I showed the rough cut to my friends Chris and James. It’s also my first opportunity to see the whole thing from beginning to end. (Mind you, it’s annoying that I’ve made a film long enough to warrant a toilet break in the middle of it. Either that or I’m getting old. I’m sure my bladder used to hold up longer than 75 minutes…) For those of you not familiar with film-making, let me share with you one of my poncier allegories. It’s like producing a jigsaw. (Wait, it gets more original, honest…) You start off by drawing the picture on the box – ie. your script. You then have to go about making all the little pieces – the shots and scenes. Each bit takes a lot of time and effort, and whilst you’re working on them, you’re so focused that you lose sight of the bigger picture, in fact you completely forget about it. Which is why it takes you completely by surprise when you put all the pieces together and find that they match the picture on the box. Okay, the film will never follow the script completely, especially amid the compromises of a low budget shoot, but to see your plot there (and my god, on watching it, The Beacon does even appear to have one of those) and your characters developing, and your jokes getting laughed at (I don’t even remember writing any jokes) is pretty cool. Anyhoo, James and Chris made some very useful suggestions, mostly little things – rest assured there will be an “alternate scenes” section on the DVD – but the main topic of conversation was the graveyard scene. Another bizarre aspect to film-making is that something you conceived whilst walking through a graveyard almost 3 years ago, which in your mind makes such good sense and which looks cool with some music from The Rock slapped over it, can actually just confuse the hell out of everyone except you. James came up with a few extra shots I could shoot to sort it out, and I’ll run these by a few other people before filming them.
Directed by Neil
Blog posts from when Neil used to produce and direct his own micro-budget movies (2001-2014).
The Beacon: September 3rd 2001
I can’t be bothered going into the anal details – see Dave’s site if you’re really that interested – but suffice to say we did film the scene of the hostages getting recaptured in the end, though with limited hostages, and an alternate bad guy, who shall remain unidentified, save to say that his newly shaven facial area had to be masked by an M-16. And so ends principle photography. Sniff. Sob.
The Beacon: September 2nd 2001
We were up at 5:30am (well, most of us), and had recovered from the previous day’s hilarious stall by about noon. As it got dark, we removed the sacking that we’d been using to black out the windows, and filmed some scenes outside the carriages. Finally it was up onto the roof for some cliched-but-fun action, with AJ on his injured leg, Josh and his fear of heights, and LJ and her rational realisation that running about on recently rained-on curved roofs in the dark is not a very safe thing to do. We left the site at midnight.
The Beacon: September 1st 2001
The train weekend at Coventry Railway Centre begins. We did not start on time. “We’ll look back on this day and laugh,” Rick, our sound recordist for the weekend says cheerfully. “We’ll go, ‘Remember the day we started at 4:00pm?'” (Call time: 9am.) The reason? A late train, ironically. The guardian of the holy generators finally arrived and set us up with some power for our overly-blue-gelled redheads, and filming went extremely smoothly and fairly quickly after that. Richard Moreby joined the cast as randomly-appearing-bad-guy, filling in for Phil Smart (Sly) who had sadly had to drop out. Forseeing nightmares with the generators, combined with a simple case of having too much to do in too short a time, I had taken steps the previous week to hasten the filming this weekend. Firstly, I decided to shoot everything handheld. This also added a handy train-in-motion sway to the footage. Secondly, I drew floor plans of all the lighting set-ups. Anyway, shortly after 10pm we decided that some attendance at a public house was in order, and took a break from filming. We then came back from the pub and went to bed (in another train).
The Beacon: August 26th 2001
Spent last Thursday afternoon burning stuff at Chris’ house. He moved out of Malvern for good today, so we had to make sure we set fire to some stuff in the name of cinema first. The editing continues, by far the most rewarding part of the film-making process. Things that I hadn’t really thought about since I finished the script are beginning to resurface. The character arcs (such as they are) and themes and all that crap are starting to show through. I’ve just been to see Swordfish, and as Dave rightly said afterwards, it makes you feckin’ sick when you struggle so hard to make a feature with no money, then see how effortlessly Hollywood produces great flicks. Mmmmm, bullet-time explosion.
The Beacon: August 21st 2001
Finally got rid of those damned cars. A very nice man from a scrapyard on Castlemorton came out and picked up the wrecks. Now all I have to do is explain the whole thing to the DVLA without getting locked up. Got me a flat in the Hairy Ford, above the prehistoric creature/woodwork tool pun market. So I move out of this town forever (again) in just over a week. Which is good, because “Malvern is so fucking dull”. Borrowed Dave’s The Rock soundtrack CD. Will be editing The Beacon to this. When I finish the goddamn capturing. (I’m about half way through.)
The Beacon: August 15th 2001
I would like to publicly diss RKR scrapyard in Worcester. They promised they’d tow away our knackered cars today, but on calling them they claimed they’d never have promised that and told us they couldn’t take them until next week. Therefore, in order to get the cars off Madresfield Estate by today as we’d promised the owner, my parents had to tow one of them away – in muchos illegal and death-risking fashion, as the car had no electrics and dodgy brakes – and leave the other there for poor Dave to sort out in the morning. RKR suck ass. And I will defend that in court. Anyway, now that’s out of my system, on to lighter matters. Such as the explosion of Chris’ shed, preceded by an obviously faked photo shoot for the Malvern Gazette. Lynx, as the Soul Searcher website will testify, is by far the most impressively denotating aerosol product on the market. Six cans, two cameras, sweet fireballs. Although I think Chris was a little annoyed that everyone kept pouring/spraying flammable substances all over the shed while he wasn’t looking. Still, we were sadly only able to damage the windows. (Already in a fairly poor condition, due to years of abuse from my various casts.)
The Beacon: August 13th
There are two types of estate. There’s the type of estate owned by some rich guy who has loads of private lands and servants and stuff, and there’s the type of estate where you find knackered cars strewn on the roadside. Today Madresfield Estate was both. The image of a small child jumping on a totalled Mark 1 Fiesta moved out of the ghetto and into the driveway of the richest family in Malvern. Yes, today was the day the teddie bears shot a car crash. Dave donned a motorcycle helmet and took a sledge hammer to the windscreen of our recently purchase Mitsubishi Colt, while Gaz Parkin’s Ford Fiesta was ramped up by the road. Not one, but two cars ripe for destruction. Gaz, who has a reckless disregard for his own safety, had been down to perform several stunts for the film, but due to a spot of post car-accident whiplash, had not been able to help out on the movie. It was in fact Dovey who stepped up to rubbish the brick-on-accelerator method of crash achievement, offering instead to drive the car to its doom himself. Twice. Once without a seatbelt. Still, he survived, which is more than can be said for the cars. Mmmm, destruction. We then filmed two hasty shots with a dummy, before sweeping up all the glass, ripping anything useful out of the cars, and zooming off to the “wrap” party. And I lost at Trivial Pursuit. Pants.
The Beacon: August 12th
I didn’t write the scene. Until just before we started shooting. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. The van became a Jeep Cherokee – complete with US licence plate circa 1979 – and the hollow-camera-contains-gun shot had to be dropped, but I did write in a death by clapperboard, with cheesy post-homicidal quip and seventies zoom. When we arrived it was pouring with rain, but after determinedly setting up some gear, it dried up, leaving bad grey skies. I’m going to LA next month to shoot stock footage; I just hope the weather matches. We did four gunshot effects – one of which, featuring my good friend Matt Hodges, writer of Cow Trek – took three attempts to work. We also shot some very cool little fights, with Simon finally finding a martial artist who lived up to his exacting standards, in the form of David Sheppard. After being killed off as short-lived bad guy Tate, David reappeared as two entirely different US Marines, whose fates were equally terminal. The light was fading by the time we finished (NOT 6pm, as scheduled), and we ended up getting a pick-up shot dropped earlier in the day in quite obvious darkness, like yesterday. A reshoot some time, I guess. I’m so very, very tired. And tomorrow, it’s the end.
The Beacon: August 11th
Mostly fighting. Simon Wyndham had to dress up as John for a couple of shots, which was quite amusing, but not as amusing as the dummy of John which had to be rigged up for the final sequence. We were losing the light as we attached the mannequin Scotsman to the tracking dolly, and pushed it unconvincingly towards a shed. You’ll understand why when you see the film. We were also supposed to do an explosion in the shed, but after two failed attempts, it was too dark to try again. I guess there’ll be something in the diary for next week after all. Anyway, you’ll have to excuse me as I have to go away and write tomorrow’s scene.