The Beacon: October 7th 2001

Once again, the ability of film-making to make the moronically simple unfathomably difficult is proven. Much like when we originally filmed the “Los Angeles” scene, we arrived at Beech Business Park in the pouring rain and sat in our cars waiting for it to ease off. Unfortunately this time it didn’t so we just had to shoot in the rain. Fortunately – for his own personal safety – Simon avoided using the “C” word. James Clarke, author of the seminal students’ Spielbergography provided the requisite coolness for the short-lived character of Van Driver, whilst AJ managed to get himself wet again. What also got wet was the inside roof of Dave’s car, doubling for the unavailable jeep in carefully-framed shots. Dave foolishly agreed to let us do a gunshot effect in the car (actually his dad’s), which went mostly on the ceiling, rather than the rear view mirror as intended. Still, despite looking well dodgy on location, it all cut in fine as usual. Meanwhile I’ve been continuing to knock off the 2D FX shots: adding a moon to a night shot of the hills; sunlight glinting off a gun barrel; blood streaks on a wall, and the hills into some flat-horizoned wide shots. I continue to ponder the train crash scene, and how best to achieve it. I may well have to don some cords (sorry Dave), glasses (sorry Dave) and a badge-covered jacket (sorry… er, me) and go along to the Model Railways swap meet at the leisure centre next month. A Hornby train crash is all very well and good, but I’m hoping they might have some larger scale models.

The Beacon: October 7th 2001