Indignation director pushed Logan Lerman to film 18-minute scene in a day

James Schamus needed actors Logan Lerman and Tracy Letts to be “superhuman” to complete an 18-minute scene in one day on the set of Indignation.
James makes his directorial debut with Indignation, a coming-of-age tale about a Jewish boy who struggles to adapt to college life in the 1950s, which stars Logan, Tracy, and Sarah Gadon.
Most Hollywood filmmakers take an entire day to shoot about two or three minutes of actual film footage, but on low budget movies like Indignation, the schedule is much tighter and more pages of script have to be completed in the same time period.
In one standout scene, Logan and Tracy, who plays Dean Caudwell, have an intense conversation in his office and the actors had to remember the full 18-minutes of dialogue because it was shot in one take over and over again.
“I was asking my actors to be superhuman,” James told WENN. “They had to be completely off book on that scene. It was 18 minutes, we were doing single takes for the whole scene… so they had to do that again and again and again and again. We shot that scene in one day. Most Hollywood movies are doing two minutes a day, maybe three… You finish a take and (say) ‘let’s go again’, meaning like, ‘be superhuman people’.”
The director was impressed with how “on” his actors were and admits it was hard for him because he would have so many notes after each 18-minute run-through but he had to keep to the schedule so limited his feedback.
“I could have given them notes for 20 minutes after each take so I realised that I couldn’t, no-one would survive that, and I forced myself to only give one note to each of them after each take,” he explained. “I had to pick which one would spur them to think or feel or try something different.”
Although the film, which is released in the U.K. on Friday (18Nov16), is James’ directorial debut, he has plenty of on set experience through his producing collaborations with director Ang Lee and his co-writing efforts on The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2003’s Hulk.