director - exodus/lit circle

For my lit circle on Exodus, I chose to be a director. Exodus would be an interesting chapter to direct because of all the different settings (the characters all get split up.) I chose to do a scene with Leah because she's in the most exotic place. My second choice would be Rachel because she's also in a pretty different place (compared to the rest of the book.) Adah and Orleanna are pretty boring in terms of blocking a scene, however.

The scene I want to portray is the chapter when she is in Bulungu. She is escaping the Congo with Anatole, her mother, and Adah, and I think the way I would film the scene (starting from when she gets into the truck - "The truck was orange. I do remember that...") would be to mount the camera using a headpiece onto the actor playing Leah (in the style of Darren Aronofsky's "snorri-cam"), which allows for a freer close up shot without having the boring, rock-steady lock-down shot of a tripod or crane. The colors used would portray a somber environment to the point of being almost frightening - think the latter segments of "Apocalypse Now" (haunting) mixed with "the Mission" (lush, but muted).

The next part would begin with a long shot showing the width of the river, then cutting to the situation with the ferry and the truck battery. I would track the camera (as hard as it would be) alongside Leah one or two inches under the water, with a lot of "sloshing" to reflect the conditions that Leah is experiencing. It would cut between these shots and shots looking towards the canoe from a boom attached to the bow, to parallel the camera style of the earlier truck scene.