I never dreamed we would find a cemetery on top of a hill with a view of a succession of green mountains, just like I wrote in the script. After the movie, we gave them back, and the surfaces were re-sanded so they could be sold again. I have no idea. We weren't thinking about the Oscars that day, or any other day on the set that I can recall. The time pressure on a small movie is very intense and completely dominates the atmosphere on the shoot.
Most scenes have to be covered from a variety of angles.
Every time you move the camera around, it takes about an hour or more to relight everything. Every time you move from one location to another, it takes two or three hours. The days can only be so long because of the speed of the Earth's rotation, and various complicated union rules and schedules for how long you can work a cast and crew, and how much overtime you have to pay them with the money you don't have. So under the weight of that pressure, and the weight of not wanting to appear too far out of my element on my first day, we were not thinking of the movie's future, the Academy Awards, or even the Sundance Film Festival. We were thinking about how tight Laura's close-up should be, and whether she looked too beautiful to be believable as a normal person, and whether she should run down the hill or just walk.