Q:How many council workers does it take to tell you when they’re changing a light bulb?

A: Six.

Yes, six different people I was transferred to until I finally found someone who could tell me when the Christmas lights go up in town. (October 26th, if you’re that interested.) Armed with that information I was able to draft up a shooting schedule, using eight pieces of paper sellotaped together, divided into a grid of days and weeks. Somewhere near the beginning of this journal is the tale of a humourous evening early in SS development when James and I decided we needed about 80 days to shoot this movie. We in fact need only 36. Which just goes to show how wrong you can be when you’re me.

So what else has been going on? Oh, mostly chasing-up people, making phone calls, posting letters – that kind of caper. It’s getting very tedious now. I wish pre-production was over. Or at least that we could get onto the interesting stuff, like tech scouts and rehearsals. But no, first we have to make lots of lists and tick everything off those lists.

Yep, it’s just five and a half weeks to go. That scared me when I realised. The truth is that none of what we have left to sort out is difficult, or even that time consuming. It’s just bitty and somewhat annoying. What I don’t understand is how I managed to do ALL of this myself two years ago on The Beacon, without a producer, location manager, props manager or anybody like that.

James and I met this evening at The Courtyard (fancy that), where we were served by Dido, who was also singing over the PA system. I was impressed. Anyway, we worked out what needed doing next. Our primary concern is to get the locations locked, especially since Simon’s going to be choreographing the fight scenes in a couple of weeks and he still hasn’t seen two of the key locations.

I just finished making the calls to the actors and actresses we’ve picked for the parts – more details on them to come during the week. Big thanks to everyone who attended the auditions, Ben at Babelfish for putting up with people coming through his office every half hour for two days, and Matt Manning and Dave Abbott for helping me out.

James and I met Ian Tomlinson today, who is going to be taking on some of the props work alongside Jenni Gregory. We spent a couple of hours (at the gloriously sunny but annoyingly windy Courtyard) going through the script and listing all the props we’ll need.

As James said to me earlier today, it seems like the film was meant to happen this year rather than last, as things seem to be coming together so well. We’ve heard from Movie Mail, the Hereford-based mail order distributor of videos and DVDs, that they want to talk to us about selling copies of Soul Searcher. We’re also booked in for Borderlines, Herefordshire’s brand new film festival, in March 2004, to screen an extended trailer and generally big up the movie. All this makes getting cooperation from location owners and the like a lot easier, since we’ve got a guaranteed audience.

Yesterday I took Simon Wyndham to about half of the fight scene locations, talking him through the scenes and providing him with copies of my virtually indecipherable storyboards.

Simon Ball and James are setting up the auditions for next week. Apologies to all those who applied and haven’t been asked to audition.

What the hell was that? It sounded like a number of small explosions immediately outside my flat. Blimey. I think it must have been fireworks.

The production is now at the spending-a-lot-of-time-on-the-phone stage. Today I’ve been trying to set up recces for me and Simon at the fight locations, as well as juggling lots of other little things. Simon Ball has agreed to arrange next week’s auditions for me, as he did last year, since James will be indisposed writing his book on animated films. Babelfish in Vauxhall have kindly permitted us to use their spare office to hold auditions in.

James arrived at 8pm last night. We stocked up on pizza and coke, then hit the keyboard in our quest to produce the final draft of the script: draft seven. We finished shortly before two o’clock this morning.

The opening scene and the middle action sequence received extensive rewrites, in a bid to differentiate them more from other action sequences in the script. Other than that, our work consisted primarily of tweaking stage directions and changing the phrasing of the odd line. We also found ourselves cutting a fair number of lines, realising that a simple look on the face of the actor could communicate the point without making it explicit through dialogue, We’ve also enhanced the character arcs of Luca and Gary, just by adding the odd phrase or stage direction here and there.

The script now clocks in at a lean 85 pages, and with this firmed up we can proceed to go through it with crew members such as Cat (locations) and Jenni (props) and really start to get stuff sorted.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. Well, what a bulging post bag we’ve had this week. (Note to those of you already giggling in a puerile fashion: you will find no cheap “bulging sack” jokes here.) Amongst the many CVs received so far, special mention must go to the gentleman who listed Jedi Mind Tricks amongst his Special Skills. “You do not need to see my headshot.”

However, this week’s star letter, winning nothing but the pride born of a mention on this illustrious website, is from Al from Durham (and also Hereford, presumably):

Neil,

Them pan pipe toting dudes in high town wear ponchos and if you want to see what a dick people look in them pop in a record shop (if your out of Hereford) and take a look at the cover of Motorhead’s eponymous album. Hope Jimbob gets cured good and quick.

The Poncho police.

Roundin’ ’em up an’ burnin’ ’em like rock’n roll records. Devils work!

Al

Soul Searcher replies: We’re going with the poncho, so there,

James might have glandular fever. He’s going for all these scary blood tests and things. The doctor said he had an acute infection. James said the doctor had a cute ass. He was thrown out. Not really of course – the power of suggestion. But seriously, he’s not a well man.

I’ve just finished typing up a new draft of the investors’ agreement, which I am taking to a solicitor tomorrow morning. I’ve spoken to one Mr. Chris Jones, martial artist extraordinaire, about appearing as a demon and doubling for Joe; he and Simon Wyndham will be coming to Hereford soon for a grand tour of the locations. Their plan is then to shoot blocking tapes in the gym Chris owns oop North.

I’m having second thoughts about Dante’s poncho. Why would anyone wander about the streets at night wearing a poncho? (Note: this is a cowboy-style poncho, not a yellow-plastic-waterproof-style poncho.) Maybe I’m just getting cold feet now that I know that someone is going to start making it any day and then it’ll be too late to change my mind.

Doodies. Cajun chicken sandwiches. Coffee. (Like a reverse timelapse film of a faded curtain, a pattern is emerging.)

On tonight’s agenda were: 1. the contract letter for investors, which we decided to take to a solicitor to be on the safe side; 2. casting, which I will be putting a call out for in the next few days; 3. the script, for which we will meet on Saturday evening to produce a final draft.

I spoke to several potential prop/costume makers who had replied to ads I posted a week or two ago. Experience levels ranged from students to seasoned professionals with major feature film credits.

Doodies. Chips. Coffee. I wonder how much this movie would have cost if we’d charged all the coffees and pizzas of our meetings over the last 18 months to the production? Speaking of which, James is going to contribute some cash to the budget. Fantastic.

We were supposed to have a meeting this evening for key crew, but it turned out that no-one could make it. D’oh. I advertised for a props maker and a costumes maker last week, and some solid CVs have come in. The cogs are beginning to grind into motion. So much of the work is already done. The main thing now is to start getting the props and costumes made and to recast the characters who have moved on since last year.

David Abbott, who wore many a hat (and toupee) on the crew of The Beacon, sent through a CG animation last night which will appear in Soul Searcher as a computer game which Joe’s best friend Gary is playing in an early scene. It’s fantastic, and it reminded me of one of the great things about doing a big project like this – getting the right people in to do certain jobs, then sitting back while their excellent work flows in. Much more fun that doing everything yourself, a la The Beacon.