In American Beauty, theres a scene where Ricky Fitts shows a home movie of a plastic bag flailing in the wind and looking eerily beautiful. Does anyone know the circumstances behind that scene in real life? Did the director just go and tell them to film something beautiful or did one of the people involved have that footage before the filming started or did the entire scene get built around someone shooting that footage or what?
It seems to me that you can’t just tell people to produce something like that, there has to be a story behind it.
I seem to recall Conrad Hall (who was an Oscar for AB’s cinematography) discussing the shooting of the plastic bag scene (director Sam Mendes, IIRC, was not on set for that). The plastic bag was in the script, so they had to shoot it on video, and Hall talked about how it took forever to behave correctly (there were PA’s with fans and such out of frame trying to make it appear to be “dancing”). No digital trickery or manipulation involved, just a lot of patience.