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The “argument” sequences in the film are shot with shaky handhelds, in low and heavily shadowed light, and are tinted blues, greens, and yellows. It’s a great effect that not only adds drama and tension, but helps to hide the fact that these arguments are actually taking place inside a small hotel room, and not the arguing couple’s home, which one assumes it to be. It’s a very clever way to make use of only one location, where one would quickly run out of unique shots.
The added plus of this effect is to be able to create an extreme contrast between the “arguments” and reality. When April and Ben return to their true personas, the room assumes normal color and lighting, and is shot with a more stationary camera.
During the first montage, however, there is a quick cut from the argument to reality and back again. It seems like a bit of a precursor, as the argument sequence soon ends and reality begins. But this one quick flash cut was a little odd and felt out of place. The transition should have been made suddenly, as April seemed to snap out of the argument quite suddenly. There is also a moment later on where they are in the midst of an argument, but April starts to come out of her persona while Ben is still stuck in his. The filmmakers did several quick cuts back and forth with transition effects to identify this occasion, which was done pretty well, although it was still a little confusing.
This film had an ongoing theme song, which was both slow and moving. It only played during the argument scenes, however, which added a great note of drama to them, and an additional touch of realism to the reality scenes. The music also popped up at the end of the movie when Ben begins yelling at April, not as his wife, but as April herself. It’s a great added note that hints to the fact that Ben is using this bit of yelling as more “therapy,” although, to April, it cuts like a knife.
Now, while the film’s concluding scene works pretty well, it does have some issues with the music overwhelming the dialogue. When the music first started to appear, Ben is speaking quietly, and the music soon got too loud and overpowered his dialogue. A good rule of thumb is to mix music beds to approximately –18 dB and dialogue to about –12 dB, which prevents the music from overcoming the dialogue.
In addition, as usually happens when shooting in a hotel room, there were too many hard surfaces which led to excessive reverb in the audio. While this is hard to fix short of ADR-ing the whole movie, it can be prevented in future films by taking along some comforters and blankets to cover up any off-camera hard surfaces. (A little bit goes a long way in this case.) Additionally, keeping the shotgun mic’s tip between one and a half feet and two feet from your actor's mouth can also help insure you get a much cleaner recording.
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