Every now and then we will turn to the scrapbook and relive moments from the The Future’s past. The scrapbook is old with parchment pages and a torn velvet cover. No, actually it’s iPhoto.

When you’re making a movie, just like writing a book (or even maybe living a life) you are constantly scouring the world for details to steal — or even just evidence to support your theory. My character Sophie often has her head covered – by blankets, a shirt, or bowed in confession. This was one of the many pictures of covered people I gathered over the last few years. I managed to take it before the light changed. Just because you live in public doesn’t mean you can’t hide.

When we did the location scout of the animal shelter, there was a goat in the Animal Receiving area! Utterly distracting to me.

This is the production designer Elliot Hostetter and the costume designer Christie Wittenborn (and me) figuring out the color palette for the movie. We’re using pens from Muji (the store) that Nikolai von Gravenitz suggested we both buy. He was in Berlin and we had to be creative about how to discuss color while apart. You’ll notice all the cheerful pastels are together in the right hand corner — the discard pile. All those colors reminded me of my first movie. We loved the flesh colors, browns and pinks. Also there is a lump of gold in there, there was no gold pen, but we wanted gold in the palette.

Getting bad news on the phone while simultaneously doing a costume fitting with Christie and her assistant Mairi Chrisholm. The nice thing about being an actor/director is that no matter how big the director problems are (can I make this location work or is it going to ruin the whole movie?) you can always shift over to actor problems for a moment (how does this shirt make me feel?) Each one is a break from the other. The shirt did not ultimately make it into the movie.

Coming up: The report from Australia! Tomorrow I fly to to the Sydney International Film Festival.