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Posted: 2020-06-05 12:00:00

05/06/2020

5th June 

Yesterdays slightly delirious mood was curtailed as we attempted our task of finishing all the filming for Act One of the production. The topsy turvy nature of filming meant that we ended at the beginning of the act. On stage this is a straightforward enough scene- but it’s a long one- effectively 6 sets of duologues with lots of coming and goings. So we soon learned on film it’s a nightmare. Tim playing Firebrace is in it from the beginning- and indeed his face is the first that audiences will see at the top of the film. So we began with him looking at camera and opening, closing eyes and doing some heavy breathing. This breathing is meant to be the noise of tunnelling 60 feet beneath no mans land- when we reviewed the footage at the end of day meeting- it generated much hilarity as we realised the perilously thin line walked between tunnelling a trip to the lavatory. Thin lines.

Tim is still in perpetual battle with every single item in his make-shift studio and curses and berates everything as he goes on take after take of some sublime work. He is joined in intervals by Liam, Sam, Max and then Tom as we methodically take the scene apart trusting Tristan to put it back together again.

Liam joined late as he has been juggling not just this project but a full time job for a college and home-schooling two children and a 1 year old dog, Max has been making headlines with a big storyline in Eastenders and comes in bang on time ready to work, his acting muscles taught from the rigorous Eastenders schedule. Sam too has a full time job and young baby- so we have been scheduling carefully around everyone. Charlotte doing an amazing job just making it all happen at all frankly.

By the time we were done with Act 1.1 it seemed to no longer bear any resemblance to the scene we knew- so can only hope when stitched back together it still makes sense.

The afternoon ended with Charlotte filming the eponymous end of Act sequence just before the men go over the top on July 1st. Even against green screen with imagined explosions and communication done over zoom and dodgy internet connections it still managed to convey a power. It was also the first day for Jeff who plays The Colonel - you can see him second from bottom on the left hand side- his hat and gun arriving just in the nick of time. And James joined from the upstairs room in the flat- he can be seen in the bottom of the screen.

Maddy who plays Isabelle has we heard definitely lost all of Tuesdays work due to her phone failing. So we must now reschedule- and quickly- a days worth of work. So the next few days look scrappy- some key scenes need filming and we still don’t know for sure whether we have all the takes ‘clean, uploaded and ready to assemble in the edit. So it is a race to all this tidied, sorted and ‘in the can’ ASAP before actors costumes, phones and laptops need returning.

Two days of filming remain.