Mum and Dad Shoot - Day Seventeen

The last day of the shoot - and everything felt very strange. Because of the shift from nights back to days (or at least lates - today was 12 till 12) and the travel day we had, it was nearly two and a half days since we shot, so that feeling that you get at the start of the week of having to gear yourself up again was magnified. Also it was strange because we're in London, and I'm staying at my own parents' house - in the bedroom I grew up in - and filming in a location that I've walked past a thousand times - a field at the end of a runway just outside Heathrow. Also, our unit base is at Bedfont Football Club, next to the Rec where I used to play as a kid. Suddenly I feel about 6 years old again.

The field is a great location - at least in some respects - it's facing the end of a runway, so planes take off directly overhead every couple of minutes, and it's got landing lights in it, these weird yellow plastic towers spaced along a line towards the runway. It's also got about twenty horses in it, which we constantly had to herd about during the day to stop them encroaching on the shots. Obviously, it's a bit of a problem for sound, what with the deafening roar of a jet overhead thirty times an hour, but luckily, there's not really much dialogue (at least not during the day stuff).

We started, as usual, slowly - Art Dept had to reconstruct part of a fence we made in Nottingham to sell the location, so that took a while - then there was rigging Barry's Steadicam which he was letting us have for the day, and then setting up the corner of the field we were using as a base. It was also blazing hot - meaning that within a couple of hours, I had a sunburnt face, at which point (despite about twenty people advising me to do it earlier) I put on some suncream. We eventually turned over at about 2 - then had to wait for planes to come into shot. I don't know if we managed to actually get any great stuff of jumbos roaring overhead (and it's something that we can also work with in the edit) but I thought that, seeing as we were there, we should try and get some if we could.

While we were doing the Steadicam stuff, my Mum and Dad turned up. I didn't get the chance to speak to them much, but I'm really glad they came and I think that the cast and crew kept them entertained. Although what they made of Perry's blood-stained dress I don't know...

Time seemed to vanish today (as usual) and when the blocking for the climactic scene wasn't working out, I had to come up with a quick alternative - not least because we were starting to lose light (losing light, gaining light - it's always something...). We ended up rushing through the final through shots, staging them in a slightly different way, but hopefully getting some good stuff. Oh, and we also managed to kill a sofa (not ours - we found it in the field.)

At lunch, I had a quick chat with a couple of journalists, (including Alan Jones - who has written extensively on Argento (I had to reign in my impulse just to talk about the new Third Mother film for the entire thing). He was really into the script - and said that he had it pegged as a 'Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girlie' homage from the start.)

Then it was into our final session - a night shoot in the field. Again, night exteriors seem to take forever - but we managed to get it all done - our final shot being a long lens shot of Lena, Birdie and Elbie walking silhouetted past the lights of the airport. And that was it - back to Bedfont Football Club for a quick drink and then back to my parents' house to have a long lie-in.

Everybody was asking me if I felt weird that it was all over, but really, it hasn't had time to impact yet. Also, the minute we finished, my brain started filling the void with a million other things - the edit, my next script, how to pay the mortgage while I finish the film - so that, in a way, the energy I put into the shoot is probably just going to morph into another set of concerns. Also, I'm so used to shooting now that the scale of what we've done hasn't really hit home. 17 days for a feature is really good going (especially picking up a day during the shoot), and I'm hoping that we've got all we need to tell the story. I know I've had to change things here and there because of time and budget constraints, but it's never felt like I've had to compromise the film too much - in fact, I feel that, with the aid of a great cast and crew, I've actually been able to make a lot more of some things.

I'm going to miss working with everyone on that intensive a basis - but it does make me really determined to get another filim of the ground as soon a possible, so that we can do it again. That's the trick - to try and make this a regular occurence, rather than just a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Even if it means working on a low budget all the time (although maybe not always this low), it'd be great to just carry on making twisted and perverse little horror films for the next few years. Although, I'm getting ahead of myself - I haven't even got this one done yet - and there's still a long way to go...

Mum and Dad Shoot - Day Sixteen

The last shoot day (night) in Nottingham, and we were still in the offices - we're using a location which used to be Carlton studios, just off Lenton Lane - somewhere I've been quite a few times before in the past. Carlton TV left there a few years ago and now it's used by the University of Nottingham, but there are still the remnants of the TV station there - including an enormous empty studio, with a massive lighting rig, plus a props store. It's actually quite a good place to be, kind of like being in school out-of-hours. Everybody can spread out and be comfortable. The only problem with the place is that mobile phone and walkie-talkie reception is terrible, so we had a couple of occasions tonight when we were waiting to go for a take but couldn't track down key members of the crew because they were out of reception range.

We also had a group of extras tonight, including a couple of people I know - Dena Smiles and Yvonne Varnier. It was good to see them, although I did apologise to Dena for scandalously underusing her.

We got on a bit quicker tonight, although as soon as we went outside to do the exteriors (involving extras and van driving (with a cameo role for Trnovski as the bus driver)) things slowed again. It's weird, it feels like we've got a load of people and quite a lot of equipment, but realistically, we're still working on quite a reduced crew and with a limited amount of resources and it's when you try and do things like tonight that you feel it - Jonathan had lost a big light so had to be quite creative about how he employed the other lights we had - the kind of thing that makes you have to rethink your blocking and staging just to accommodate the fact that you want your characters to at least be visible.

As it got towards dawn we still had one more scene to do - the opening of the film. I wanted to do a shot from outside, looking through a window down a very long corridor, with Lena turning to walk away. We set up the shot, with light quickly building outside, then waited. And waited. And waited. Because Olga wasn't there - she was down the other end of the extremely long corridor where the make-up room was, getting her hair redone for continuity's sake. But with the bad reception, it meant that nobody knew that. Cue lots of frustrated moans from people, as it was getting brighter by the second. Eventually, we got Olga back and managed to get the shot, and the scene, just in time for dawn.

And that was it. While everybody derigged, I went into the enormous empty studio and found a battered football that someone had left there and me and Toby (Elbie) had a kick about. While I did feel bad about not helping with the derig (typical director), it also felt great to expend some energy, runing about and lamping a ball across the studio. It's only when I get the chance to relax that I realise how tightly wound I've been over the past couple of weeks.

Of course, we're not finished yet - we move down to London on Monday to shoot the ending of the film in a field near Heathrow. That's if the weather holds, of course. If not, there might have to be a hasty rewrite involving all the characters finding shelter in an empty warehouse.

Mum and Dad Shoot - Day Fifteen

Got in at about half six this morning after the first of our night shoots at the office location. It was weird going from days to nights – having a lie-in and then being able to relax a little bit during the day wasn’t necessarily a good thing – when we all arrived at the office it felt like it took longer than usual to get back into our stride, and before we knew it it was ‘lunchtime’ (11.30) and we’d only just finished the toilet scenes. The location was great though – finally having some space to spread out felt really good, but then maybe that – and the fact that we’re coming to the end of the shoot – gave the whole night a bit of a half-term feel.

I thought when we first arrived that I wasn’t going to be able to last through the night – I was so knackered today, and couldn’t lie in as long as I wanted to – but the more we went on, the more the adrenalin kicked back in, and by the time we had lunch, it felt more like a normal day again.

Then problems started to kick in – it started getting light in the windows behind the actors, making it really difficult to make it look like nighttime – the problem hampered by the fact that the camera – which had been playing up a bit all night – suddenly decided it didn’t want to work on the batteries, so we had to track down a mains power source, meaning that the last shot we did is going to require some grading in post to make it match.

By that time everybody was flagging anyway – I looked up to frame a shot at one point and saw Olga lying on the floor half-asleep – so we wrapped ten minutes early – then me, Jonathan and Andrew had a chat about the schedule for tomorrow – when we really need it to get darker quicker and lighter later, or, more realistically, to work a lot faster than we did tonight. Will force-feed everybody coffee when they arrive, maybe