We snuck in without permission to shoot our film's climax — and then everything went black

Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This TIFF 2023 edition by director M.H. Murray focuses on his film I Don't Know Who You Are.

It was late afternoon, December 2021, in Toronto's East End. I was chewing gum and shivering. Big, red streetcars flew by south of me on Queen Street, briefly overcoming the music that was tickling my eardrums. 

It was the 13th and final shooting day for my first feature film I Don't Know Who You Are. 

I paced around in the gravel, furiously sipping hot coffee from a red solo cup. I was walking around the location that we were planning to use for one of the most important scenes in my film. It is, you could say, the climax scene, and it contains intense emotion and violence and a little prop pocket knife. Logistically, it was going to be a lot of work.

The location I chose was a cool, gravel-y alleyway beside a large brick building. The building's wall was lined with large vertical windows. It looked, to me, like an industrial church of some sort. It felt creepy and intriguing. 

At night, the building's windows emitted a sort of blue-ish light that I became obsessed with. We had scouted the area days prior, and I was determined to film this scene there. Nothing could change my mind.

Inside the building, there was a gym that stayed open late, until 10:00pm. So we knew the lights would be on until then. Our plan was to get there at 9:00pm, once it was fully dark and more empty, and film as fast as possible.

The only issue was… we had no money to pay for a permit to use that space.

In other words, we had no legal permission to film there. 

***

"Stealing scenes," as people call it in show biz, is something that I have been doing my entire life. 

It generally means that, as a filmmaker, you don't have enough money to pay for all of the locations that you need to tell your story. So you try to find locations that you can film in or at for brief periods of time, where few people will mind or care. You get your shots and you get the hell out of there before anyone notices and calls the cops. 

Some people call this guerilla filmmaking. This has always been an important part of my process as a filmmaker — not by choice, but out of necessity.

Sometimes, the need to tell a story a specific way or in a specific place, whether you are allowed to or not, outweighs the fear of "getting in trouble." 

***

The sky was almost pink. I couldn't find the sun. Inside, my cast and crew were gathered, mentally preparing themselves to shoot and record the last scene of the day.

As the sun set, and the time to film approached, I could feel the adrenaline — or something like it — pumping through my veins with more and more propulsion. And I felt dread. A lot of it.

At that moment, I felt a bit like a zombie… but I knew I couldn't show it. I had to be awake, alive, reliable, and sure of myself. I don't think I've ever been that tired. But there was more cinema to be made. 

I fiddled with the silver rings on my fingers until I noticed the time. I had to return inside to go over the next scene with my cinematographer, Dmitry Lopatin, and the actors, Mark Clennon (Benjamin) and Michael Hogan (The Man). We laughed together and kiki'd about how excited we all were to get this thing in the can and go to sleep. 

We mapped out how to get the shots we needed as fast as possible, both to avoid "getting in trouble" and also to avoid being outside for too long, where the weather was fiercer than expected. Soon, we walked over from our "production office" (which was, really, just my friend's funky loft), trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Of course, the camera was quite large, so being inconspicuous was a challenge. But we snuck our way down the street and over to the gym's alleyway as mysteriously as we could.

*** 

It was now completely dark. Night had fallen. And it was freezing. 

I could see in everyone's faces how anxious they all were to hurry up and finish. I did my best to direct the scenes as fast as possible. In my head, and in the heads of my whole team, the clock was ticking. 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 

My heart felt heavy when I looked down at my phone after calling "Cut!" on the last of Mark's coverage. The time was 9:56pm. We only had four minutes to get Michael's coverage, and it included a blood gag. We didn't even have a makeup artist that day, so we had to apply the blood ourselves. We moved as fast as possible. 

Dmitry lifted the camera onto his shoulder as Victoria Long (my dear friend, story editor, and also a producer on the film) helped Michael with the blood. "Sound speeding!" shouted Michael McInnes, my sound recordist. Dmitry followed with an eager, "Frame!"

The red light turned on. We were rolling. 

I stared at the action unfolding in front of me, trying to avoid the clock ticking in my pocket. Then, right as Michael was about to perform the blood gag, at the height of the scene… everything went black. 

The lights in the brick building — the primary source light for the scene — disappeared. Inside, all you could see was darkness. 

Everybody froze. The silence was so thick, I could hear the fake blood dripping on the gravel.

I looked at my phone. 10:00pm.

I looked at Dmitry, at Victoria, at the rest of the crew. I imagine myself at this moment looking like a deer in headlights, without the lights. My eyes were probably wide and full of fear, my mouth ajar — aware of my doom but unable to move or do anything about it. 

"Ok…" I said, beginning a sentence that I wasn't sure how to complete. 

I suddenly felt frozen or suspended in place, unable to walk or move. It felt, for a moment, like I was sinking, deeper, and deeper, and deeper, into a dark, cold, oceanic grave. I was Jack from the Titanic, and my cast and crew were all Rose, watching me sink away, unable to help. 

It felt like I had created an impossible situation. I felt lost at sea. 

I looked up into the closed gym that sat in the building beside us. For a moment, I tried to use my mind to will the lights to turn back on. But they remained off. Suddenly, inside, I noticed someone walking amidst the shadows. 

Something turned on, deep inside of me. Without thinking, I turned away from everyone and ran toward the doors of the gym, back on the main street.

It was like every low-budget production I have ever worked on was leading me to this moment in time, where I would need to somehow make things shake in a moment of sheer desperation.

I tried to open the door to the gym, but it was locked (of course). So I took a deep breath, gathered myself, and knocked as politely as I could considering the bubbling anxiety beneath my skin. 

Soon, a kind woman appeared and opened the door, her face riddled with confusion. "Hi there, I'm so sorry, we are closed," she told me. (For a moment or two I was flattered that she thought I was there to use the gym, considering my unquestionably ragged and non-athletic appearance.)

I asked the woman if she would turn the lights back on, and she said no. I begged her and tried to explain that it would "change my life" if she turned the lights back on. I could see her face begin to twist with curiosity. "I don't know…" she said. 

Then, I remembered the $100 bill we had leftover from the cash we used for props in several scenes throughout the film. Since this was our last scene, I figured we didn't need the cash anymore. So I offered it to the kind woman.

She looked out at my cast and crew, who were all lingering in the alleyway, and then looked back at me.

"10 minutes, ok?" she said. 

I nearly shrieked. I thanked her incessantly; she just nodded and went back inside. 

I ran back over to my cast and crew and we all got back into our positions as the lights turned back on. I could hear choirs singing in my brain. I was given a second chance to get this shot.

"Action!" 

***

Making a feature film, or any film project, is like trying to swim in the ocean. You can create a plan, and you can swim as fast as you can, with the best technique and all of the knowledge you could ever acquire — but you can still get pulled away by a tide, or bitten by Jaws, or captured by merfolk… You just never know.

Every day, a series of miracles and mistakes overlap and dance together. In the end, sometimes you end up with something beautiful. And sometimes you don't.

Luckily for me, this time, things worked out. But I didn't know that yet, on that 13th day of production. On that day, all I had was my team to support me — and some guts to steal the damn scene. 

I Don't Know Who You Are screens at TIFF 2023 on Friday, September 8 at 10pm and Saturday, September 9 at 8:45am.