Last night we shot the training sequence at Westons Cider. I had Eye of the Tiger in my head all night. We were filming amongst a big cluster of vats which looked very cool. Chris Jones came down with friends Tom and Andy who doubled for Ray doing some crazy shit. We wrapped a little late but it all went really well.

There was an amusing incident the other night when I dreamt I was filming in my flat and started talking in my sleep.

Me: Where’s Colin?

Edd (waking up): What?

Me (not waking up): Where’s the crew?

Edd: They’re probably at home in bed.

Me: But Ray’s here, right?

Edd: No.

Me (finally waking up): Shit, I dreamt all that?

We’ve got a couple of days off now since there’s nothing we can shoot with the available cast and crew. I’m going to spend the time editing (although sleeping has been more of a priority thusfar).

The scheduling problems mean we’ve had to take a major sequence out and hold it back until January. This at least means that the rest of this month will stay pretty much as planned.

My sincerest apologies to David Dukes. I received an e-mail from him last night which he sent several days ago, explaining that his phone was broken and he was unable to contact us. Also, due to the postal strikes, the money I’d sent to finance the props had not arrived, meaning he didn’t have the working capital to complete everything. Thanks to Scott Lamplugh for his e-mail defending David. My intention has never been to disrepect David’s work and certainly his level of commitment and dedication (and resultant lack of sleep) cannot be denied. David, if you’re reading this please get in touch as the pictures you sent of Luca’s weapons look fantastic and we’re all looking forward to using them.

Apologies also to James, who it seems is not dropping out after all. No, I don’t understand either, but I’m sure all will be explained in the fullness of time.

Get ready, cos this is a long one.

First of all, apologies for the lack of updates. My computer was used as a prop a few days back and has only just found its way back to my flat.

On Friday we headed out to Rotherwas Industrial Estate with Ray and Jonny to film a four page dialogue scene which I had cleverly decided should be one continuous steadicam shot as they walked down the street. It took a fair while to light. And as for actually shooting it… man. 24 takes. Aside from line fluffs, screw-ups also occurred frequently in the camera department with lights getting in shot and so forth. Plus we were recording sound onto minidisc recorders in the actors’ pockets linked to lapel mics. When, on about take 18, we finally made it to the end of the scene without any screw-ups, we were slightly annoyed (to say the least) to see BLANK DISC flashing up on the display on Jonny’s recorder. Six more takes later and we finally had a technically useable scene, but by that time the actors were so cold and fed up of saying the same lines over and over again that the performances were not up to scratch. Can you say reshoot?

We then moved to a house to shoot the scenes in Joe’s living room. This required Ray to look tired. He did not find this challenging. One of the scenes involved Ray playing air guitar. By this time it was 7am and daylight was starting to filter in. Most of the crew had deserted us, including Edd – though not through choice – he had to stay at my flat because we’d lost the key and couldn’t lock up. This may also go on the reshoot list. (Arrggh.)

Colin and I then had to walk home since everyone with cars had buggered off. Edd was fast asleep when I got in. I described the night’s events to him deliriously. For some reason it seemed extremely funny. I got to bed at 9:30am.

Saturday’s work was just as long but even more unpleasant due to the fact that we were outdoors all night. And it rained. All night. We began with a scene outside James’ house – a very simple scene, but it was complicated by losing costumes, the vast numbers of fireworks going off in the vacinity, and the rain (which at first we tried to sit out, until we realised we’d never finish this movie if we did).

This done we moved to Technical Rubber Products on Rotherwas Industrial Estate to shoot scenes that we dropped on the first week from the High Town schedule. This involved Ray kicking a bit of demon ass and doing a lot of running. It also involved a very cool practical effect which you’ll see when I cut the trailer next week. The rain kept pouring down, accompanied by a pretty cold wind. Our lights were all stood out in the monsoon and somehow managed to keep working despite everything physics teachers have been telling us for decades.

Come three o’clock I was feeling extremely wretched and miserable thanks to the weather (and I’m sure everyone else was too) and the temptation to cancel the night’s final scene was great. However we couldn’t afford to drop another scene, so on we went to Hereford Crematorium, dragging Kat out of bed for her graveside scene. As we were setting up the rain intensified and the more sensible crew members amongst us started to murmur about death by electric shock and such things. We derigged and stood under the crematorium porch, hoping it would ease up enough for us to get the shots and go home to bed. Finally it cleared a little and we got back out there. Poor Kat probably froze her ass off but the weather was extremely atmospheric and really added to the scene.

Sunday we were indoors all night, thank god. We were filming at the place where everyone knows our name (that’s Doodies, if you’ve been living in a cave for the last 18 months). There’d been a screw-up with the key so we were a bit late getting started, and extremely late finishing. Ian did a great job of dressing the location and it really looked like the cosy, friendly place I wanted on camera. It was Chris Hatherall’s first night of shooting as Gary and much hilarity ensued as he and Ray perused the copy of Loaded that had been brought in as a prop. Kat fell asleep in the corner; we finally got to her bits at about 4am. Ray had taught her how to make cappucinos for the scene. With the end in sight, the appearance of a noisy garbage truck outside was not very welcome, but it soon went away and we finally wrapped as it started to get light. After a lot of washing up and furniture moving, I returned home, tired but extremely happy with the day’s work. It was also the most fun day so far. Plus it was indoors.

For all the good footage we’d been getting lately, things were starting to go decidedly pear-shaped in other areas. Due to non-arrival of certain props our schedule has been thrown in disarray meaning we won’t wrap at the end of November as planned.

Whilst in Doodies, Edd dropped another bombshell. But enough about his ass. He told me that James didn’t want to be the producer any more.

Anyway, Edd’s been promoted in his place and immediately proved his mettle by buying us a nice big lasagne for lunch last night (Monday). The night’s work began at Manhattan’s, where we shot an exterior scene on their fire escape. Sound was a bit of an issue, what with passing cars, music from inside the club, whirring air conditioning units and church bells chiming.

Then it happened.

Cueing the tape up to make sure I didn’t record over the previous night’s footage, my eyes were greeted by the horrifying sight of the Doodies material largely obscured by big grey and green pixels. It was all I could do to stop myself from crying. Or throwing the camera across the car park.

But there was nothing I could do about it, so I cleaned the heads, put in a fresh tape and started shooting the fire escape scene. We then headed back to my flat for food (the aforementioned lasagne) and a production meeting. We checked the fire escape scene back – it was fully in tact, complete with fantastic sound (that Ian Preece is a genius). A quick review of the Doodies footage revealed that it was mostly fine; we had only lost the last hour or so’s work.

After the meeting, at which we announced James’ departure, Edd’s promotion and Vicky’s promotion to 1st AD.

We then set up outside for two fairly simple scenes outside my flat. This was fairly uneventful, save for a visit from a drunken man who staggered worringly close to the camera, and a fair amount of pissing about involving renditions of songs from The Labyrinth. We wrapped at the relatively reasonable time of 3am.

Well there’s been plenty of rain since. We didn’t shoot anything last night because the camera was away for repairs again and we couldn’t sort out extras in time. Today was supposed to be a day off anyway, but we’re shooting tonight because if we don’t we’ll never wrap at the end of November. This week has been extremely frustrating, having started off so well at Westons and them fizzling out very quickly due to rain and rescheduling. Finding other scenes to do has proved extremely difficult due to the availability of key players. I guess when you pull at a thread in your schedule, it’s gonna start to unravel.

Other than going to see Finding Nemo and getting my regular biannual fix of The Labyrinth (no-one can blame you/for walking away/but too much rejection little girl… etc.) – plus getting the chance to kip in the Soul Searcher house last night – I’ve spent the time capturing what we’ve shot so far onto the edit suite and starting to cut it. Looking good.

Scheduled for tonight was the training sequence between Grim Reapers old and new. At 3:30pm the rain looked like it was settled in for the night so we decided to go with a back-up location, a warehouse, rather than an exterior location at Westons Cider. I’d not seen the warehouse before and when I arrived I knew immediately it wasn’t right for the scene. The rain was starting to ease off but by then it was too late to set up Westons again so we cancelled the night’s shooting.

We headed back to the house where the actors are staying and had a bit of a production meeting, plus Ray and Simon got to look at the new scythe which has been made for us by the blacksmith whose shop we filmed at last week. It’s extremely sweet.

It’s now 12:11am and there hasn’t been a single drop of rain since the call time. God damn weather. But we did get to watch Back to the Future Part II.

Last night was the best night of the shoot so far. I’d been really worried about it because it involved shooting a foot chase necessitating three total relights in different sections of our location, Westons Cider brewery, followed by a sequence on the walkways above some vats featuring a creature that would be entirely generated in post-production. The crew however were totally on form and allowed us to shoot the chase very swiftly. The brewery looked fantastic on camera and it was quite fun getting Ray and AJ to run about and jump over stuff.

After lunch Jonny and Ray and I got up on the walkways and started to rehearse the sequence with the non-existent creature. Naturally it was quite confusing but eventually we got it blocked out and were subsequently able to get all the coverage quite quickly.

Right now Edd is putting the finishing touches on my living room’s new paint job in readiness for the scenes in Joe’s flat tonight. We’ve just spent half an hour going round women’s clothing stores, looking extremely dodgy, looking for a white sweater to complete Heather’s costume. We also tried to find a copy of the South Park movie soundtrack but failed so now we’re watching the film again.

Last night we were at Campions, a boarded-up restaurant near the river bridge, to film scenes of Dante and his servant trying to blow holes in the dimensional barrier between Hell and Earth. Apart from the camera playing up again, things went pretty smoothly and to schedule. We had to postpone a couple of shots involving a demon, since the armour isn’t ready yet, but other than that a good night’s work. Fecking cold, though. As the night wore on we watched a sparkling coating of frost form on all of the equipment.

Having taken Thursday off, though I don’t recall actually relaxing in any way, we spent Friday night shooting the scenes in Dante’s lair. The location for this was a derelict romney hut on Rotherwas Industrial Estate, just outside of town. Filled with random junk (and, in the recent past so I’m told, unexploded grenades), it was a fantastic location to begin with. Once Ian (the art director) had worked his magic and we’d set up a few lights shining in through the gaps in the corrugated iron and pumped it full of smoke, it looked like a million dollars.

It was supposed to be a fairly short day, but by now I’d hit my stride and wrap times were going out the window. It was Andy Nicol’s first day of shooting in his role as the villanous Dante, and I worked with him to adjust some of the scenes’ dialogue and blocking to improve on what was on the page. Ian’s drawbridge chains and The Book of Fire came to the fore, though the latter got kind of trashed after being thrown across the room several times.

The former got trashed tonight at LaFarge quarry, our second port of call after paying a visit to a blacksmith named Alex Wilkins who we shot transforming the drawbridge chains into smaller, chained-library-style chains. Muchos fire, muchos sparks. The rushes look amazing. Edd, Colin, James and I then squeezed back into the producer’s car with all the gear to travel to the quarry. We got lost, but had lots of fun on the way.

We rendez-voused with the Companions of the Crow, a medieval re-enactment group from Oxford who were portraying soldiers in the flashback to the battle between Mankind and Demonkind. They were all enthusiastic, particularly when we got to the bit where they could actually kick the crap out of each other. We would have come close to wrapping on time, were it not for a bout of rain just before nine which threatened to shut us down for the evening. But it cleared eventually and we were able to grab the final scene before coming home for some pizza and a look at the budget. We’re not as wildly out of control in that area as I’d feared we might be, but I will be spending a lot of 2004 in debt by the looks of things.

It stopped raining. But the package did not arrive until ten. And unfortunately some of the contents were not quite what we had hoped for. I decided to drop the sequence which required them from the night’s schedule, to buy us some time to get the demon armour redone. This meant that Max and his two make-up assistants had spent hours putting bald caps on Chris and Andy for nothing. It also meant we did a lot more standing around in the cold than we needed to.

Around the same time I discovered the next massive cock-up, when I sent some of the crew to get the crane from the hotel car park. It was gone. Due to some bad communications, James had thought we’d used it the previous night and had it picked up. So crane shot to open the movie. Thoughts running through my mind at this point included jumping on the next plane to New York, and the pros and cons of various methods of suicide.

Most of the crew repaired to the Green Dragon Hotel for an emergency production meeting, during which it was decided to move tomorrow’s filming back to Friday, previously planned as a day off. This sorted, my spirits lifted considerably.

We still went ahead with the remaining street sweeper shots however, once the vehicle arrived at 2am. These went well, with Phil the driver letting Ray take the helm for a couple of shots, and cheerily letting us unbolt his rear bumper to simulate Joe-related bollard damage.

All in all, I’m very glad the High Town sequence is over. I always knew it was going to be the most unpleasant part of the shoot (touch wood), with its public location, nasty orange streetlights getting into shots, and the necessity of directing-by-numbers in order to get all the disparate and wildly out-of-sequence elements of the scene shot within the time constraints of the location, martial artists and street sweeper. All that said, I’m confident we’ve got a really cool opening sequence for the movie.

I’m really looking forward to the scenes that are just two people talking in a room.