by STEVE JOHNSON (seen drinking coffee and falling in Episode 1)

The thing about working on Gravityland is that it changes the way you think and see. I got the call to be in the shoot late the night before -and going in knew almost nothing about what would happen, other than arrive at the coffeehouse at 8am. So I arrive, and we head across the street to begin filming. I am given a clipboard and pen to track the scene markers and shooting time. And this is when everything changed.

As we film, all of Portsmouth transforms from “Pleasant Street, Saturday, etc.” to an enormous sound stage which I begin to see for all of it’s cinematic possibilities. People who pass us on the sidewalk, the angles of the buildings and the alleys are now parts of our plot. There are layers now to the town that weren’t there before. And here’s John Herman, flapping around in his scarf and hat like some mad escaped Dickens character, shouting out time stops and scene changes over his shoulder.

My part in the actual shoot is short - my contribution is to fall down, basically. But that is a minor point. Gravityland is about possibility, about taking the known and then adding more, a new way of seeing. And that’s worth falling down a few times in cold, deep snow early on a Saturday morning.