Add to friends 7:31 AM Mortus Illumina , The begining
The first few entries in the journal are going to attempt to try and bring everyone up to speed, that way the rest of the journal should flow more easily.
Mortus Illumina began life in September of 2000, we had just finished shooting Deadlights and Ad-Astra (Directed by Mike Peter Reed) (two shorts see photo albums) and i was keen to start on my first feature. I had this nightmare about two blacked out face nun's and i was joking with everyone on the set of deadlights about doing a film about nuns, which no one took too seriously.
After a glorious wrap party for the two shorts, which involved everything from smoke grenades, people falling down balconies and all kind of manners of debauchery taking place (plus more!)! ,I began to write the first draft of the script. The working title for the script was called "Nunning things" and was very much a 1970's Hammer head horror. Over the three years the script has changed considerably, it has involved into quite a deep supernatural/Faustian thriller. When I finish the film I will post the original script just so you can see how much it has changed!
Moving onto the film itself, the first shoot took place in April of 2001 at Rainthorpe Hall in Norfolk a 16th century country house. The shoot was badly budgeted and badly planned to be honest. mainly down to lack of inexperience at this sort of scale, but the main bugger was,we were originally meant to be filming at a castle near by, but we lost that location 4 days before we were meant to shoot! Amazingly we found Rainthorpe hall in 4 days and sealed permission to shoot their in that period! mainly thanks to Steve the production manager on MI.
With 4 days to the run up to the shoot, we didnt have time to pre recce the location which added to the delay, plus we lost a day on the shoot waiting for an electrician to install a distribution box so we could plug in our lights! . Also to note at this stage the script was still in its hammer head horror mode.
For 9 days we battled against the elements! but through all this there is one night of shooting that really sticks out, and that is the car shoot. (see photos in MI first shoot) This was one of the first scenes to be written and is why the film has a 1940's feel to it, when you see the final scene in the film you'll see why it wouldnt work in a ford escort!
The reason this bit of shooting sticks out in my mind is firstly to contradict Robert Rodrgiuez (anyone who has visited the discussion board on www.exposure.co.uk will know that i have a real nemesis thing going on with Rodriguez) Rodriguez in his book Rebel without a crew says you can call yourself a filmmaker even before you have set anywhere near a camera, which i for one has always thought as b*llocks. Even though i had directed two shorts before, produced another short , it was not until after i had filmed the car shoot that i was happy to call myself a filmmaker and a director. Here is why;
The shoot was planned for early evening on the fifth day of shooting. The car turned up in time (we had agreed to hire it for the definition of a few hours) The afternoon had been spentm getting the lights in place (see photos) for the car outside the house. actors were in costume and make up, all we were waiting to do was for the sun to go down so we could crack on with filming the scene, but then it rained.......
Being on a low budget we could only afford to hire internal lights, which we were using outside, Myself and the DOP watched in dismay as the rain began in small showers, stopped and then started again. By about 9 pm it seemed the rain had stopped long enough to actually be safe to start turning over the camera and fire up the lights.
The moment we got outside and fired up the lights and camera rolling, bang! The heavens opened again before camera rolling could be called. All the lights were taken from their stands and bought into the hall of the house, the crew and cast huddled up in the library (see photos of first shoot ) and sat round the fireplace.
By now it was about 11pm amazingly the people who lent us the car were still happy bunnies as we served up dinner (pasta with a cold tomato - dont ask!). It was now rolling onto about 11pm crunch time.
It was still raining heavily outside, talking with the DOP it was a case of do we call the shoot off , or continue to wait for a break in the clouds which didn't look like it would appear. (nb. if we had external lights it wouldnt of been so much of a problem) we came to the conclusion that come midnight would be the crunch for the decision,
Midnight came and we decided sod it, we will go for it! I dont want to get into safety to much here otherwise this first entry in my journal would go on for ever, but we decided to take a risk WHICH WAS CALCULATED and the risk would be carried by two people, myself and the DOP)! We would shoot no matter what.
To do this we first needed to get every bit of our lighting kit bone dry. This is where everyone really began to come together as a team. Every hair dryer, heater or anything that produced heat was bought into the hall with the lights and everyone did their fair share of drying out the lights.
The next step in this plan was to move the lights and kit back outside and keep them covered as much as possible , so everyone (cast, crew etc) were outside standing over the kit in two's covering the lights with plastic sheeting, ready to remove them at that crucial moment. Once the DOP and lighting director had gone round checking and hooking all the lights up, the sheeting was removed, the cast and crew moved well back and the DOP hit the switch.
Due to the external/internal issue once the lights were on, they were staying on. Next was to come up with a human cover for the camera (ie people covering the camera with umbrellas, plus monitor etc,etc) next was to establish a coffee train to keep hot drinks constantly flowing to the guys and girls outside, next was to do redo all the make up on the actors which had now faded, next was all the jiggin that always has to take place before a shoot, this included gels (which needed to be literally bolted down to withstand the rain and the wind) , light jigging, (we had to use someone car headlights to kill an extra bit of spill we couldnt cover with lights), the car in the shot had to be jacked up (something we did not for see luckily the guys with the car helped out here) camera moved into position and shot blocked, sound moved into place , clapper loaded and by about 1/4 to 2 in the morning we were ready to go for the first shoot in that scene.
Over the next 5 hours, the battle between 5ylac and the elements was fort. When the wind blew down a flag stand , there was a 5YLAC'r to pick it up, when the rain soaked an actor , there was a 5YLAC'r ready with a warm cup of coffee and a coat! It was a really nice case of everyone pulling together and working as a team.
As the sun began to came up the next morning, the scene was well and truly in the can, the battle between 5YLAC and the elements had been won! As the car owners drove off (amazingly still happy) and the cast and crew retired to the yawning tent for a few games of scrabble. I retired to another tent.
Absolutely soaked to the skin I made a mistake of putting my hat in the microwave to try and dry it out forgetting their was metal in it (see again photos from the first shoot of my beloved hat!). After watching my beloved hat go up in smoke, I switched on one of the redheads(lights) pulled a chair in front of it and dozed off. As the heat of the light dried out my clothes and after i got my couple of hours sleep before the next days shooting schedule began, then I was happy to call myself a filmmaker and a director.
Following on from the first shoot, seeing the footage we had shot i did the first major rewrite of the script taking out the hammer head horror aspect and concentrating more on the faustian side, my reason for doing this was the quality we had hit from the first shoot. To do justice to this the story in my opinion needed to change.
It wouldnt be until September 2001 that the next shoot would take place. In between that i faced near bankruptcy and the stress from that ended up putting us in a back of an ambulance! but by September this was all forgotten and we were ready to shoot the next bit of MI!
The organization this time around was a 1000% superior, in fact looking back I think it is the most organized shoot we have done to date. But take note! , though the organization was good, unfortunately some of the elements werent. Some out of our control others which we would learn from next time around. To give an example we had a good plan for catering , but in the end the catering was pants , not down to the planning or organization just the elements. The biggest let down was the getting everyone home bit, which spiraled the budget (which up and to this point had been under control) way out of control. This was due to unforeseen circumstance, though a contingency was in place the unforeseen circumstances totally blew that out of the water too.
The shoot took place at a RSPB Nature reserve, in Kings Lynn (see MI second shoot photo album), for me personally the run up to the shoot was a nightmare. At the time i was working at an American Investment bank. The week leading up to the shoot was that of September 11th. On one level depsite the obvious dramatic effect i ended up having to work past midnight every day that week, after a week of doing similar hours for a totally different reason. To say I was shattered both physically and mentally for the shoot is an understatement.
Also the whole incident of September 11th effected people in many different ways, there wasnt the usual bubble of energy at the start of the shoot. Remember the 5YLAC vs the Weather from the first shoot ? well the weather would seriously take its revenge on this shoot. gale force winds, torrential rain all into the mix. Two days after we had finished filming the whole location and the camp site we were staying on were destroyed by flooding! Welcome to the beach of death!
Which is quite appropriate really, as the beach is our background for the deadlights world in the story, a bleak and ever changing landscape ruled by Veil (pronounced VALE) and occupied by lost souls. Thanks to the weather we got some great atmos into our shots which really help set the mood.
One star who shines (brightest amongst many! )from that shoot is James Butler our mixer (www.vobine.co.uk) . Amazingly through all this torrential rain and gale force winds we have perfectly clear audio, also his amazing Tardis of a bonnet contains every bit of kit you can imagine!
Another hero of the shoot was my Trusty American Dodge 1984 RAM Mini Van (mini A-team van) which unfortunately I had to get rid of this year (RIP). Whilst a pain on the fuel guage driving around surburbia ( it would depressingly go down fast ), on the motorway it was King! ideal for that motorway trip from London to King's Lynn. Plus, it served as a much needed sheltered area on the beach for Make up , costume , catering and most importantly for the cast and crew to jump in the back to keep out of the elements! Also thanks to be carpeted inside it was also my digs for the nights, though, lesson learned make sure you leave a window open!
Note in the photographs (MI Second shoot) how well everyone is wrapped up, this was a lesson learnt from the first shoot. Before the shoot i prepared a document called "how to be a happy surf bunny" which basically was a step by step guide dealing with what to wear , how to deal with everything from exposure to the elements and anything else you can imagine to being out in a environment (do not be fooled by the sunshine in the photos!) like this. It payed off. the people who followed the document (which was the majority) were in deed happy surf bunnys.
You might also notice that by magic my hat which I burnt in the microwave has reappeared! Unfortunately that is not quite the case. My first cap i had owned since i was 15, it has been on many adventures and mis-adventure's most notably where i had to carry 9 1/2 stone over dartmoor in appalling conditions, plus my times i have worn it over Salisbury Plaines, Billingsbry and many a film shoot. It was an absolute perfect fit and i have to confess i cant remember where it originally came from. The hat on the beach was an attempt at a replacement and it just didnt fit right L. I have had many attempts of finding a replacement since but have yet to find a perfect match :-(
One final thing on the beach is you might notice the megaphone, kept closely by my side at all times after threats by various members of cast and crew to steal the batteries! One of the disappointing things though, in gale force winds it turned out to be immensely practical which took away all the fun really :-(
The next shoot for MI, would take place in April 2002 the main reason for the gap for shooting this time round was purely down to the British winter and the short days.
In the beginning of 2002, All was in place to get the film finished by the end of the year, well that was the plan and as you will read, that all went a bit pear shaped to save the least!
January and February had mainly been spent tying down locations, taking on extra cast and crew and planning for the two imminent shoots. That being the London shoot and the Chapel shoot. Originally the chapel shoot was planned to be before the London shoot but due to location difficulties with the chapel (see later on) it worked out the other way round.
The London shoot in April (MI_Third Shoot album) without doubt was the most successful shoot of the film so far, though it did have a very rocky beginning!
Our first location for the London shoot was a cemetery in Richmond, we had arranged permission from the council and had turned up at the cemetery ready to set up and shoot. After a long wait before the gates opened, we went in set up and got ready to start turning over and...... the graveyard manager turned up , screaming blue murder at us.
Apparently Richmond council had failed to inform the graveyard of us coming, plus my exec producer at the time was on a train about two hours away with the paperwork prooving we had permission to film. After much ranting and raving (All from the graveyard manager, she was extremely highly strung!) we managed to compromise and we agreed to film in a very disused and abandon part of the cemeterty(in all fairness there was some confusion on our half with the location as well) though her last words to us were "The gravestones in there are old and if you touch one it will probably fall on you and kill you" happy ey! I also lost my sunglasses in her car which was annoying :-(
But after that initial hiccup plus being directly on the flight route for Heathrow (lesson learnt here is always when reconnoitering locations check sound levels!), the shooting over the next 4 days went extremely smoothly.
After the day at the graveyard our next location was over in Stratford east London for two street scenes, the first with the motorbike and the second with Rico and Mary, ill come to the latter in a second but the motorbike you can see in the photographs, was amazingly bought back to like thanks to Mark and Rookie on the crew. The bike had been purchased a week before the shoot and was literally a lump of rust, thanks to another 5YLAC'r spending some days painting up and wacking on lots of chrome cover, the bike looked passable. What Rookie and Mark did though was another story, creating a HT lead from bits and pieces from old refrigerators along with god knows what else they managed to get the bike turning over and running! a huge cheer went round the set when they did!
The second street scene also went extremely well, but a little story behind that. That is the third time we have attempted to shoot that scene, if you look back through the MI shoot albums you'll see the street location present, albeit Marys dress changing each time! The first time we attempted to shoot the scene, it was rained off pure and simple Second time, It was just poor i think partly because of the september 11th feeling, (it was the first day on the second shoot) and also technically it suffered, but third time lucky! (albeit there is one shot missing but no one needs know if i keep quite ;-)) In the promo cut we have of the film so far we have used footage from all three shoots of Rico walking down the stairs in the background, technically it took him over year to get from the top of the stairs to the bottom, blink and you'll miss it.
The third day of the London shoot, took place at a canal near by the Stratford location , unfortunately there are no photos from this, so i wont go to much in detail just to say it was a successful days shooting. Moving on the last days shooting was the bar shoot.
With out doubt for myself and many other's involved in the film this has been the absolute highlight so far , everything about that shoot worked fantastically, especially the crew and cast.
This is also the most expensive piece of filming in the whole film, For the master shot of this scene(you can see the stills in the album MI Bar shoot) which is a 4 minute track around the nightclub, one tenth of the entire budget of MI so far was spent to achieve that shot and it was worth every penny (every penny had been pushed to the max) Again like most thing's in low budget filmmaking it had it fair share of bumps before we got to that point.
Firstly a week before the shoot the band who were meant to be in the background pulled out, luckily the Alleycats (http://www.alleycats.fsnet.co.uk/) stepped in, in return for keeping the costumes from the shoot.
Also for a test, I used a casting agency for the extras,it was clear the day before shooting we were going to have only about half turn up (hence why in the photo im wearing the shirt and waistcoat) But this situation was turned around thanks to everyone in the team pulling together. Most of the extras in the bar scene are crew members and friends of cast and crew.
On the day of shooting in the afternoon every one got stuck in traffic literally all on the corner of Aldgate which was 5 minutes from the location but grid locked for about an hour and a half!!
But the moment everyone got down on set, everything came together like a well oiled greased up nun film making machine. The speed at which we moved was unbelievable, this was also the biggest accumulation of cast and crew on set so far (apx 50 + people). I remember doing the brief that evening. I always do briefs before a days shooting or even sometimes before a specific scene yardy yardy yar and it is always something i do automatically. You plan what you are going to say way before hand and then it is just a case of saying it and rallying up the troops. but i went to do the brief that night and i looked out of literally the sea of people and it was like "wow". it really took us by surprise!
This might sound strange, but i dont really notice what goes on around me on set in a sense..... reason being as a director i have a very specific role on set, my main task is to get the shot. To do that i have to have the entire sequence of shots in my head, then to ensure continuity i have got to also got to visualise what is yet to be shot for the entire film and also recall what has been shot so far. I have then got to remember on top of that the schedule for the nights shooting, plus all those pre-production meetings relating to the shoot such moments where the DOP says we are going to be doing this for this shot etc etc.
Next role as a director is to make it happen, to do that i spend some time with each department and leave them to get on with it, so everything is in snippets, i dont see any of the cast or crew go through make up as im busy with say the sound guys then I dont see the sound guys get set up as im busy with the cinematography guys. Etc etc
On top of this I am also the producer as well which adds another list of tasks into the list. Going back to that Rodriguez filmmaking malarky, to add another point. My first shoot Deadlights in my opinion I didnt direct that film, i produced it and had a chance to play with the camera simply because the producing element took up most of the time on that shoot (very small in comparison to MI). On MI after the car scene i was definetly directing and the bar shoot is probably the only time i have been able to fully 100% concentrate on the directing side. this was down to the fact how everyone worked well as a team. What i will do on a later blog is run through the crew and cast and what people do on set. Some words to the crew and cast that night, Bloody amazing!
Shortly after the shoot someone showed us some footage of the "making of" and i couldnt believe it!
Everything went extremely well that night, in some sense the night's shooting ran itself. We wraped at about 4am the following morning, after the take down it was around 5, 5.30 am in the morning, most of the cast and crew were now safely on there way back to their beds and it was just a few of us left.
The owner of the club then offered us a round of drinks. Have to say that is the best beer i have ever had! Watching the sun come up in Whitechapel!
The next piece of shooting the Chapel shoot (see photos MI Fourth shoot) would take place two months later, filming took place at a secret location in Cambridgeshire.
Finding the church, was an absolute nightmare, In total i investigated about a 1000 different deconsecrated churches, contacted about 500 of them initially, which soon whittled down to about a 150. After further contact with all of those churches it came down to a list of about 10 which soon whittled down to the final one.
It was the biggest amount of work done on the film relating to locations. Why was it so difficult ?
Firstly if we had money and could pay the £1000 to £1500 day shooting fee's im sure we could of got a church just like that, but we dont have that sort of money!
secondly, this is true of all locations is each location needs to match criteria relevant to the production. We had quite a few options to shoot in churches in Wales, but the cost of moving the 5YLAC machine out there far out weighed any advantages. Other issues such as local amenities, power distribution, camping facilities, vehicle access and much much more come into account.
Thirdly, a lot of the churches in shall we say a 200 mile radius of London said no at the first mention of film. The story we got (alebit several different versions of) is a BBC crew who filmed at a church, totally wrecked the graveyard with their kit, to say the owners werent happy is an understatement. As many of these churches are owned by organizations such as friends of friendless churches, and smaller communities of deconsecrated churches, this story has spread like wildfire making filming extremely hard at such locations. but we got our church :-)
Looking back at the church shoot, in some ways it was bit of a strange one. In terms of wantended up in the can, it was definitely by far the most productive shoot, but i dont think there was anything special about it or anything bad about it, it was just a average shoot in a whole.
I know from talking to some of the crew and cast that they had an absolutely fantastic time, whilst others wernt so happy and some are sitting with me on the middle of the fence. Like any shoots it had it's fair share of problems , but nothing really specific sticks out. (maybe time has clouded) I would say one thing though as well as being the most productive shoot, it was also the most productive in terms of comic moments, everything from singing and star jumping nuns (thats another story in itself! but you can see a singing nun here (http://www.5ylac.s5.com/fldfiles/SingingNun.mov ) and also Jason the Camera assistant was an endless supply of frank Spencer style amusement.
For the first time on a location shoot i didnt stay with the rest of the cast and crew down on the camp site, which in a lot of ways was an advantage but i did miss out on all the usual debauchery associated with a 5YLA C location camping experience. Eddie sent us some pictures from the camp site of one of the crew members in a field with a horse and a double bass! the mind can only boggle!
All i do know is where i was staying caused a rift of rumours between the crew and cast on the campsite. There was a book going on where it was, bets came in for everything from the church crypt (the church didnt have one!) to the A-Team van and hanging in the bell free(a favourite to lead the book towards) no one got it right im pleased to say :-) a lot do know now, but for the ones who dont, I m leaving them guessing,
I think the shoot was best summed up by a crew member who wasnt present at the shoot, to quote "sometimes on a film you have good days and you have bad days, normally the bad days are forgotten the moment the next good day comes around - the problem with MI is that , as the shoot is disjointed , it easy to look at the last bit of shooting rather than the whole experience as a whole" Tricky one, .
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THIS ENTRY CONTINUES ONTO THE NEXT ENTRY IN THE JOURNAL
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Mortus Illumina began life in September of 2000, we had just finished shooting Deadlights and Ad-Astra (Directed by Mike Peter Reed) (two shorts see photo albums) and i was keen to start on my first feature. I had this nightmare about two blacked out face nun's and i was joking with everyone on the set of deadlights about doing a film about nuns, which no one took too seriously.
After a glorious wrap party for the two shorts, which involved everything from smoke grenades, people falling down balconies and all kind of manners of debauchery taking place (plus more!)! ,I began to write the first draft of the script. The working title for the script was called "Nunning things" and was very much a 1970's Hammer head horror. Over the three years the script has changed considerably, it has involved into quite a deep supernatural/Faustian thriller. When I finish the film I will post the original script just so you can see how much it has changed!
Moving onto the film itself, the first shoot took place in April of 2001 at Rainthorpe Hall in Norfolk a 16th century country house. The shoot was badly budgeted and badly planned to be honest. mainly down to lack of inexperience at this sort of scale, but the main bugger was,we were originally meant to be filming at a castle near by, but we lost that location 4 days before we were meant to shoot! Amazingly we found Rainthorpe hall in 4 days and sealed permission to shoot their in that period! mainly thanks to Steve the production manager on MI.
With 4 days to the run up to the shoot, we didnt have time to pre recce the location which added to the delay, plus we lost a day on the shoot waiting for an electrician to install a distribution box so we could plug in our lights! . Also to note at this stage the script was still in its hammer head horror mode.
For 9 days we battled against the elements! but through all this there is one night of shooting that really sticks out, and that is the car shoot. (see photos in MI first shoot) This was one of the first scenes to be written and is why the film has a 1940's feel to it, when you see the final scene in the film you'll see why it wouldnt work in a ford escort!
The reason this bit of shooting sticks out in my mind is firstly to contradict Robert Rodrgiuez (anyone who has visited the discussion board on www.exposure.co.uk will know that i have a real nemesis thing going on with Rodriguez) Rodriguez in his book Rebel without a crew says you can call yourself a filmmaker even before you have set anywhere near a camera, which i for one has always thought as b*llocks. Even though i had directed two shorts before, produced another short , it was not until after i had filmed the car shoot that i was happy to call myself a filmmaker and a director. Here is why;
The shoot was planned for early evening on the fifth day of shooting. The car turned up in time (we had agreed to hire it for the definition of a few hours) The afternoon had been spentm getting the lights in place (see photos) for the car outside the house. actors were in costume and make up, all we were waiting to do was for the sun to go down so we could crack on with filming the scene, but then it rained.......
Being on a low budget we could only afford to hire internal lights, which we were using outside, Myself and the DOP watched in dismay as the rain began in small showers, stopped and then started again. By about 9 pm it seemed the rain had stopped long enough to actually be safe to start turning over the camera and fire up the lights.
The moment we got outside and fired up the lights and camera rolling, bang! The heavens opened again before camera rolling could be called. All the lights were taken from their stands and bought into the hall of the house, the crew and cast huddled up in the library (see photos of first shoot ) and sat round the fireplace.
By now it was about 11pm amazingly the people who lent us the car were still happy bunnies as we served up dinner (pasta with a cold tomato - dont ask!). It was now rolling onto about 11pm crunch time.
It was still raining heavily outside, talking with the DOP it was a case of do we call the shoot off , or continue to wait for a break in the clouds which didn't look like it would appear. (nb. if we had external lights it wouldnt of been so much of a problem) we came to the conclusion that come midnight would be the crunch for the decision,
Midnight came and we decided sod it, we will go for it! I dont want to get into safety to much here otherwise this first entry in my journal would go on for ever, but we decided to take a risk WHICH WAS CALCULATED and the risk would be carried by two people, myself and the DOP)! We would shoot no matter what.
To do this we first needed to get every bit of our lighting kit bone dry. This is where everyone really began to come together as a team. Every hair dryer, heater or anything that produced heat was bought into the hall with the lights and everyone did their fair share of drying out the lights.
The next step in this plan was to move the lights and kit back outside and keep them covered as much as possible , so everyone (cast, crew etc) were outside standing over the kit in two's covering the lights with plastic sheeting, ready to remove them at that crucial moment. Once the DOP and lighting director had gone round checking and hooking all the lights up, the sheeting was removed, the cast and crew moved well back and the DOP hit the switch.
Due to the external/internal issue once the lights were on, they were staying on. Next was to come up with a human cover for the camera (ie people covering the camera with umbrellas, plus monitor etc,etc) next was to establish a coffee train to keep hot drinks constantly flowing to the guys and girls outside, next was to do redo all the make up on the actors which had now faded, next was all the jiggin that always has to take place before a shoot, this included gels (which needed to be literally bolted down to withstand the rain and the wind) , light jigging, (we had to use someone car headlights to kill an extra bit of spill we couldnt cover with lights), the car in the shot had to be jacked up (something we did not for see luckily the guys with the car helped out here) camera moved into position and shot blocked, sound moved into place , clapper loaded and by about 1/4 to 2 in the morning we were ready to go for the first shoot in that scene.
Over the next 5 hours, the battle between 5ylac and the elements was fort. When the wind blew down a flag stand , there was a 5YLAC'r to pick it up, when the rain soaked an actor , there was a 5YLAC'r ready with a warm cup of coffee and a coat! It was a really nice case of everyone pulling together and working as a team.
As the sun began to came up the next morning, the scene was well and truly in the can, the battle between 5YLAC and the elements had been won! As the car owners drove off (amazingly still happy) and the cast and crew retired to the yawning tent for a few games of scrabble. I retired to another tent.
Absolutely soaked to the skin I made a mistake of putting my hat in the microwave to try and dry it out forgetting their was metal in it (see again photos from the first shoot of my beloved hat!). After watching my beloved hat go up in smoke, I switched on one of the redheads(lights) pulled a chair in front of it and dozed off. As the heat of the light dried out my clothes and after i got my couple of hours sleep before the next days shooting schedule began, then I was happy to call myself a filmmaker and a director.
Following on from the first shoot, seeing the footage we had shot i did the first major rewrite of the script taking out the hammer head horror aspect and concentrating more on the faustian side, my reason for doing this was the quality we had hit from the first shoot. To do justice to this the story in my opinion needed to change.
It wouldnt be until September 2001 that the next shoot would take place. In between that i faced near bankruptcy and the stress from that ended up putting us in a back of an ambulance! but by September this was all forgotten and we were ready to shoot the next bit of MI!
The organization this time around was a 1000% superior, in fact looking back I think it is the most organized shoot we have done to date. But take note! , though the organization was good, unfortunately some of the elements werent. Some out of our control others which we would learn from next time around. To give an example we had a good plan for catering , but in the end the catering was pants , not down to the planning or organization just the elements. The biggest let down was the getting everyone home bit, which spiraled the budget (which up and to this point had been under control) way out of control. This was due to unforeseen circumstance, though a contingency was in place the unforeseen circumstances totally blew that out of the water too.
The shoot took place at a RSPB Nature reserve, in Kings Lynn (see MI second shoot photo album), for me personally the run up to the shoot was a nightmare. At the time i was working at an American Investment bank. The week leading up to the shoot was that of September 11th. On one level depsite the obvious dramatic effect i ended up having to work past midnight every day that week, after a week of doing similar hours for a totally different reason. To say I was shattered both physically and mentally for the shoot is an understatement.
Also the whole incident of September 11th effected people in many different ways, there wasnt the usual bubble of energy at the start of the shoot. Remember the 5YLAC vs the Weather from the first shoot ? well the weather would seriously take its revenge on this shoot. gale force winds, torrential rain all into the mix. Two days after we had finished filming the whole location and the camp site we were staying on were destroyed by flooding! Welcome to the beach of death!
Which is quite appropriate really, as the beach is our background for the deadlights world in the story, a bleak and ever changing landscape ruled by Veil (pronounced VALE) and occupied by lost souls. Thanks to the weather we got some great atmos into our shots which really help set the mood.
One star who shines (brightest amongst many! )from that shoot is James Butler our mixer (www.vobine.co.uk) . Amazingly through all this torrential rain and gale force winds we have perfectly clear audio, also his amazing Tardis of a bonnet contains every bit of kit you can imagine!
Another hero of the shoot was my Trusty American Dodge 1984 RAM Mini Van (mini A-team van) which unfortunately I had to get rid of this year (RIP). Whilst a pain on the fuel guage driving around surburbia ( it would depressingly go down fast ), on the motorway it was King! ideal for that motorway trip from London to King's Lynn. Plus, it served as a much needed sheltered area on the beach for Make up , costume , catering and most importantly for the cast and crew to jump in the back to keep out of the elements! Also thanks to be carpeted inside it was also my digs for the nights, though, lesson learned make sure you leave a window open!
Note in the photographs (MI Second shoot) how well everyone is wrapped up, this was a lesson learnt from the first shoot. Before the shoot i prepared a document called "how to be a happy surf bunny" which basically was a step by step guide dealing with what to wear , how to deal with everything from exposure to the elements and anything else you can imagine to being out in a environment (do not be fooled by the sunshine in the photos!) like this. It payed off. the people who followed the document (which was the majority) were in deed happy surf bunnys.
You might also notice that by magic my hat which I burnt in the microwave has reappeared! Unfortunately that is not quite the case. My first cap i had owned since i was 15, it has been on many adventures and mis-adventure's most notably where i had to carry 9 1/2 stone over dartmoor in appalling conditions, plus my times i have worn it over Salisbury Plaines, Billingsbry and many a film shoot. It was an absolute perfect fit and i have to confess i cant remember where it originally came from. The hat on the beach was an attempt at a replacement and it just didnt fit right L. I have had many attempts of finding a replacement since but have yet to find a perfect match :-(
One final thing on the beach is you might notice the megaphone, kept closely by my side at all times after threats by various members of cast and crew to steal the batteries! One of the disappointing things though, in gale force winds it turned out to be immensely practical which took away all the fun really :-(
The next shoot for MI, would take place in April 2002 the main reason for the gap for shooting this time round was purely down to the British winter and the short days.
In the beginning of 2002, All was in place to get the film finished by the end of the year, well that was the plan and as you will read, that all went a bit pear shaped to save the least!
January and February had mainly been spent tying down locations, taking on extra cast and crew and planning for the two imminent shoots. That being the London shoot and the Chapel shoot. Originally the chapel shoot was planned to be before the London shoot but due to location difficulties with the chapel (see later on) it worked out the other way round.
The London shoot in April (MI_Third Shoot album) without doubt was the most successful shoot of the film so far, though it did have a very rocky beginning!
Our first location for the London shoot was a cemetery in Richmond, we had arranged permission from the council and had turned up at the cemetery ready to set up and shoot. After a long wait before the gates opened, we went in set up and got ready to start turning over and...... the graveyard manager turned up , screaming blue murder at us.
Apparently Richmond council had failed to inform the graveyard of us coming, plus my exec producer at the time was on a train about two hours away with the paperwork prooving we had permission to film. After much ranting and raving (All from the graveyard manager, she was extremely highly strung!) we managed to compromise and we agreed to film in a very disused and abandon part of the cemeterty(in all fairness there was some confusion on our half with the location as well) though her last words to us were "The gravestones in there are old and if you touch one it will probably fall on you and kill you" happy ey! I also lost my sunglasses in her car which was annoying :-(
But after that initial hiccup plus being directly on the flight route for Heathrow (lesson learnt here is always when reconnoitering locations check sound levels!), the shooting over the next 4 days went extremely smoothly.
After the day at the graveyard our next location was over in Stratford east London for two street scenes, the first with the motorbike and the second with Rico and Mary, ill come to the latter in a second but the motorbike you can see in the photographs, was amazingly bought back to like thanks to Mark and Rookie on the crew. The bike had been purchased a week before the shoot and was literally a lump of rust, thanks to another 5YLAC'r spending some days painting up and wacking on lots of chrome cover, the bike looked passable. What Rookie and Mark did though was another story, creating a HT lead from bits and pieces from old refrigerators along with god knows what else they managed to get the bike turning over and running! a huge cheer went round the set when they did!
The second street scene also went extremely well, but a little story behind that. That is the third time we have attempted to shoot that scene, if you look back through the MI shoot albums you'll see the street location present, albeit Marys dress changing each time! The first time we attempted to shoot the scene, it was rained off pure and simple Second time, It was just poor i think partly because of the september 11th feeling, (it was the first day on the second shoot) and also technically it suffered, but third time lucky! (albeit there is one shot missing but no one needs know if i keep quite ;-)) In the promo cut we have of the film so far we have used footage from all three shoots of Rico walking down the stairs in the background, technically it took him over year to get from the top of the stairs to the bottom, blink and you'll miss it.
The third day of the London shoot, took place at a canal near by the Stratford location , unfortunately there are no photos from this, so i wont go to much in detail just to say it was a successful days shooting. Moving on the last days shooting was the bar shoot.
With out doubt for myself and many other's involved in the film this has been the absolute highlight so far , everything about that shoot worked fantastically, especially the crew and cast.
This is also the most expensive piece of filming in the whole film, For the master shot of this scene(you can see the stills in the album MI Bar shoot) which is a 4 minute track around the nightclub, one tenth of the entire budget of MI so far was spent to achieve that shot and it was worth every penny (every penny had been pushed to the max) Again like most thing's in low budget filmmaking it had it fair share of bumps before we got to that point.
Firstly a week before the shoot the band who were meant to be in the background pulled out, luckily the Alleycats (http://www.alleycats.fsnet.co.uk/) stepped in, in return for keeping the costumes from the shoot.
Also for a test, I used a casting agency for the extras,it was clear the day before shooting we were going to have only about half turn up (hence why in the photo im wearing the shirt and waistcoat) But this situation was turned around thanks to everyone in the team pulling together. Most of the extras in the bar scene are crew members and friends of cast and crew.
On the day of shooting in the afternoon every one got stuck in traffic literally all on the corner of Aldgate which was 5 minutes from the location but grid locked for about an hour and a half!!
But the moment everyone got down on set, everything came together like a well oiled greased up nun film making machine. The speed at which we moved was unbelievable, this was also the biggest accumulation of cast and crew on set so far (apx 50 + people). I remember doing the brief that evening. I always do briefs before a days shooting or even sometimes before a specific scene yardy yardy yar and it is always something i do automatically. You plan what you are going to say way before hand and then it is just a case of saying it and rallying up the troops. but i went to do the brief that night and i looked out of literally the sea of people and it was like "wow". it really took us by surprise!
This might sound strange, but i dont really notice what goes on around me on set in a sense..... reason being as a director i have a very specific role on set, my main task is to get the shot. To do that i have to have the entire sequence of shots in my head, then to ensure continuity i have got to also got to visualise what is yet to be shot for the entire film and also recall what has been shot so far. I have then got to remember on top of that the schedule for the nights shooting, plus all those pre-production meetings relating to the shoot such moments where the DOP says we are going to be doing this for this shot etc etc.
Next role as a director is to make it happen, to do that i spend some time with each department and leave them to get on with it, so everything is in snippets, i dont see any of the cast or crew go through make up as im busy with say the sound guys then I dont see the sound guys get set up as im busy with the cinematography guys. Etc etc
On top of this I am also the producer as well which adds another list of tasks into the list. Going back to that Rodriguez filmmaking malarky, to add another point. My first shoot Deadlights in my opinion I didnt direct that film, i produced it and had a chance to play with the camera simply because the producing element took up most of the time on that shoot (very small in comparison to MI). On MI after the car scene i was definetly directing and the bar shoot is probably the only time i have been able to fully 100% concentrate on the directing side. this was down to the fact how everyone worked well as a team. What i will do on a later blog is run through the crew and cast and what people do on set. Some words to the crew and cast that night, Bloody amazing!
Shortly after the shoot someone showed us some footage of the "making of" and i couldnt believe it!
Everything went extremely well that night, in some sense the night's shooting ran itself. We wraped at about 4am the following morning, after the take down it was around 5, 5.30 am in the morning, most of the cast and crew were now safely on there way back to their beds and it was just a few of us left.
The owner of the club then offered us a round of drinks. Have to say that is the best beer i have ever had! Watching the sun come up in Whitechapel!
The next piece of shooting the Chapel shoot (see photos MI Fourth shoot) would take place two months later, filming took place at a secret location in Cambridgeshire.
Finding the church, was an absolute nightmare, In total i investigated about a 1000 different deconsecrated churches, contacted about 500 of them initially, which soon whittled down to about a 150. After further contact with all of those churches it came down to a list of about 10 which soon whittled down to the final one.
It was the biggest amount of work done on the film relating to locations. Why was it so difficult ?
Firstly if we had money and could pay the £1000 to £1500 day shooting fee's im sure we could of got a church just like that, but we dont have that sort of money!
secondly, this is true of all locations is each location needs to match criteria relevant to the production. We had quite a few options to shoot in churches in Wales, but the cost of moving the 5YLAC machine out there far out weighed any advantages. Other issues such as local amenities, power distribution, camping facilities, vehicle access and much much more come into account.
Thirdly, a lot of the churches in shall we say a 200 mile radius of London said no at the first mention of film. The story we got (alebit several different versions of) is a BBC crew who filmed at a church, totally wrecked the graveyard with their kit, to say the owners werent happy is an understatement. As many of these churches are owned by organizations such as friends of friendless churches, and smaller communities of deconsecrated churches, this story has spread like wildfire making filming extremely hard at such locations. but we got our church :-)
Looking back at the church shoot, in some ways it was bit of a strange one. In terms of wantended up in the can, it was definitely by far the most productive shoot, but i dont think there was anything special about it or anything bad about it, it was just a average shoot in a whole.
I know from talking to some of the crew and cast that they had an absolutely fantastic time, whilst others wernt so happy and some are sitting with me on the middle of the fence. Like any shoots it had it's fair share of problems , but nothing really specific sticks out. (maybe time has clouded) I would say one thing though as well as being the most productive shoot, it was also the most productive in terms of comic moments, everything from singing and star jumping nuns (thats another story in itself! but you can see a singing nun here (http://www.5ylac.s5.com/fldfiles/SingingNun.mov ) and also Jason the Camera assistant was an endless supply of frank Spencer style amusement.
For the first time on a location shoot i didnt stay with the rest of the cast and crew down on the camp site, which in a lot of ways was an advantage but i did miss out on all the usual debauchery associated with a 5YLA C location camping experience. Eddie sent us some pictures from the camp site of one of the crew members in a field with a horse and a double bass! the mind can only boggle!
All i do know is where i was staying caused a rift of rumours between the crew and cast on the campsite. There was a book going on where it was, bets came in for everything from the church crypt (the church didnt have one!) to the A-Team van and hanging in the bell free(a favourite to lead the book towards) no one got it right im pleased to say :-) a lot do know now, but for the ones who dont, I m leaving them guessing,
I think the shoot was best summed up by a crew member who wasnt present at the shoot, to quote "sometimes on a film you have good days and you have bad days, normally the bad days are forgotten the moment the next good day comes around - the problem with MI is that , as the shoot is disjointed , it easy to look at the last bit of shooting rather than the whole experience as a whole" Tricky one, .
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