You’re probably wondering why there hasn’t been an entry for so long. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. With only two weeks to go until our scheduled start date, we find ourselves in a position where we’re several grand short of the budget we need to be able to shoot the film. The project’s now officially on hold until after Christmas. It remains to be seen if any Herefordshire businesses will come through for us on the funding front, but there is a very real possibility that this film will now never get made, not least because I’m not sure where my career as a lighting-cameraman will be by the time the New Year arrives. Doors are starting to open for me and I may simply not have the time to make this film next year.

It’s the old, old story. Boys write film. Boy has to drop out of project. Boy can’t raise enough money to make film. Film is on hold. Shame on you, Herefordshire businesses.

The shoot in Italy has gone well – man, it’s perdy up in dem mountains. I waited until the filming was over, and Tom was suitably drunk, then cheekily asked him if I could have the lights he bought for the shoot. Four nice, shiny new Arrilites. After all, he doesn’t need them any more. Tom, being the lovely human being that he is, kindly obliged. So that’s four more lights for Soul Searcher.

In between the filming, I’ve been co-ordinating the props design/making effort by e-mail. Maya has been sending me designs for swords and scythes, I’ve been selecting and approving them, then sending them on to Rob so he can start making them.

Simon “campest man in human history” Ball and I travelled down to London last night. We’re flying out to Italy tomorrow with Tom and the gang for the last leg of the Beyond Recogntion shoot. Today we held auditions in Conway Hall, Holborn, for the roles of Gary and Luca. Helping us out was Tom’s friend and partner in crime, Matt Manning, who kindly agreed to read opposite the hopeful thesps, a decision he probably regrets since, whilst popping out to get some cash and coffees, he was mugged. Mmmm, London.

Anyway, we were meant to see four or five people, but only two turned up. (This is perhaps the folly of holding auditions on a Saturday morning.) Unfortunately, neither of these folks were right for the parts, though in a bizarre stroke of coincidence one happened to be the girlfriend of props dude Rob Gillies.

I can now reveal that Chris Hatherhall, who we saw in Hereford on the 20th, has been cast as Gary. As for Luca, the search continues…

Max took me over to Norton Armouries Ltd, a company which makes armour for films such as Gladiator and A Knight’s Tale. Where was this company? London? Bristol maybe? New York? Er, no. It’s in Eastnor, Herefordshire. What are the chances of that happening, eh? Therein I met Dave, a very nice guy who looked at the Soul Searcher concept designs and promptly offered to work for free. Which is always nice. We were treated to a tour of the workshops, where some highly lethal-looking swords were being made, and remnants of past projects from various films and TV shows were scattered about. Coolest of all though, was a completely random formation of solidified plastic which looked exactly like something out of an H. R. Giger drawing. So anyway, that’s one less thing for me to worry about. It really has been great having Maya on board doing such fantastic concept art – his work is responsible for attracting several cast and crew members to the project.

Yesterday I spent largely in Maylord Orchard shopping centre, storyboarding the major action sequence which takes place there. My concentration was frequently broken as I attempted to guess which well-known song was currently being trashed by a hideous instrumental easy-listening cover getting piped through the centre’s PA system.

A Chuck Berry compilation was the much more agreeable musical accompaniment today, as I sat in Doodies boarding some other outstanding sequences. This evening I met with Karen Nielsen, our second make-up artist alongside Max Van De Banks. Then I went back to Doodies, where sadly Chuck was no more. “Okay guys, this is a blues riff in B. Watch me for the changes and try to keep up…”

The second wave auditions, at long last. Helped out by Chris “sound man” Mayall, Simon “Leave her alone, she’s just a kid!” Ball and Salem “only met him yesterday” Hanna, we saw some potential actors for Luca, Gary, Van Helsing and Abner. A couple of actresses understandably didn’t make it to the arse-end of nowhere that is St. John’s Methodist Hall, Hereford, and so I hope to set something up with them in London next week.

It’s been a while since my last entry – I’ve been pretty damn busy. I actually got a couple of free hours today to put my feet up and watch TV – yay! Okay, so last week I had a meeting with the powers that be at Leftbank Village, who were most agreeable to us filming a fight scene behind some of their shops. Last weekend I went to Italy to recce for another shoot – Beyond Recognition – and spent the extensive trains and planes journeys continuing my epic storyboarding quest. And then stupidly left them all on the plane when I got back to Stansted. Fortunately a very kind security guard posted them back to me.

On Wednesday I went to London, where I met up with an actor, as well as two people who are going to be making props and costumes for the show. One of them, Rob Gillies, worked on Lord of the Rings no less, and is going to be making the swords and scythes for us, as well as bounty hunter Luca’s customized arsenal. Today Cat and I went to Westons Cider Distillery out in the wild of the Herefordshire countryside. A very pleasant gentleman by the name of Colin gave us a guided tour of the vats – ranging from old stylee giant barrel affairs through to big shiny stainless steel numbers – plus the rest of the site, and was more than willing to let us film sword fights on the walkways and other such cool stuff. Now if I can just get a helicopter for that inevitable aerial angle…

Simon came over to view the fight locations, with Geraint in tow to film the proceedings. We started off at Maylord Orchards, where our minds boggled at the action possibilities – mmmm, escalators… mmmm, lift…. mmmm, balconies – dropped into Doodies, which is now officially confirmed as a location, then went on to the Leftbank Village. Although we seemed to come up with satisfactory rough blocking for the first part of the fight, we began to get doubts about the second part, once we realised that the owners were never going to let a couple of actors climb over the tiered balconies. After pondering this for some time, and briefly going up to the top floor, but not quite having the nerve to go into the extremely exclusive-looking bar and roof garden, we checked out the river bridges. I have, ahem, big plans for one of them, but we also came up with a good alternative if the council won’t let us close Greyfriars Bridge. Which, er, might well be the case.

Next stop was The Courtyard, where we got to go up on the roof, and lo, it was very cool. Consisting of several large flat layers, complete with a nice ladder next to a big boiler thing leading up to it all, it also provided a very nice view of the city and in particular Bulmers. Inexplicably, there were several tennis balls and a rugby ball on the roof, despite it being 4 or 5 stories high. After that we went to the multistorey, which we didn’t have any official permission to recce, and as a result were kicked out by the night watchman after about two minutes. Finally we stopped off in High Town, where we lamented the ever-present orange atrocities that are streetlights. The problem is, no matter how great this film looks, if we get a hideous orangey-pink sodium streetlight in shot it’ll instantly look like a crappy home movie. Which means we need to bring some very large lights of our own in order to render the streetlights little white specks in the background. Mmmm, expensive.

A recce day, which kicked off with Cat and I meeting possibly the friendliest location owner I’ve ever encountered – the manager of Hereford Leisure Centre. He was excited about the project, and was more than happy to accommodate our needs for shooting in the car park. We then went to Halfords car park and the Texcao garage on Holmer Road, where I explained to Cat the nature of the scenes so she could approach the proprietors. After leaving Cat, I went on to TGS Bowling, where I sat and drank coffee by the pool tables, scribbling storyboards for the scene I want to shoot there. Then it was off up Aylestone Hill to Churchill Gardens, where I discovered a weird seat that I can sit our heroes on, and on to Watermeadow Close, home of James Clarke MIA, to check out the possibility of using his abode as Heather’s in the movie. Since then I’ve been adminning and storyboarding. There are a couple more places to look at towards the end of the week, then I’m in London for most of September doing corporate work. Somehow I’ve got to fit the second wave casting in around that, but since most of the hopefuls are capital-based anyway, it should at least make things easier for them if I can afford to hire some kind of audition space in Londinium.

Went to Malvern to engage in fighting talk with Simon Wyndham. We went through the fight scenes one by one (Simon pointed out that there are twice as many as in most Hong Kong action movies) discussing the style of fighting, character motivations, camerawork, location and length. If only we’d done that for The Beacon. Simon showed me excerpts from his not insubstantial HK action movie collection to illustrate various points. “What’s that fighting style that’s big and show-offy and crap?” was as technical as I got. We noted that two of the later fights were very similar, and so made a change to the script that will add more variety and I think works out better for the characters in the end.