The Borderlines screening went well. It was a good turnout for a Wednesday afternoon and several people wished me luck with the project afterwards.
This week just gone saw the frantic activity of the pickups shoot. My tiny flat was crammed full of people on Tuesday and Wednesday – including stalwarts Ian, Col and Jenny and modelmakers Beth and Jonathan – as the ceiling mechanism miniature was completed, a full size girder was refurbished and a small section of airship hull was rebuilt.
On Thursday and Friday we descended on the function room of the Drayton Court pub in West Ealing for the filming. Joined by my fiancee Katie, DP Ollie and behind-the-scenes cameraman Gerard, we embarked on an ambitious schedule of shots which would finally render the pilot scenes complete. On Thursday we filmed the model shots, with Lau and Lou’s superb Swordsman taking centre stage. Shooting upside-down proved to be a major headache. I had turned the monitor upside-down, leading to communications problems as directions like “left a bit” or “higher” actually meant “right a bit” and “lower” for the puppeteers. Nonetheless we got everything I wanted and wrapped at the very reasonable time of 5:30pm.
Friday was more laid back. The day involved setting up first the full size Swordsman, then the full size ceiling mechanism piece, then a few other bits and bobs (including Katie, in Isabelle’s dress) in front of the airship hull piece and the girder. The resemblance to the original set was quite remarkable, though of course we had to keep moving the hull to make sure we weren’t seeing off the edge of it, and everything had to be shot fairly tight. The last few shots were quite hurried, but we didn’t drop anything significant and I was very pleased with what we’d done.