Filming in the rain...

Filming on Monday wasn't a complete success, but not a complete failure either. We filmed the first few scenes on Brighton seafront just along from the Palace Pier, but the climax was cancelled due to bad weather. And although the end of the film is the most complex part, it was these first scenes that I was most worried about. Brighton seafront is busy at the best of times, and we were going to film on the busiest part just by the pier at a time when most people are heading home from work. I'm not a huge fan of filming in public - partly because I keep expecting some official type person to demand to see a permit, and partly because you're relying on members of the public to just be members of the public, not look at the camera at all or demand to know why you're filming them.

Ironically we were saved by the weather that later forced us to cancel the shoot. It wasn't raining when we started but being cold and windy there weren't too many people around, just enough to make the scene work. And those that were around helpfully walked through the scene oblivious. Shooting with two units (okay, not whole 'units' exactly, just two cameras) was a new experience and a difficult one - they were set up quite far apart and our actress (my helpful and talented girlfriend, Andrea) was set up even further away so there was a lot of running around. And as usual worries about the time meant that I spent too long working out the shots and didn't concentrate as much on what Andrea was doing as I should've done, but when we watched it back it looked fantastic. Then we moved down to the decaying West Pier and tried to cheat the geography of the seafront to get a cool shot. Then it started raining and we called it a day.

We've decided not to enter the film into the horror film competition - the deadline is June 12th and although it would be possible there's no way I can do it with my current workload - so that takes a lot of the pressure off. So we're looking to shoot the final scene in a few weeks time when I'm a bit less busy, and hopefully with a bit more planning the climax could come out really well.

Also, I finally got some feedback on Hit the Big Time from Jason who plays one of the main characters (and played Garrett in Ten Dead Men). I'm planning to speak to JC tonight and then I just have to work out when I'm going to rewrite the thing. Apparently it got a lot of interest at Cannes though and there are a couple of producers waiting on the completed short film and the feature script which is encouraging. Also JC will be sending me the teaser trailer for the short soon so it will be great to see some actual footage.

And I'm now 25 pages into my first script for Ross. As usual my first act is way too long, but once that's done I'm hoping to race through the 2nd and 3rd and finish the thing by the middle of next week. Then move onto the second script and hopefully there will be a week at the end of June to do rewrites!