The were shot out of the window of the bus with a long zoom lens on the highway leading to the Newark airport. The rest is the genius of Deb Lewis. When the opening sequence of the film became the closing sequence during editing, we used the shot with the Statue slowed down to anchor the voice and that particular line of music to Iris' subjective life, and the statue to anchor the film loosely in New York. The rest of the film is a rather stark character study which seems to be rather straight-forward. Films are built out of shots, which are dramatic constructions in the same way scenes are.
Shots are complex dramtic constructions which can unfold through time, by editing, etc.
To the extent that Afraid remains visually involving but doesn't seem tricky is the extent that Deb and I succeeded at this. We spent a lot of time looking at films from the 1940's to figure out how the visual language worked. I have no idea. We picked a date to shoot, and went forward as though we had the money, although we didn't. I have no doubt that if we had waited to shoot until we had raised the money that we would still be waiting.