The goal was to make something to show off in a portfolio, but if that doesn't work, then it was to get experience as well. Either or, is good, cause it was worth making just to learn. I asked people's opinions on if the scene was necessary, and they said that cutting it is worse, than the actor not having a beard. Cutting it will make less sense overall.
Plus I think cutting it will disappoint the actors and it's hard to find good actors, right? However, every time I think of using B roll, it feels like a random patch up. B roll just doesn't seem to work unless the scene was originally scripted for B roll to fit the tone of it.
I could throw in a stock footage shot of the sun quickly going down and coming back up, if that's better, I would just have to find a stock footage shot where the footage matches my footage, and looks like the same movie. But the audience may ask what was the point of that shot, since they did not need to know how much time went by, when a simple cut probably would have made more sense, story wise. Or they may take it as stylistic and not even question it.
I went to look at the same actor and he lost quite a bit if weight since, I don't think it will work to reshoot a shaving scene with him. Or maybe it will... I might ask around more and see what people say. Perhaps he could shave in sadness before cutting to the next scene, since it's suppose to be a sad scene next. Perhaps I could put a subtitle in the movie that reads 'ONE DAY LATER' or even 'ONE WEEK LATER'. Would this make it more clear to the audience that the character had time to shave? This may come off as unnecessary information, but Hitchcock actually subtitled the date and exact time of day, that the first scene in Psycho took place.
I made a similar mistake before, when shooting a previous short film. I wrote a scene where not everything was shown, cause I wanted to leave some details up to the audience's imagination, cause I thought that leaving it to their imagination would be more effective, rather than showing everything.
However, a lot viewers became confused. I would like to learn more about how smart the audience is and how you can leave to their imagination, and how much actually has to be shown and explained. Like for example, if you watch of movies from the 50s and before, a lot of scenes will start out with an actor, entering a building, showing him go inside. But nowadays, in movies, they are already inside the building, and they don't have to show them go in.
A lot of those older movies would also show dissolves, almost every time the location and time changed. This is really common in a lot of older TV shows as well from the time. But eventually directors realized that the audience was able to put it together, and not have be shown dissolves, or show actors enter a building, etc.
So I would to learn how smart the audience is, and where to draw the line and actually have to show something, and not miss it in shooting. So from now on, I've learned to not show shavings or haircuts, unless there is actually an emotional reason to the story to have them, and I should actually show them play out in a scene, is that right? I will plan a lot better in preproduction next time as well. Perhaps I could make it a rule that no scene will be shot out of order from flashbacks to preserve continuity, or I could even mark in the script which scenes are acceptable to shoot out or order, and which not, but this can be risky in case I think one can be, when cannot.
