Soul Searcher: January 26th 2004

Saturday and Sunday went really well. Saturday night’s stuff was very bitty… A small scene in the multistorey car park with the weapons rack, which Colin had to make last minute modifications to to get it to fit in the car boot. Then out the back by an electrical substation to reshoot the two dialogue scenes which had originally taken 27 takes out at Rotherwas in October. Now substantially cut down, the scenes were quick and easy to shoot. In fact, I think I spent longer in the car park standing around waiting for people than actually shooting. Still, it did allow me to make two trips over the road to The Codfather (which came second in the Best Named Takeaway Awards after Kent’s Tuck-In Fried Chicken, Dudley). Then it was back to Castle Cliffe to tip watering cans over Ray and Jonny’s heads, under the pretext of filming extra close-ups for the rain fight. One quick extra CU of Kat for another scene and we were wrapped for the night.

After four hours of sleep, it was time to get up again for the remount of Luca’s dawn arrival on the edge of the town. This went considerably better than November’s effort, given that the Mustang actually worked, didn’t run out of fuel, and didn’t need to be brought there on a flatbed truck. Cheers to Jonny for agreeing to get up that early just to drive the car to location for us. After wrapping 25 minutes early (an event roughly as frequent as the appearances of the Hale-Bop comet), we all went back to bed for a few more hours. The evening’s filming was at Rowden Mill, the only problem being that we somehow had to get seven people and all the equipment into the Mustang and Chris’ car. Astonishingly, we succeeded, though it took us about an hour. Chassis scraping the tarmac, we headed to location and moved through the night’s material at a fair old lick, wrapping dead on the scheduled time of ten o’clock. The last shots involved Lara doing swerves in the Mustang on very wet, muddy grass and almost losing control of the car. Jonny was like a little boy when he saw the train, having not been to Rowden Mill before, and was delighted to get a ride in the engine. I was similarly delighted to finally get a ride in the Mustang on the way home, though when I tried to get out at the end, I immediately realised why Lara had been having such trouble with her getting-out-of-the-car shots all through the shoot. It’s a bit like that Toy Story 2 out-take where Woody gets his ass stuck in the roll of sellotape.

Soul Searcher: January 26th 2004