Directing Actors With Disabilities 

Directing Shalom whose Duchenne muscular dystrophy had progressed to a point where he only has limited muscle control in his fingers, face and throat was both rewarding and challenging. With such limited movement, his emotions could only be conveyed through voice acting as well as his facial expressions. I relied heavily on close-ups for the emotional scenes as well as working on dialogue delivery to convey grief and pain.

To accentuate what his character was feeling, I experimented with light for some of the shots. In these shots, the lights brighten and dim gradually according to the character’s mood.

For Amanda, much of the directing was more practical. She needed to know where she was walking and where the items she needed to pick up were. I decided to use voice overs in the film so this way there wasn’t a need for dialogues to be recorded on set. Hence, I could give her directions during filming on where to go and what to do.