(174) The shoot

Sorry a bit late blogging this, but busy been have I (and not just polishing my one Yoda stage act...)

The filming went very well!

It was a very exhilarating, though totally knackering experience!

We were blessed with great weather (no rain,and good lighting effects from God plc) for our location shots - "Handsome smart suited man running" - ohmygosh! they cast moi!

The team gelled together brilliantly, everyone worked in totally professional manner (members of the public thought we were a "real" film outfit and kept out of shot and even flagged down and turned cars round for us!)

All the equipment, you know, actually worked(!) and we discovered two fantastic new acting talents: The beautiful Mrs S and the sinister Evil Alex!
Move over all you Streep & Daniel Day Lewis wannabes...

We raced up and over a huge learning curve and got it all in the can ahead of the schedule devised by our Director Stephen and Producer Caff!

The time it took to get all the different shots surprised the less film making experienced amongst us (i.e. All except Stephen & Caff!).

You see, fellow scribes, they're right, writing it is the easy part...(although of course, selling it is a right bastard!)

You see, we could only blag the one camera, so did not have the luxury of multi camera takes & whatnots...

However, the day's rough shots looked excellent to me, beautifully framed, well acted, classically lit, etc, but now the precious images we captured are off to be be edited into something really special...when our talented young editor Adrian gets back from Poland!

He had to jet offski to see family the next day!

So we have a nail-biting week to see what all that hard work will look like with the different takes stitched up nicely together over Alex's stirring incidental music...

Really looking forward to seeing our mini-epic on the big screen (alright my big telly!)

I'm really proud of my talented team and the hard work they all put into the movie.
Instead of Goldwyn, Welles, Coppola or Spielberg sized budgets splashed over a vast studio system with huge sound sets, thousands of technicians and millions of dollars to play with, we had the seven of us multi tasking, a wheelchair (camera dolly!), a cellar and a £100!**

But we had fun.
We learnt a helluva lot.
We worked well as a team.
And we got our first film in the can!

** Yeah, I do realise this is twice the normal budget of the average British feature...