The Beacon: July 16th

For the most part disastrous. You’d think, would you not, that finding somewhere on the Malvern Hills that you could slide down on a piece of cardboard would be fairly easy. But oh no. The two locations I had planned, and several others that I hadn’t, were not steep enough, or too rocky, or the grass was too long, or too short. We borrowed some unused shop window dummies from a department store for the Sarah-and-Cameron-fly-off-rocks-over-hostages stunt, but after much chin scratching and some lame dummy-chucking, we succeeded only in breaking one of the plastic people’s legs. The production assistants, Sarah, Geraint and Simon, then had the unenviable task of returning the generously-lent mannequins, and apparently witnessed a rather frightening degree of upset on the face of the shop assistant. (I understand allegations were later made as to the nature of this man’s relationship with the dummies.) It was 4pm by the time we actually got going, having hiked all round the hills filming odd shots of LJ and John MacLachlan (Cameron) sliding very short distances over unsuitable ground. We finally found a section of path steep and smooth enough to permit cardboarding, and used it over and over again in the Back To The Future stylee. Injuries were sustained when extra Leigh was assigned to dive on LJ when she reached a certain point on the path, beyond which death was probable. Leigh managed to split his lip in the dive, and kick LJ in the jaw, giving her a headache for the rest of the day. Being the tough, uncompromising director that I am (cough), I got her to repeat the slide many, many times – this time with her being responsible for her own cessation of motion. We also gaffa-taped the camera to one of the cardboard sledges and I slid down on my arse next to it to get those dynamic POVs. So it was all worth it in the end, but I should have tried it all out beforehand. I’ll probably schedule in another day to shoot more cardboard chasing.

The Beacon: July 16th