Lost In London Live! Review
Thanks to Fathom Events we got the chance to see Lost in London Live! A historic event in cinema history! Lost In London is a “based on true events” movie about Woody Harrelson during a particularly “bad night” in London. Some poor choices has his marriage on the rocks, he’s at risk of losing his family, and his career is spiraling uncontrollably downward. A heartfelt tail of a celebrity who is also just a husband and a father that is coming to realization about what’s most important in life and how he’ll do anything to hold onto that, like get his kids to the set of Harry Potter in time after a crazy night Lost in London!
“Lost in London” was a bold experiment and a total success in storytelling! I really feel privileged to have seen this filmed and streamed live! A one camera, no cut, live feature film shot and scored and streamed simultaneously around the world! Over 300 crew and 30 cast members made this all happen. After the live broadcast a Q&A session was held with Director Woody Harrelson, his directory of photography, Nigel Willoughby, and the cast and crew who had raced from the location of the where the final scene wrapped, Waterloo Bridge, to the “nightclub” set where the entire cast and crew was waiting!
During the Q&A co-star and best friend, Owen Wilson, was credited by Harrelson with being instrumental in pushing for the production to be a live broadcast. When asked about Directing again Harrelson says: that for his first directorial debut that he would like to try something “where you get a chance to take a second shot”. Woody goes on to say that he “will never ever ever do something like this again.”
Despite what had to be immense technical difficulty the production went off with almost no mistakes. One moment during a scene where Woody was being shoved into a cop car you could hear the microphone someone was wearing rubbing against fabric, but it was small, short lived, and relatively unnoticeable.
During the Q&A session it was said that there was a really “big mistake” that stopped the story dead. A critical actor had left the scene and was needed to move the scene along. It what is known as a “beautiful accident”. In the film industry “a beautiful accident” is something that unintentionally happens during production and cannot be planned but ends up enhancing rather than taking away from the performance, which is why it’s known as a “happy accident.” In the scene where the accident takes place Woody is making a phone call from jail. The actor, Peter Ferdinando, who plays a hard-nosed detective, leaves the scene early leaving Woody and his costar, Martin McCann, to improvise until the Peter can return. Peter says he was so pumped, from an earlier scene where he gets physical with Harrelson, that he totally forgot that he was still needed! With the actor gone the scene carries on with the phone ringing on one end over and over with no answer. An extra level of suspense is created because of the long delay. As Woody and the cast agreed the time on screen actually wasn’t that long of a delay in time but on film it does feels like an eternity! A level of anxiety is created just like it would be for somebody calling for help from Jail. The scene was intense and the “mistake” was handled like a bunch of pros!
A beautiful live “happy accident”, A blessing from the film gods to Woody Harrelson and his crew for taking such a bold risk in creativity and pushing the envelope in filmmaking. I would love to see more directors take on this challenge and produce more live streaming content. BRAVO!
