The day before the shoot begins. I don’t feel as if I’m about to start making a feature. I feel as if I’m about to do a short film, have a day off in which to pre-produce another short film, and then start making that the following day, and so on. My grand vision of having everything locked down so I didn’t have to do any producing between shooting days has dissipated. I can’t be shooting a feature tomorrow because I’m not ready. Surely I haven’t arranged anything? Oh that’s right, I did most of it weeks ago. That’s okay then. It’s going to rain. Hell, it has done for the last couple of days. Why should tomorrow be any different? This film is either going to look horribly flat and grey throughout, or have god-awful continuity as rain-soaked vistas are intercut with strong sunlight scenes. Britain sucks ass. And I have no sound man for tomorrow. So The Beacon is going to follow in the fine tradition of Soul Searcher and Cow Trek, and be yet another Neil Oseman film with shit sound. And what’s worse is that everyone else on the crew is going to say “it’s fine”, “anyone can do it”, “look, I’ll hold the boom – that’s all you need to do”. They don’t understand. They’ve not been there. Where are all the sound recordists? Curse you all for not doing my film. But I shall stop moaning now, and think about the fact that two and half years of work is about to come to fruition. The fruition of more work, followed by more post-production work, followed by an actual film. So no real fruition for half a year or so yet. Damn. But I’m looking forward to it. Honest. The guns came. Thank god.