My last entry from this side of the pond for a while, I guess. Well, decisions have been reached. More, perhaps, than I had anticipated from this week at the outset. We haven’t made the all important phone calls yet, so I’m obviously not going to say any more here. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of acting we saw this week, and huge thanks to everyone who took the time to come along. It takes a great weight off my mind to know that we’ve got (assuming the people in question accept the roles) the right folks for the job – it’s going to make my job a hell of a lot easier.

Finishing the last of the auditions at about 2 o’clock, James and I made our recceing way to the football stadium (via Groovy Rick’s house), where Joan the company secretary was very co-operative. She was even happy in principle for us to switch the big floodlights on when we film, and to go up one of the lighting towers for a couple of shots. I love helpful location owners.

This evening we met (in a location so predictable it’s not even worth typing) with Kat Whiteaway (quite possibly not the correct spelling), who’s interested in helping James out with the production and organisational stuff, and Jenny (er… don’t know her surname… sorry). who is now officially our art director. We spent a long time explaining the tone of the film, the locations we have in mind, the look and feel we want to give the props, costumes and characters, and kicked around various ideas along those lines. Both Jenny and Kat were excited by what we were doing.

All in the all, it feels like the whole project has moved up a level today, which is a nice way for me to leave it.

Ooh, the excitement. Start spreading the news, I’m leaving the-day-after-tomorrow, I want to be a part of it, etc…

Another fruitful day of auditions. I’m finding it a great opportunity as a director, firstly to be able to concentrate solely on peformances without having to worry lighting, camera moves and all the other guff, and secondly in trying out different ways of playing the scenes, and different tones for the characters. What I’m finding difficult is getting the awkwardness and stlited air in the early scenes between Joe and Heather, which I’m sure is due to my failing as a director rather than the actors. It’s ironic that I’ve been in that situation so many times myself, but I can’t seem to find the words to describe it to the actors. I’ll have to videotape it next time it happens to me.

Two of days auditioning down, and we’ve seen a wide range of people, some of whom we’ll definitely be seeing again. It was like a little Beacon reunion, with Geraint helping us out filming the read-throughs, and Josh and Sarah R reading parts against the auditionees. Dante was a particularly difficult character to audition, since he doesn’t have a decent run of dialogue anywhere in the film. Even using a scene from an older, more speak-heavy draft left us with the problem of the actors having to mime sword fights in the Art College room we’d hired. And James made lightsabre noises. I was also treated to the extremely rare (once every 14 years, it seems) sight of James shouting in someone’s face, as he read the Grim Reaper’s part against Joe hopefuls.

This audition process is a veritable epic compared with the rushed few hours of chats and read-throughs that constituted Beacon try-outs. What you’re always hoping for is someone to walk through the door who pretty much IS the character, without having to act that much. Failing that, you’re after someone who looks right and can take direction well enough that you can work with them to make the character what you want it to be. One thing we’ve found thusfar is that often an actor will nail one or two of the three audition scenes, but will be way off for the others. Ironically, the two people who have consistently delivered are Josh and Sarah, who sadly can’t be involved with the shoot due to university commitments.

Nonetheless, we’ll definitely have cast our Gary by the end of the week, and hopefully Joe and Heather too. The other roles may be left in limbo until after NY when further auditions can be held.

Wow. A guy from off of Eastenders sent his CV in. How weird is that?

I took a wander yesterday and shot a little recce footage of the station, Rotherwas Industrial Estate and the area around the Leisure Centre. As a result, I now know exactly where I want to film all those scenes in the script which just say “Ext. Street.Night.” Walking around Rotherwas on a Saturday afternoon was much like walking around a ghost town. I saw no-one save for a woman locking up a factory, and a couple of guys who pulled up in their car and asked if I’d seen a black and white sheepdog. I told them I’d seen a black and white cat, but that he belonged to some postman or other. (Did you, Neil? No, I said “I’m sorry, I haven’t.”)

Today I’ve been doing more storyboarding. This film actually has more dialogue in it that any film I’ve ever directed. (Since my dialogue’s always crap, I tend to use as little of it as possible.) This makes it a bit of a challenge from a camera point of view – ie. how to make the shots interesting and varied over the course of a five minute dialogue scene, without distracting the viewer from the performances. I’d like to do some really long shots in this movie, just letting the actors carry it.

So I’ve got five more days in the country. They will consist of almost constant Soul Searchering – auditioning by day, meeting crew or recceing by night. Sleep? Pah! I can sleep on the plane.

The casting call finally got into the Shooting People digest, and James found his e-mail server jammed full of interested thesps. Of course, many of these folks are from London, so their talent and suitability for the part will have to be weighed against the cost of accommodating them for the duration of the shoot, but that’s a bridge we can cross when we come to it. Incidentally, I’d like to see the bridge that you can cross before you’ve come to it. Does it have a wormhole in the middle?

This afternoon we met with one young actress (oh god, I’ve started calling everyone “young”…. I’m so fecking ancient…) who won’t be able to come to the auditions next week, but is interested in the role of Heather nonetheless. As much as I’d like to cast all the lead roles before I leave for New York – to give Simon as long as possible to get them fighting fit – the fact of the matter is that there may have to be a second wave of auditions upon my return, a month down the line. That is if I come back. People keep saying I won’t.

About an hour ago I started storyboarding. I did part of the opening scene months ago, but now that many of the locations are firmed up – at least in my desire to use them, if not in their owners’ desires for them to be used (yes) – it’s time to start turning those words into crude sketches and little 3D arrows like the ones what proper storyboarders draw.

Oh man, this keyboard is so sticky. I only went and spilt OJ on it, didn’t I? And the VCR remote, which no longer works. Yuk, yuk.

Right then, so I’ve just got back from a week camping in Cornwall – a surreal week featuring such rare sights as an aroused dolphin, a drunk woman trying to bed a gay man, and a man getting lost round the back of a portaloo. Of course I spent my spare time in the tent doing Soul Searcher sketches, brainstorming locations and sending James long e-mails from antipodean-owned cybersurf shacks with sea views. I hadn’t been back long, naturally, before I ended up at The Courtyard with a large ring binder, a cup of coffee and a pile of headshots. For whilst I’ve been away, Jim has been fixing it for wannabe actors to audition for our movie. Let’s not beat about the bush – the number of responses has been disappointing. No worse than that for The Beacon, but we were expecting more since we cast (ho ho) our net wider by posting in PCR. As ever, I guess lack of financial renumeration is putting people off. Still, thanks to everyone who has applied, and I look forward to meeting you all next week. We’re also going to try to recce a lot of locations next week so that I can begin storyboarding while I’m in New York. But of course, you journal-starers don’t know about New York…

A week on Sunday I’m off to upstate New York for three weeks, all expenses paid, to be the Director of Photography on an action thriller. Chopsy what? Jammy who? Beyond Recognition is being self-financed by London-based director Tom Muschamp, to the tune of not much more than The Beacon‘s budget, and he’s hooked up with a producer in New York, so there it shall be shot. With me doing lighting-camera. In New York. [Laughs deliriously for several minutes.] Obviously this is a big chunk out of the SS preproduction time, so we need to get things to a stage where they can tick along by themselves during that period.

Once again, the scary smallness of Hereford, um, scared us. On the way to the Courtyard, we bumped into Geraint, who just happened to have some of his cool concept sketches with him. He had some very interesting ideas. We hope to meet with the “practical” designers next week and talk about who might be able to make some of the stuff. Goodbye for now.

Firstly, I never want to see The Beacon ever again. An eight year-old could have written a better script. Sadly though I must sit through it again tomorrow, when there’ll probably be no-one there except the ten winners of the Chicago Rock competition. Today’s turn-out was pretty good, and only three old ladies walked out, presumably because of the f**k-laden prose that passes for dialogue in the movie.

A few people offered their services for Soul Searcher, but no-one offered any money. Indeed, it seems that none of the 12 potential funders that were sent comp tickets even bothered to come. You see, this is why I used my own money to make The Beacon. Myself is extremely generous when it comes to giving money to me. Extravagant even, one might say.

Anyway, I’m off camping in Cornwall for a week the day after tomorrow – but don’t think I’m not taking my Soul Searcher file with me. Whilst I’m away, Beacon veteran Geraint Pounder will work on some concept sketches, and I’m going to do some storyboards, even if it’s still just key moments at this stage, rather than entire scenes.

Also this afternoon James and I wreaked havoc on the airwaves, diffusing our double act onto BBC Hereford & Worcester as we talked about Soul Searcher. Sadly they did not broadcast our impromptu song. All together now… “SOUL SEARCHER / HE’S SUCH A HAIRY LURCHER / HE’S GOT A SCYTHE BUT HE WON’T HURT YA…”

An evening of hilarity after a rollercoaster couple of days. The film continues to crystallize in my head. Where before I could only see the dialogue scenes, I now have strong images of fight sequences and action set pieces. I’ve sent Simon Wyndham, the fight arranger, some notes on the emotions and styles of each fight, and am itching to begin storyboarding.

Tonight James came round so we could write a press release for the casting call. After much comic double-acting, we got this done and turned our attention to going through the script scene by scene and noting down how many days each would take to shoot. Then I totted them all up. 84.

84.

James proceeded to list big Hollywood movies which were shot in less time than that. I went through the list and shaved some days off. I totted it up again. 79.

So we sat back on my dodgy brown sofa which always makes you gradually slide off and laughed for a bit. It’s not going to take us 79 days to shoot. Of course it’s not. The Beacon only took 28 days. Allowing for the fact that this script is 20 pages longer, it’s all set at night and the fight scenes are more complex, I reckon it should take us 60 days. Which is what we’ve been saying all along. I got out my diary and we looked at the latter part of the year. We decided to pencil in October 7th very faintly as a start date, with a wrap date of December 20th. That’s 11 weeks; 77 days. 60 days of shooting and 17 days off in between. That’s more like it.

So it’s fine, it’s all good. Except that every now and then I remember that we still need to raise UKP60,000. We reckon we can start shooting if he have UKP20,000. The Beacon screening’s tomorrow; it’ll be interesting to see if any of the funders we mailed will show up and want to support us. Please. This movie’s gonna kick ass. Seriously.

I sat down yesterday and went through every story setting, writing possible locations next to each. This morning I went through it again and noted down the colours of light I want to use in each scene. I’ve now got quite a good idea of what this movie’s going to look like. I plan to favour big, tree-lined, American-looking streets like the one with the leisure centre on and Rotherwas Industrial Estate over city centre high streets wherever possible. I’ve always wanted to shoot on a factory site too, so hopefully we’ll set up a recce around Bulmers and Sun Valley at some point to see if we can’t film in their grounds.

As I was thinking about all this last night, something clicked in my head and action inspiration promptly formed. I have a couple of ideas now for what should be quite visually striking action scenes, reminscent of Highlander and classic 80s action movies. Blue light shining through big fans. Bring it on.

The great thing is that this action will be handled completely different to that in The Beacon. That was the kind of film where, when something blows up, the lead character walks away from the explosion in super cool slow motion, a blank look on their face. In Soul Searcher, our heroes will be stumbling away Indiana Jones-style from the explosions, dusting themselves off in disbelief at their own survival, and muttering about how much trouble they’re going to get into.

I also spent a lot of today reconfiguring the trailer over and over again, trying to find a way to get the music, visuals and voiceover to work with, rather than competing against, each other. I finally succeeded and I thnk the result is pretty cool. It will premiere at The Courtyard after The Beacon on Monday – don’t forget to buy your tickets folks (just call the box office on 01432 359252) – and then will be uploaded to this site on Tuesday.

The three amigos drove off into the sunset, towards Rotherwas and other glamorous potential locations. The third amigo was none other than multimedia personality Chris “Whitney” Mayall, who served as note taker, video documentarian and surreal commentator on our journey from Sublimesville to Ridiculous City, USA. We checked out some warehouses and factories, and a cool abandoned Nissan hut, before heading back into town to wander the streets, pointing a video camera at various buildings and going “that’s nice”. Needless to say, we ended up drinking thin cokes at The Courtyard.

To be honest, I didn’t feel like we’d achieved anything, but perhaps it was my fault for not really being in the right mindset. It’s also an unusual experience for me to be directing a script which I haven’t written entirely myself, so as a result I don’t have every word etched into my brain… yet.

It was only when I got home afterwards that I got clear in my head exactly what I want from this film’s locations. Firstly, like I always strive for in my photography, it needs to be uncluttered. Especially on video, where everything’s in focus most of the time, if you’re not careful to keep your frame fairly sparse, your subject gets lost in the background. Secondly, I like uniformity. That’s what I love about Maylord Orchards and the Left Bank Village. Everything’s been designed by one architect, so you get a visual consistency, unlike in the high street where every building is a different age, colour and design.

On the bright side, shooting at night has it’s advantages in that if you don’t like the look of a particular building, you just don’t light it. It also hit home this evening that simply the fact that our actors will be walking through the main streets in the middle of the night with no-one else around will look very eery and interesting. Like it’s a ghost town. Hardy ha ha.

Anyway, it looks like I may have to force some of the locations into the visual style of the movie by careful framing and coloured lighting. I plan to have a very stylised palette for the film; in homage to the beautifully photographed Terminator 2, I shall be adopting a Fire & Ice colour scheme – ie. pretty much every scene will be very orange or very blue. Of course this isn’t just a lighting issue – it also needs to be worked into the props, costumes and set dressing.

The problem I have at the moment is visualising it. I’ve never shot at night in an urban environment, or with the size of lights we’ll be using on Soul Searcher. I’m not entirely sure what High Town’s going to look like with a blue-gelled 5KW HMI shining on it. Still, it’ll be fun finding out.