Something crawling

It’s a little less than a week before the shoot and I’m in the bedroom I grew up in back at my Mum and Dad’s house in Bedfont, under the Heathrow flightpath. While I’ve been coming down to London all this year, I’ve either been staying with Lisa and her husband in Battersea or here with my Mum and Dad. Because of the setting of the film, it’s actually been quite good to come back here a lot and get a feel for the place – I’ve not actually lived in Bedfont since I was 18, so it’s been good to reacquaint myself.

Everybody keeps asking whether my Mum and Dad have read the script. They haven’t – not that I’m worried about them reading it, it’s just not really their thing – they don’t like horror films and I’m not sure what they’d make of it. In a way, it’s probably simpler to make the film and then let them see it, so they can respond to it as a story rather than just an idea or a blueprint. Also, the coward in me fears having to explain stuff to them – although I don’t think they’d be offended – my Mum and Dad have been through a lot in their lives and I don’t think anything I could write would really phase them. I guess it’s just that while it’s on the page, it just feels like something that has crawled out of my head – dank and miserable place that it is – and therefore I seem wholly responsible, whereas as a film it will necessarily involve a whole bunch of other people - so I can kind of spread the blame for all the Wrongness. Like I said, cowardly.

Production-wise, everything seems to be going well – Art Dept are working on the locations, we’ve got most of the costumes done, the FX and make–up seem to be progressing well – I just feel like I need to catch up a bit. What with last-minute location scouting (we’ve still to confirm two places…), and rehearsals last week, my working time’s been pretty full – it was only really over the weekend that I got all my director’s notes done and started in on a shotlist. And that just made me realise how much I’ve still got to do. I’m acutely aware that once we get started I’m not really going to have much time to think about anything apart from What We’re Doing Now and What We Have To Do Next (and hopefully not too much of What Have We Fucked Up and How Do We Get It To Work Now?), so all the time I can put into thinking now is going to stand me in good stead.