About the Production

“Shades of Day” is a contemporary fable, a love story that explores the mysteries of the human soul. As its serpentine plot unfolds, we cross and re-cross the thin line that separates tragedy and comedy. And what could provide a more suitable backdrop for the proceedings than Hollywood — city of illusion.

The script The saga of the film itself begins with a brilliant script by director Vitaly Sumin and playwright Jeff Bergquist. It was based on an original story by Sumin, which in turn was inspired by Feodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights,” one of the greatest love stories ever written.

In Europe, Dostoevsky's story has been the subject of numerous adaptations for theatre, television, and the cinema. One of the most successful remains Lucino Visconti's award-winning “White Nights” (1957, Venice Film Festival), which starred Marcello Mastroianni, Maria Schell, and Jean Marais.

In transporting the essential elements of “White Nights” from mid-I9th century Russia to modern-day California , Sumin has underscored the universality of Dostoevsky's tale as well as the commonalities of the human experience.

Bringing the visionary “Shades of Day” script to filmic fruition presented a daunting challenge. Here was a story that functioned on multiple levels, an intimate story with an epic structure, its textures woven with strands of symbolism and subtext.

Hollywood dreams On one level, Sumin is presenting an homage to the Hollywood film, particularly of the silent era. The famous Hollywood sign is employed to great effect in the background of several key scenes, along with other famous Tinsel town attractions including Mann's Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a cemetery of the stars.”

Within the cemetery, several poignant scenes take place at the grave of Charlie Chaplin. But this is, after all, a film about dreams and reality (in that order)---director Sumin notes with a certain mischievous glee that Chaplin is actually buried in Switzerland.

Cynematic Elements

Black and White and Color “Shades of Day" is shot in both black and white and color; the shots and sequences in color represent dreams, desires, and hopes. For example, after signing a contract with a movie producer of questionable repute, the lead character of Linda happily relates the turn of events to Sam, her customer at the hotel bar where she works. The skeptical Sam sees Linda in black and white while the dreamer Linda observes him in vivid color.

This black and white to color technique hearkens back to such classics from Hollywood's “golden age” as “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Secret Garden”, where the new Technicolor process was used for the “magical” parts of the films. “Shades of Day” employs the approach with unprecedented subtlety by incorporating color at unexpected places in various scenes. When contrasted with its extraordinary black and white cinematography (which conveys in each frame the “shades” of the title), the effect is stunning and evocative.

Voices Perhaps the filmmakers most daring choice involves sound, specifically the “voices” that are heard by the lead characters. These are the voices of inanimate objects (a desk, a gun, various edifices on Hollywood Boulevard ...) and of the dead (in the film's cemetery scenes). This expands on Dostoevsky's concept in ”White Nights,” where the characters speak to buildings exclusively.

The challenge was to incorporate this surrealistic element without undercutting the reality or the mood of the piece.

After careful consideration, Sumin arrived at a crucial decision as the film went into post-production. Though actors had been cast to provide the “voices,” he replaced them with the lead and supporting actors who appear on screen — their natural voices were altered through technical means and acting technique (different accents, intonations, etc.). The idea was that the “voices” were actually projections of the imagination of the character who hears them and should therefore be based on voices that actually exist in the character's world.

This sound design meshes perfectly with its visual counterpart. The idea was to coordinate sound and picture to capture the subtle interplay of the characters and the “voices” they hear.

Generally, when we hear a “voice,” we're seeing the character who ' s interacting with it. And conversely, when we're hearing the character we're seeing the source of the “voice.” The logic of this motif lies in the fact that, as stated above, the voices are actually ego projections of the characters who hear them.

In one striking scene the lead character of Linda, played by Camilla Bergstrom, has a conversation with a golden pin which had been owned by her stem grandmother. The pin, which speaks with the voice of the grandmother, is actually played by Bergstrom herself - the haunting effect was achieved after extensive sonic experimentation.

Another instance occurs during Linda's job interview with Marsha, the smug, uptight personnel director of a luxury hotel.

Bored by the questioning, Linda engages in an imaginary conversation with Marsha's desk, which attempts to warn Linda about the pitfalls of the position she's applying for, then attempts to woo her, and ultimately is protected by the girl's hand from the pensive tapping of Marsha's pen. The voice of the desk is provided by Brian Paul Stuart, who plays Linda's fiancé Paul. We actually hear Stuart as the desk (though the voice has been altered) before we hear him as Paul. Thus the quirky and comical interaction between Linda and the desk foreshadows the complex relationship between Linda and Paul.

Throughout the film, the “voices” are heard singly, in chorus, and in crescendo in a masterpiece of sound design. Sumin's approach serves to subliminally integrate the dreams and reality of the story.

Visual Elements In “Shades of Day,” with its quality of magical realism, the movie screen had to function as a window looking into a parallel world. The film needed a “ look ” that would capture its singular vision. Enter Gus Blaudziunas, award-winning cinematographer.

Blaudziunas and Sumin collaborated in pre-production for several months, a major investment of time that was necessary to attain the filmic quality required for the story. Chosen locations were meticulously mapped, photographed, and videotaped. Based on this material, the director and cinematographer designed detailed storyboards for each scene and came to a consensus on basic visual elements, composition, key camera movements, and angles, as well as the type of lens to be used for each shot. Thus the style and pace of the movie were determined long before a frame of film was exposed.

The Golden Pin and the Music

In Dostoevsky's “White Nights”, the Young Woman (the prototype for Linda in “Shades of Day”) reveals to the Dreamer (the prototype for Steven) that, when she was a child, her blind grandmother used a pin to attach their clothes together to prevent her from wandering off.

In “Shades of Day,” the concept of the pin is evolved further to represent Linda's passage from enslavement to liberation. The everyday pin is upgraded to a symbolic golden pin.

In an extraordinary flashback we see young Linda and her grandmother (played respectively by six year old Olivia Watson and Sherri Morse) joined by the pin. The grandmother decides to test the child's faithfulness by pretending to fall asleep. Linda carefully opens the pin and is about to escape when her grandmother suddenly grabs her and slaps her in the face.

In a desperate attempt to attain liberation through an act of protest, Linda uses the pin to pierce her own palm. She watches with a strange fascination as the blood begins to flow.

Musically, the scene is underscored with a chorus singing “Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder" from Mathews Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach (as brilliantly performed by the BBC ensemble, conducted by Paul Goodwin).

Later Linda comes into Steven's bedroom, undresses, and proposes that they try living together for one year before her scheduled reunion with Paul. When she opens her hand revealing the golden pin, Steven takes it and attempts to pierce his own palm in solidarity with her childhood act of protest. She stops him with the words: "You don't have to do it! I've already done it... ”

For Linda, the pin represents her unique connection to the vast mystery of life; the connection is hers alone — it's not to be co-opted by Steven or anyone else.

Steven responds to Linda's intercession by tenderly kissing her scarred palm, an act that precedes their making love for the first time. (During a later love scene we see the golden pin mounted in a beautiful frame above their bed.)

Near the end of the film, Linda lets the pin fall from her hand and leaves it lying on the ground in the “cemetery of the stars.” This happens at the grave of producer Gary Huy, whom Linda has come to love dearly despite her initial suspicion about his motives.

As she walks away, Linda realizes that she no longer needs the crutch of the golden pin. She's finally achieved her liberation. Along with the pin, she can let go of her past and her deepest fears.

The two scenes described above involving the golden pin and the grown up Linda are underscored with original music, the result of a fruitful collaboration between Sumin and award-winning composer Cengiz Yaltkaya.

The music consists for the most part of contemporary inventions based on "Mathew's Passion,” Bach's profound exploration of suffering and the human condition (first heard in Linda's flashback). Even when Yaltkaya presents us with a jaunty piece that would be right at home in a Broadway musical, the soul of Bach isn't far beneath the surface.

Special mention should be made of the director's and the composer's musical homage to the silent film, consisting of original ragtime brilliantly performed on piano. It's heard during the unique black and white sequences that hearken back to the wild burlesque and madcap chases of the silent era.