The orderly disorder

Sometimes what seems disorderly has a perfectly logistic purpose. But in order to explain why I’m changing the scene would take ten minutes of conference. So I don’t explain, and it looks as though I am being capricious. When I’m outside, the position of the sun determines everything: I’ll suddenly jump from one sequence to another, even go into a sequence that wasn’t planned for that day, if the light suddenly becomes right for it. The sun is the most beautiful light in the world, and the way to make it beautiful is to film it at its moment; so that means jumping. Those are the technical reasons for the orderly disorder. Then sometimes the actors aren’t right on that day, you see that they need another day, another mood. The thing isn’t working. Then you must change, and the change does everybody good. Sometimes, when all the lights are in one position, in order to move logically to the next scene as planned creates an enormous waste of time. And rather than lose time in moving the lights, I confuse everybody else by jumping to the next thing I know we can shoot. I think you will agree that the disorder doesn’t mean that we work slowly. I think it is terribly necessary to work quickly.

—Orson Welles