The Story of Blue
I want to tell stories of characters facing difficult choices. The way characters stumble through decisions on their way to personal growth compels me and a huge reason why I’m a writer.
Daniel Konrad lived in my head for a couple years as I tried to determine how his story would be told. The idea of him being an honest person who lives his life according to the code of the law, only to have it fail him, is what brought Blue to life.
Daniel is a good person and an honest police detective, but his grief overwhelms him and he acts outside his usual world. Ultimately, how much more scarred will he be after his actions, and is he forgivable? Can he forgive himself and move past his grief?
That’s the story of Blue.
How We Got There
Blue was a process of pre-production that saw 5 months of planning with multiple table reads and script revisions as I saw the actors bring these characters to life. One thing that I’m aware of and work hard to not do is overly impose myself on what the actors are doing at the beginning of their understanding of the characters they’re portraying. As a writer/director, I strive to make the characters obvious in the script. I develop character treatments for all primary characters so I can keep track of them and ensure their actions are consistent throughout the story, but I don’t give those treatments to the actors specifically to break myself from my own echo chamber and allow those characters to grow into something I can recognize as actual. My overall goal as a writer is to present characters and a story that is sympathetic in a way that the audience would believe that it could exist and that the suspension of disbelief functions as it should.
My biggest problem with Blue was that Daniel was a character who had lived in my head for a couple of years and I really wanted to let him go. Not being precious with the character that I felt a strong connection with was a goal I specifically and consciously held firm to. I didn’t even give director notes on the character to Scott until after the first table read, and even then I basically told him that I felt he understood the character and I trusted him to bring Daniel to life.
The problem then was that I needed Colin to be strong as a character for Daniel to measure up to, and we got lucky with our casting. We were referred to Giovanni through some people we trusted, and he was 100% the correct casting as a counter to how Scott presented the Daniel character.
The Lessons Learned
I learned a ton through the process of creating Blue. I feel that Ed did also as producer. We celebrated some wins and, I guess, celebrated a few lessons in filmmaking.