joe ballman and the folding of socks

as per my promise at the end of the last post, i am expanding upon the brief mention of a sock folding seminar.

context: for those of you who haven't read the script or visited the website (www.grammarschoolpictures.com), joe's character, colin, lives with his tragi-comic, agoraphobic father (played by jim). throughout the film, colin tries to ask advice from his dad, who, due to his mental state is unable to provide colin with the kind of sound, parently advice he craves. about 3/4 of the way through the film, colin tries one last time to pull some guidance from his old man, who, at the time, is unable to draw his attention away from the three newly-washed, unfolded socks that his housekeeper left on the kitchen table. after a few brief exchanges, colin gets frustrated at his father's inability to sympathize and grabs two of the socks, quickly folds them together, tosses them on the pile of laundry and storms out of the room.

so we start shooting the scene... it's a really simple set-up: only two shots (a pan from a cu of the socks to a medium shot of colin and his dad, and a reverse that highlights joe's folding of the socks). as we start shooting the medium shot (effectively the master), joe opts out of actually folding the socks (they are off screen at this point) so that he can get a solid rhythm to his action. i didn't think much of it, but he had also refused to fold the socks during the rehearsals earlier in the week. so, that's fine, he gets the rhythm and we switch to the reverse. and, it's during the dry run that we all realize that joe doesn't actually know how to fold socks (at least, in the classic, middle-class, american way wherein two socks are broght together, side-by-side, and peeled inside out (almost like a banana), so that the elastic from the (partially inside-out) dominant sock almost fully engulfs both it's own exterior as well as the length of the subordinant sock). as best i can tell, joe folds his socks by laying one on top of the other, then there's some kind of rolling of the socks together from top to toe, after that, i don't know really what happens. i think maybe he rubberbands the rolled socks together or uses scotch tape, maybe. anyway, it's totally convoluted and takes about twenty seconds and, frankly, it looks terrible on camera. and also it's a process totally incapable of expressing frustration (which is the whole point of the action). so we stopped shooting and spend about 15 minutes trying to teach joe how to fold socks the right way (and quickly). at first he had some trouble picking it up, so we tried different methods of teaching him... we had him mimic us slowly, we physically manipulated his hands for him, and we even tried the spooning method often employed in golf or tennis lessons. but all this was to no avail. our dp, gerry, then suggested a different technique (of welsh origin, i believe) that was very quick and ultimately resulted in the same sort of fold. joe would have to stick a hand fully into the sock, then grab the second sock (with his socked hand), then use his un-socked hand to pull the elastic of the sock that was on his other hand over the sock the he was holding in the socked hand. and it was a move easily capped off by an aggressive toss of the folded socks onto the table. the only problem with that method was that joe was having a great deal of difficult getting his hand into the sock. gerry suggested starting the shot with his hand already in the sock, but that option really limited our editing choices for the scene. finally, joe got frustrated and insisted that we just start shooting and he would figure it out. sure enough, he got a quick, frustrated, aggressive sock fold and toss on about the third take. we tried to get two more takes of the action, but he just couldn't repeat. the boy had one good sock fold in him, probably forever, and we were lucky enough to catch it on video. and that's what real acting is - pushing yourself to levels of accomplishment that you never even knew existed. our hats off to you, mr. ballman. for that day, you were an Actor.