Her hair and makeup artists had done a glorious job of hiding the red rims and dark circles around her eyes, and Tommy played a convincing bit of awe at the sight of her, but the angles were flat and static, boring, even. She watched them both hit their marks and deliver their lines on cue. Nothing seemed out of place or even off-putting, but neither was it engaging in any way. The whole thing felt a little too on-the-nose, but Brian hadn’t actually made any mistakes worth criticising.

“Ugh.” She pulled the headset off.

“That good?” Talia asked hopefully.

“It’s textbook, comprehensive, well framed, and dry as fuck.” Sophia stared up at the rafters and released a heavy breath.

The rafters.

“The rafters,” she repeated in her external voice.

Talia followed her line of sight, but apparently not her line of thinking. “Excuse me?”

“Get someone in the rafters with a Steadicam.” She looked around until she found her costar and their new intimacy coordinator. “Tommy, Caroline, I want to run something by you.”

“Aye,” Tommy said. “Someone’s got to liven things up.”

“I’m listening,” Caroline added.

“What if during the kiss, instead of having Tommy push me against the wall, he lowers me to the ground. From there we shoot from above, a more expansive shot, my dress flared out dramatically. He can draw the layers up slowly, but ball it up in his fist as he pushes. Then we can cut back to the shots we got earlier of his hand on my calf to make it clear what’s happening, but instead of cutting close again, we use the shot from above to slowly zoom in on my face. We move from the expansive to the intimate just as I showcase surrender.”

Tommy fanned himself with the script. “Sounds amazing.”

Caroline nodded seriously as she seemed to walk through the mental steps the framing would require. Then she grinned. “It’s similar choreography, only worked from a different position. No new risks, and bloody beautiful.”

Caroline had been a breath of fresh air on set all day. She was young and enthusiastic as well as empathetic. Perhaps if she’d been around the whole time, none of them would still be standing in this stable right now.

“Sounds like you’ve got a real eye for the artistic,” Caroline continued, “and since we’ve already shot the skin-to-skin contact, the main question to consider here is your comfort level with him balling up the skirt, and the limits of how far you’d like him to pull it up.”

She nodded, thankful for the consideration. She’d been so set on the shot she hadn’t stopped to think about the physical impact or exposure on her own body. She chose not to examine those priorities too closely, not now, not when she was already fighting to hold other emotions at bay.