. My actor queried this. Myself, I have never been certain that this was right. I think I was trying to show how his decision to stay was directly connected to his action of parting. Or something like that. It really didn't make an sense.
So I began to think of something else that is happening in the story, in that they are parting, but they are not acting normally. That is they are not acknowledging this event. I put some of this down to pride, but more fundamental is the idea of alienation and disconnection. From what? Nature? Themselves? I am not sure, I only knew there is an imbalance. And that is what I needed to show in this scene in the bedroom. So I thought of the idea of the gesture, a movement, that follows hard on his precise, detailed packing. It comes out of nowhere. An aberration.
(The idea of movement sits comfortably with me: movement was a large part of the work I did in theatre. I was always interested in the emotional values possible with movement)

Reconciliation and Haneke's form

I have been busy revising of the short scripts, Reconciliation. This is the short in which I am borrowing Haneke's form, from 71 Fragments, of one or more shots or fragments(some short, some long), which are then closed by a cut to black.
I am just realising the limitations of the form for a short. In 71 Fragments, Haneke as a number of character sets that he alternates with. This means that he can easily create texture and rhythm by moving from one set of fragments to another. In each fragment he has another set of characters, a different location, and potentially a different pace.
Because I want to keep the focus sharp I am sticking to one location, which means I feel there is no place to go. I just had a scene in the kitchen - what now? I have already been in the living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, even the the closet!
In a feature this is not a problem.
I know, I know, I suppose I was really asking for it, taking this on.

I have now revised the script three times. Where is it going, despite my problems with pace and texture?
One addition I made, in part to defuse the drama, but also to make the story more focused, was to make it clear near the beginning that this is the day he is planning to move out. It was important that the audience is not left wondering what the events of the day are about, or how they will resolve themselves dramatically (it is clear in the title afterall).
I have already posted previously about how I have explored surface-reality in the story - packing, emptying a closet, vacuuming, doing the dishes. But my worry was that I also presented the couples estrangement in these everyday scenes - waking together (or rather not) in the morning. That these parts are not surface-reality, and may become drama.
I am now less worried about this. I might rationalise these elements as what Schrader calls disparity, the second element in the transcendental style (which leads to decisive action). I am happy with the story and I suppose the irony of the title, and how the reconciliation happens, in the mundane - he takes out the trash. I was most interested in how our lives are truly lived in these kinds of events.
Finally there is Schrader's final element, the transcendent:

3. Stasis: a frozen view of life which does not resolve the disparity but transcends it.

From the reconciliation - he, taking out the trash - to the macro view of the world, London at dusk, with lights coming on in flats just like this one.

The final codas of Ozu's films are reaffirmations of nature; they are the final silence and emptiness.

This is the first time we have left the flat, and looked at the world beyond the couple and their flat.