Soul Searcher: November 27th 2003

We tried to shoot a whole bunch of pick-ups last night but we couldn’t get locations for some of them so it was a fairly short night. First we shot outside TGS bowling – a scene where Joe passes by lots of drunkards outside a club. These were all crew members. Production designer Ian Tomlinson got to shout an uncouth remark at Ray, and AJ got to have a sly second role as Hooded Smoking Man 1. Then we grabbed a few inserts, supposedly of the chained library, in the TGS car park, before piling into the van to go to the Green Dragon car park. On the way we had to stop off at Queensway, the road we filmed on this morning, in order to show Vicky where it was so she could knock on some doors and sort us out a power supply. After a good ten minutes of driving around, with Ray and AJ bouncing about in the back amongst all the gear… “That handle just went right up my arse…” / “That’s what your mum said last night…” / “Edd, if you slam the brakes on I’m going to (*&^UKP(*&@&….”, I finally remembered where Queensway was.

At the Green Dragon we got some inserts of the new and improved scanner in the Mustang, then used a very cool old window in the building for a shot we dropped weeks ago at the blacksmith’s. We then retired to our beds.

This morning we were up at 5:30am to shoot at Queensway, as we needed it to be almost but not quite night. After various delays, mostly caused by the Mustang not starting/running out of fuel/not starting/being really fecking annoying/not starting, we got a couple of takes of the shot, one of which I may be able to use. Then it was on with haste to Ledbury Road to film the movie’s closing scene, along with our newest crew member, Richard the Recovery Guy, whose flatbed lorry was carting the Mustang about for us. The damned car managed to work long enough for us to get a take of the wide shot.

Whilst the actors were turning the car round and bringing it back for another take, I was squinting into the camera when I heard a loud bang. I looked up to see a small red car with an L plate had rammed itself into the back of a van about twenty yards from us. A teenager and his dad staggered out, shocked but unhurt, as we gawped at the car’s new concertina-style bonnet. I later exchanged a few words with the father. “It’s all your fault,” he said. “We were both turning to see what you were doing and we didn’t see the van braking.” Yeah, try keeping your eyes on the road next time, mate. So we’ve now caused a road traffic accident. The ever-expanding disaster zone of Soul Searcher.

Anyway, the Mustang came back, then promptly conked out on a side road, so we had to push it into position to get the remaining angles for the scene. This done, me, Tom and Edd headed to Ascari’s for a hard-earned breakfast. That Mustang is now pretty much everybody’s least favourite thing on this movie. It may look great, but it’s cost us a packet and we’re all fed up of pushing it about.

I’m currently debating whether to go to bed for a few hours (we have a 7pm call tonight, and it’s gonna be a long night). Although I would probably be glad of the kip later on, it would mean going through that whole waking up, feeling like shit, wanting to go back to bed thing. Mmm, the jury’s still out…

Soul Searcher: November 27th 2003