Ballast

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In Production

Working against the grain of typical studio production methods, Hammer shot his movie with handheld 35mm cameras on location in the Mississippi Delta, with non-actors playing every part. “I’ve always responded to real human beings more than to movie stars, who bring the baggage of every other role they’ve played. I know it’s a difficult idea to sell in the United States, but I respond to non-actors more profoundly than anything else.”

To enhance the authenticity of the film, Hammer showed his cast only a page of the script at a time, talking them through the scenarios on location for several months of rehearsal as they worked up to the shoot. He then gave them the freedom to react as naturally as possible within the parameters of the scene.

“I was interested in obtaining the language of each individual, their idiom, their choice of words. So if the scenario wasn’t ringing true to somebody, they were free to say ‘I’d do something more like this.’ During rehearsal, scenes would just transform from the ones I wrote. I would record all of this with a video camera and keep it in Final Cut Pro. Each night after rehearsals I’d look at all the different options we’d explored. And I would choose one or two that we would then photograph in the next week, basically rewriting in real-time. It was actually all stored on my MacBook Pro.”