When Love Meets Hard Truths: The Challenging Aspects Of The Perfect Find
Some movies are characteristic for their light approach to a story. The Perfect Find is one such movies, a story that dances across the screen, with banter, slowly developing chemistry and the golden radiance of people falling in love again, unplanned. Still, that light romantic facade mask months of painfully negotiating emotions, cruch time, the pressure of creativity and other sacrifices — the hidden battles that created a film that feels effortless to watch, but is anything but in their creation.
This is the story of how the reel met the real, and the cast and crew and to themselves to the limit in order to make a love story that resonates with every person trying to pick the pieces of their life after a heartbreak.
The plot that looked light but contained deeper meaning
The film is centered around Jenna Jones, a character that has been pu\normed with warm vkon by Gabrielle Union. Jenna is trying to pick her life back together, particularly in the career department, after a public breakup that shatters her. However, just when shes about to get her life on the right track, she falls in love with her boss’ son, Eric, who is a charming, young filmogrpaher and happens to be her boss’ son. What Ensues is a tender, glued together, emotionally stylized collapse of a jwhere the leads are the perfect dance of confusion, longing, and the strength to go for it one more time.
Jenna’s arc is one of the reclaiming of identity on a professional, romantic, and emotional level. She is not a typical cliche, as she is not a strong heroine, but dusty, hesitant, and frequently overpowered. That sort of character complexity is something that took a performance of depth…and a production team that was willing to bear that complexity.
What is not visible to the audience, however, is how much the emotional threads of the story ran parallel to real pressure that surrounded the film.
The Behind the Scenes of the Behind the Glamour
Budgetary Constraints on a “Light” Rom-Com
There is a general understanding that romantic comedies are easy to produce with regards to budget and time. They have easy to build and simple sets, and are less complicated than action, fantasy, or horror films. However, perfect find is not a rom com that is backed by a large studio. It is a labor of love.
Crew members had to double as different roles in the production team, and had a heavy workload during busy periods of the filming. The locations that were scheduled had to be rearranged multiple times to stay within budget restrictions, and a lot of the scenes that were planned to be large set pieces had to be changed to smaller scenes that were more intimate in nature. This is a creative compromise that increased the tone of the film. but flexibility and commitment were needed a lot on set.
A cinematographer later reflected on how the limited finances on the production affected the teams’ emotional states. There was very little time to set up the lighting. Retakes had to be done without hesitation. More than just emotional challenges, there were technical ones. The production went on for many hours which required emotional work to keep everyone’s spirits up.
Gabrielle Union’s Poise in the Face of Fatigue
Gabrielle Union is not just the primary actress in the film, but also one of the main producers. This meant that, in addition to her other responsibilities, she had to portray the character of Jenna Jones, who has the emotional burden of being a woman trying to rebuild her life all from a very busy schedule.
Union has been very outspoken in the public about her emotional struggles that come with the visibility she has. During filming, she had a lot of personal responsibilities, numerous projects, and advocacy work. The emotional depth she carried with her was not all that dramatic, but was heavy nonetheless.
When Union came to set, the other actors opined as to how she always looked exhausted, the kind of tiredness that stemmed from pressure as opposed to lack of dedication. However, when the director said action, she was able to effortlessly transform into Jenna and used the exhaustion that was very real to portray the character’s fragile state.
It is no coincidence that most of Jenna’s character was very real. This was mostly from the fact that Union was able to transform the emotional struggles she was going through into something very real.
Keith Powers and the Pressure of Playing a Love Interest With Depth
In portraying Eric, Keith Powers had to balance the exuberance of youth and the gravitas of emotional maturity. In a simplified view, the character could have been a two-dimensional ‘just a pretty boy with a camera’. Powers, however, went the extra mile to defend a multi-layered character and the emotional complexities that come with it.
Powers made it a point to avoid the stereotypical romantic interests, especially the negative ones within the context of romantic engagements involving young black males. The emotional impact of these engagements was felt by Powers to the extent that he was noted by the crew to have spent long hours, during free time, working with his engagement partners on scenes, to give depth to emotional exchanges that on the surface level could have been passed off as shallow.
He was looking to portray Eric as gentle, steady, and reflective.
This was all happening on set as Powers was contending with the exhaustion of taking on the various rewrites, as well as adapting to the demands that come with a high pacing production. All of these pressures had to be crystalized into a kind of quiet honesty that Powers captures with his smiles and portrayals.
Creative Compromises That Turned Into Breakthroughs
Not all pressures that the crew faced, however, were of an emotional nature. Some were a great deal of an artistic nature. These are the kinds of challenges that fundamentally reshape a film.
One of the pivotal rooftop scenes was initially meant to be filmed at sunset; however, due to uncooperative weather and budget constraints, the crew had to film at night without the desired dreamy, golden-hour lighting.
The change offered the crew a more intimate moment, with two people speaking to one another in shadows, isolated from the rest of the world, and framed in the subtle glow of the city’s soft urban light. Although the cast and crew had to adapt to the last-minute changes, the cast later stated that the feeling of intimacy and trueness to the characters was an unplanned but positive outcome of the situation.
The director was also faced with changes in one of the emotional scenes near the film’s end, which he decided to let play out without interruption. The scene was filmed late at night, and most of the cast and crew were struggling to stay awake, which contributed to the desire to finish the scene without much attention to detail. Instead. the scene was filmed with a raw unease that audiences later complimented for the realism it offered.
The unplanned changes to the schedule and the crew’s need to adapt were shining examples of survival instincts.
Most of the cast underwent quiet transformations of their own, which made it easier for them to identify with Jenna’s character and her mission of rebuilding and redefining oneself after losing an integral part of their identity.
Some of them were starting to change after long-term employment. Some were managing health problems, both mental and physical. Others were just trying to keep their heads above water in an industry that is constantly changing and unreliable.
The sets were intertwined in a melancholic embrace of lost hope. That lost hope is what built the film.
Jenna’s doubt was palpable.
Eric’s devotion was palpable.
The underlying conflict in their body language was palpable.
Because in front of the camera, the entire crew was waging a war of the same kind:
How do we put one foot in front of the other when the universe seems to derail everything?
Where the Pain Became Art
The Perfect Find is not, and never has, tried to sugarcoat that everything falls in line and is perfectly settled. It was a testimony of the production itself. It was a witty and charming film with a contemporary focus, and that honesty was a result of an unyielding passion for storytelling.
That is what makes the film so packed full of emotion; the creators were not trying to design it in a “comfortable” manner and the emotional elements were present in the people who played the characters. Each person put their heart into the film and dealt with their individual struggles and journeys.
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