Deliver Me - Shoot Diary - Day Four

8.15pm We're back outside the hall location. It's absolutely freezing and we've got a whole scene to do out here, but we're having problems with lights. Cooke wants a backlight on MyAnna, but we can't run a cable across the (very busy) road, so he ends up sweet-talking the owner of a house to let us borrow some electricity to run a 150W lamp for an hour or so. (When I say borrow, I mean he promises her twenty quid. Good job we're not out here all night, or we'd have spent all our contingency.)

Earlier we did a couple of shots on a bus, which we managed to get for free from Nottingham City Transport, who were very amenable and were happy to take us round whichever route we wanted. I know that sounds like an advert, but I'm just surprised that they were so accommodating. Maybe it's the spirit of Christmas...

12.00 midnight. We're in the hall, setting up to film the extras for the opening scene. To save time - because we lose MyAnna at 4.30 today - she's catching a plane to see her Mum for Christmas and can't leave any later - I've changed the shot from a track to a pan. By strategically placing the extras, we've managed to make the hall look slightly more full than it is, and thanks to some great lighting by Cooke and some great performances by the extras, the shots look great.

Then it's on to do the most complicated shot of the night - a track back, jib down, zoom out, pull focus from an ECU of a brass crucifix on stage, down past the healer's bowed head (managing to not knock her out with the jib head by having her crouch down out of shot and stand up on cue so that it looks like she's always been there) and down onto a big close up of the man being healed. We do a couple of rehearsals - John Ross jibbing, Cooke zooming and focusing and me tracking back - partially because it's the only way to see the monitor - and then we run four takes. The last two are good, but still a little wobbly, so we do one more. I track back a little faster, managing to (hopefully) merge the speed of the track with the speed of Cooke's zoom out and it looks great - perfect end framing. The whole thing's still a bit wobbly, but I've come to accept with these shots that it's part of the deal. The other way to do them would be with a computer controlled camera, but there's something about doing things 'live' - having to have three operators all in sync - that is really exciting and really reminds me of why I want to make films in the first place.

7.10am Back at home. We wrapped on time - the only fuck-up being that we nearly lost some of Glenn's dialogue due to extremely loud birdsong - and MyAnna left in time to get her plane. We had to stay behind to clear the location and restring all the Christmas decorations in the hall, which took ages (although, to be fair, I wasn't really doing anything, squeezing the last few dregs of Director's Privilege out of the situation before I go back to not having people do things for me anymore). Then it was back to Tina's to drop off the kit before coming home.

I thought I'd feel exhausted, but tonight I actually felt pretty awake - maybe it's my body clock getting in sync with nights, (just in time to switch back round again) - and by the end, I was thinking that I could maybe go on. Obviously, I didn't voice this to the crew or Tina (who has probably had less than 12 hours sleep during the whole shoot), but it makes me feel that maybe doing the feature won't necessarily kill me...

Sleep now. Edit starts tomorrow...

Deliver Me - Shoot Diary - Day Three

7.00 pm...and Cooke's already talking about 'rimming Jesus'. We're in the hall in Bramcote which has been dressed to look like the spiritualist church in the film, and Cooke, John Ross and John Banner are setting the lighting for the night. It's taking a long time, but once it's set, that's pretty much it for the night. Hopefully.



10.00 We've done the first scene. It's the only one with all three lead actors in it, so we cover it quite substantially. All three of them are great - and have been throughout the shoot. One of the directors on this year's DVShorts scheme, Deborah, comes along to have a look at what we're doing, and asks me how much rehearsal time we've had. I tell her we haven't - it would have been great, but in the end there just wasn't enough time to arrange it. She seems surprised - but I think if you cast well and you can get on with the actors, you've got to trust that they know what they're doing generally, and then anything on set is just a tweak. I think the key thing is communicating with the actors - luckily all of these three are really experienced, making my job easier. MyAnna is becoming slightly addicted to tear stick though.

11.00 Setting for a scene in the corridor and having a discussion with Cooke about lighting continuity. Shooting the whole film in reverse order (why we are doing this, I'm not entirely sure...) means that you end up having to do some strangely convoluted thinking - "So we need to set the lights to match with the scene which we are going to have established in the earlier scene which we shoot tomorrow." Eh?

12.30 Feels, bizarrely, both early and late at the same time. Early because we've done the scene we had scheduled, and even managed to bring forward one from tomorrow's schedule (making 1st AD Chris Pheasey very happy), and late because it's gone midnight - which yesterday would have meant we were into the last stretch, but tonight is only halfway there.

We're setting for the first of three very complicated jib and tracking shots. Knowing how long these things take to set up, rehearse and shoot, I'm hoping that five and a half hours is going to be enough. This is a key scene in the film, so I've got to make sure we get everything we need.

5.30 We've wrapped - and the lack of sleep is starting to really catch up with me. I'm feeling too tired for words - my eyes feel like they've been soaked in vinegar and dried with sandpaper. We (hopefully) got all we needed - although we were struggling for clean sound takes at the end because the birds started piping up outside with their dawn chorus. Fucking chripy bastards. Run through the storyboard and script one more time to make sure I haven't missed anything vital - but by now I'm not sure my brain would be able to tell anyway. Need sleep. Will work it out in the edit.

Deliver Me - Shoot Diary - Day Two

11.30 Managed to get a good sleep last night - apart from waking up at half seven, which is kind of the default time that Betsy would normally be waking me - and only spent a couple of hours being mind-prodded by stuff I've got to remember to do today.

2.00 Just got back from the hotel where the actors are staying after doing a costume fitting/check. Sam Loggin, who's playing Erin and Glenn Doherty who's playing Michael were both there and seem excited about starting. Glenn said that he'd read the blog and noted my comment about actors being 'flesh puppets' - but I don't think he was really offended...

Made some decisions about costume and came back just in time to give the place a quick hoover. In a moment of weakness I agreed to use our house for tonight's shoot. This is, obviously, quite stupid, but I've said I'll do it now so there's no backing out. I guess there are some advantages - I don't have to travel to set, I can go to bed straight after we finish - but they might end up being outweighed by the constant anxiety that the crew are wrecking my house. The funny thing about shooting on location is that it only takes about 5 minutes for you to start thinking about the place as 'a set' rather than as somewhere where people live. Maybe my constant nervy presence will stop them doing any major damage.

Another advantage of shooting in the house is that, if I get tired, I can get them to wire up the monitor for me, get my dressing-gown and do it all from bed. I can just borrow a walkie-talkie - "Tell the male flesh-puppet to talk a little faster for me, would you..." I'll be just like this guy.



Maybe not.


18.55 Still shooting the car stuff - just having a break while they rig the bonnet shot. All going well - done all the interior car driving stuff - which is such a pain in the arse for everyone - can't see the camera, can't get a monitor, Grant (sound) is crammed into the boot like a mafia corpse - that I don't think I'll do it again. Think we got some good takes - just need to hope that speed bumps, car vibration and engine noise are all surmountable in the cut. But then, what are editors for?

03.59 Just wrapped. Quite a niggly, frustrating and scratchy night all in all. The car stuff took forfuckingever to finish - we had problems with clamps not clamping and batteries running out at highly inoportune moments, which meant that we got to lunch about an hour behind. Then we had to come in and do the 'bedboy' scene, with Laurie in full make-up. For some reason we had about 10 minutes of not understanding how the lighting was supposed to work, with me and Cooke getting snitty with each other before we came downstairs, talked it through and realised what the hell we were doing. We managed to get everything we needed- both Sam and Laurie were great under duress - or in Laurie's case, under about three inches of make-up - and it was only at the end that things seemed to get niggly again, when one of the lighting kits we'd hired decided to start not working - or working intermittently, which isn't a good thing for when you're trying to suggest a constant light source.

Still, considering we had to deal with cars, prosthetics, electronic glowing hands and contact lenses coming in and out, I think we did well to finish more or less (10 minutes early) on time. Now I really need all these people to get out of my house so I can go to bed...