Friday October 16th 2009
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
Prospero, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest
This is meant to be the last day of the shoot. The coast of Pembrokeshire is 250 miles west of us and I miss it already. We are at an industrial estate in Essex at a specialised diving tank trying to get the shots of what happens below the surface with Benedict Cumberbatch and JJ Feild. The tank is 7m deep (easily deep enough to drown a face-puller or two). It’s also surprisingly warm and VERY chlorinated. The little old guy that runs it is sort of an East End Jacques Cousteau – bobbing about the place helping our underwater Camera team. The first thing we do is try to match the colour of the water in the tank to the colour of the water in the sea off Barafundle Bay.
One cold blustery day, way back before the beginning of the shoot, our chief underwater cameraman came on a recce with us to Barafundle Bay. While I was counting the steps up the cliff with very little glee, he took a stroll with his DVcam. When we watched his footage later it was quite startling. The grey sky and grey surface of the water quiet suddenly switched to an almost fluorescent PEA GREEN as the lens dipped under the surface – it was hard to believe. This colour change was extant while filming the boys at sea, right through the shoot.
So here we are, back in the tank, and I’m watching as the divers pour in large cans of food colouring (used in the manufacture mushy peas and baked beans) in just the right amount, stirring it by swimming with their large flippers, to try and match the colour of the tank to picture on a monitor.
[This turns out to be a TOTAL waste of time. In the edit we discover that making the colours so real just didn’t look… well … REAL. Every time we cut to an underwater shot the difference in colour looked more like it was shot in a tank than the tank actually did in the first place. Luckily we use very little of the underwater footage and end up digitally greying the water to match it closer to the look of the surface. Inaccurate, but better. This is one of those great little lessons in filmmaking that I tuck away in my mind for the future.]
While Benedict and JJ get ready, we watch the assembled rushes of the scenes above the water in the Atlantic to try and match performance too. All our minds went back to those days shooting…
Sunday 27th September 2009
Today we’re going to get in boats, take our four stars out into the bay and film them as they try to give their best friend the ultimate gift they can. His freedom. Today we are going to drown Benedict Cumberbatch.
Usually the days I liked best are those where something else (like a stunt, or special effect) takes the pressure to be the ball-breaker out of my hands. But even though the divers will be in charge of how safe the boys are, and therefore what we can or can’t shoot and for how long, I have a knot in my stomach. This is my first film in charge and my stars are about to float around freely in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s cold. It’s bound to be time consuming. Too much can go wrong… And yet it is perhaps the most important sequence of the film.
So, with wetsuits under their costumes, and wearing flippers to make treading water easier, the boys (Adam Robertson, JJ Field, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Burke) head off. They look nervous for the first time.
The dive cameraman has told me that our actors will not be able to last more than fifteen minutes in the ocean before being plucked out to dry off and warm up. This is the Atlantic and we are nearly in October. Then they’ll then need at least an hour before they can go in again. We light a fire on the beach and have tents and soup and towels and clothes ready for this process revolving. But he also tells me that as the day goes on the fifteen minutes shooting-time will get shorter and shorter. When he thinks they are too cold he is pulling them out though. No argument.
This is why there is a knot in my stomach. Though there isn’t much dialogue, filming on and in water is incredibly difficult. Basically EVERYTHING is moving. All the normal stuff like changing a lens, even moving to another angle, just eats away at the time. Fifteen minutes can vanish in a blink – and suddenly the boys will be too cold and have to come out.
The boats are loaded and gun their engines to get around the headland into the deep water off Barafundle Bay. The sea is whipping up into the faces of the actors. I am wondering if we have bitten off more than we can chew. What if one can’t take it and the others can? What if one gets sick? What if we can’t get the right shots to tell the story anyway? This is the ending of the film? It’s possibly the end of my career. Why didn’t I write a film set in a car park? With their usual humour the boys take off their coats. Adam leads them – and jumps into the sea. They follow one by one.
Back in the tank in Essex we are looking at the rushes from that day, roughly assembled into the above surface drowning sequence. The shots really do speak for themselves. We’re all remembering that is really was a remarkable day. Treading water in that kind of cold, in the currents of sea, while concentrating on what they are trying to do was exhausting. And of course that exhaustion worked so well to convey the truth of what the characters had come through to get there. Even some of the hardened crew found it quite effecting to film.
[With all four boys still alive and kicking – I hope it’s ok to reveal that in fact they stayed in for longer than 15 minutes every time they got in the water. In one shot they stayed in the water for over 40 minutes. They never complained. They just wanted to get it done and get it done right. Though they lost quite a few pairs of flippers that I had to pay for… ]
Seeing them drag Benedict back to shore, forming the end tableau, the result of the journey was every bit as striking as I had hoped it would be.
The tank is a different challenge for JJ and Benedict. The temperature of the water being the biggest different of course. The tank has windows at the bottom so I can watch the boys as they take breaths from the diver’s aqualung to stay underwater as Miles (JJ) holds James (Benedict) until he gives up the fight for a life he no longer wants.
By the end of the day the chlorine has taken its toll on them. Their eyes are red and burning. They look like rabbits that have had makeup tested on them. After surviving the Atlantic without a mutter of discontent, they are now whimpering in agony.
With some time left on the clock though, we decide to capture some scenes of the boys swimming on the surface from beneath the water. Except we only have two of them. Luckily, we do have the costumes and the young, rather bemused, diving tank assistant agrees to don Davy’s outfit as a swimming double. We just need someone to be Bill.
It is fitting as a final addition to my CV of jobs on this film that it is me. I delight in telling the ‘making of’ camera that the waist on Adam’s trousers is way too roomy for me and I dive in. As I swim across the tank with Benedict and JJ I’m thrilled to be one of them for a moment. They are laughing and endlessly willing, but they really do look pretty fucked.
Finally it’s a WRAP. “Barafundle Bay” is in the can.
I will see the lads again of course, when we get in to the sound studio at the latest, with a finished cut of the film. But – there’s a whole lot of editing to do first. It’s an emotional farewell.
I get home at last. I have some beers. I feel empty.
Every film maker I know says that a schedule must include getting ill after a shoot, as the body is allowed to shut down. But, having become a challenge-junkie I decide not to give in to this and and go out and play rugby the next day. And break my collar bone.
Only after this does it all hit me. The morning after, I can’t get out of bed. I lie there letting the whole film wash over me. Dozing, I let myself drown in it all.
I get up at 2pm. At 2.30pm I realise that I have been upright for 30 minutes without people asking me questions, without the need for decisions – I seem to be in slow motion.
Perhaps it is just to do something, or perhaps it’s some weird subconscious metaphysical need to cleanse, but I decide that I should get the Land Rover cleaned. The mud and manure are not right for North London. I drive to the local car jet-wash place where the nice Greek bloke walks slowly around my vehicle with total astonishment.
“My God! Where you been?!”
I sigh.
“Wales. I’ve been in Wales. West… As far as you can go. ”
As I wait for him and FOUR other Greeks to find my car under the allotment on wheels, Kelly calls me.
“OK, the insurance claim came through for the damaged footage. We can re-shoot the beach scenes on Barafundle Bay. When do you want to do it?”
“Um… ”
Thursday October 15th 2009
Brody: What day is this?
Hooper: It’s Wednesday… eh, it’s Tuesday, I think.
Brody: Think the tide’s with us?
Hooper: Keep kicking.
Brody: I used to hate the water…
Hooper: I can’t imagine why.
Today is the last day of the shoot in West Wales. (There’s one more day’s filming, at a special underwater tank in East London ). It’s an irony fitting of the finale to such an “incident” filled shoot that around mid morning Kelly Broad comes on set to whisper in my ear that she’d had the call we’ve been waiting for. We have now finally ‘closed the finance’. In other words we can now go ahead and shoot the film. Kelly and I laugh
Luckily the crew have only needed to concentrate on the job in hand. But while we are all fitter, stronger, very tanned (unbelievably) and have found a great rhythm, I can also see that everyone is tired.
The cast in particular have been amazing, uncomplaining and have lead the effort with their talent and resolve. But being together as these four characters in EVERY shot has taken its toll. A couple of nights ago, in a scene where they discuss the after-life while stoned, we all politely waited as Tom Burke gave a particularly long dramatic pause before saying his next line. The camera rolled on and on before JJ finally looked round at him and realised he had fallen asleep in the middle of a take. He awoke at the sound of our laughter and calmly said “Oh. Is it me?”
Last night we shot the last scenes on beach itself. Benedict crying out in pain was truly disturbing. The chilling sound echoed out into the night across the bay.
Not since I finished writing it have I been really alone. I love being part of a crew. But the day after Wales Wrap it’s just Kelly Broad and I left to clean ‘the Manor House’ at Stackpole – our unit base. I found it nearly four years earlier and now while packing it up the sadness really hits me. We dismantle the phones and pack up our numbered mugs. We empty the costume rooms, the make-up rooms, the Greenroom where the boys ate so many odd breakfasts and empty the fridge in the kitchen where we ended so many long, hot days with cold beers. The rare horseshoe bats that live in the attic will have it to themselves again.
Every so often one of the crew stops by to pick up something or leave something with us before they head back east and to their next job. We thank them for all their hard work and hope I’ll have them on a film-set again soon.
I hand the keys back to the guys from the National Trust. “Well, you were lucky with the weather anyway…” Yes. Yes. Yes. We were.
At last – I take down the banner that hangs over the door. I roll it up and toss in the back of my mud and manure-caked Land Rover. It reads “Welcome to Barafundle Bay”.
I pick up Benedict from his cottage and we leave the green and blue of the West behind us. As we drive I start to face the battles ahead – to turn our footage into a film and then get that film released… Fuck. There is so far to go. Then my phone rings.
One of our assistants, back in London already, tells me that Tom Burke was dropped at a train station in Carmarthen and then found that he’d lost his wallet. He has no ticket and therefore no way home. (Over the next two years I will discover on my travels with Tom that this not an unusual event.) Forty-five minutes later I pull off the road and collect him from the roadside. Another companion for my return to the Big Smoke.
“So Tom, we didn’t get to talk much during filming. I’m sorry. I was so busy. How was it for you? …Tom? “
Benedict looks into the back. “He’s asleep…”
“Oh… So what about you, mate? You got anything else lined up?… Hm… Well, lets chat about it. We have plenty of time now…”
Wednesday March 7th 2012
“Having ideas is like having chessmen moving forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Some people have asked “why Mug 7?”
In setting up Western Edge Pictures (and producing Third Star) I wanted us to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I have always hated the waste on film sets. I think we are a particularly wasteful industry, because of the speed at which we have to produce our product. One tiny way to do this, and try and make a difference, was to ban polystyrene cups. You may think it’s filmstock, light and electricity that make films, but I’m fairly sure it’s caffeine. Millions of cups a day – made one second before a cast or crewmember is called to do his duty and so disgarded, or else drunk out of sheer boredom, the cup tossed away, and a fresh one taken to replace it. In over a decade on sets I never saw a polystyrene cup refilled.
In the week before shooting I sent the runners out into the locality to buy 50 mugs from charity shops. I told them to buy a few base-white mugs in each one. Spread the word that a local had come back to make a film, WITHOUT the money that Harry Potter and Robin Hood had had to throw at every problem… maybe they’ll cut us some slack when we ask them to wait with a hoard of other walkers while Benedict, JJ, Tom and Adam trudge past a seemingly empty vista.
Back at our production office in Stackpole, the runners painted numbers on them all, so each crewmember could choose a lucky number, or shape, or picture they liked. We took photos of them to archive our lovely crew with ‘Mugshots’. One attempt at cutting our waste. And NO chance of our endless coffee cups blowing along the shore into baby dolphins… blow holes… anyway you get the picture. Did it work?
No.
We were so rushed, so understaffed, and so busy. Caring for the mugs went by the way side. Most ended up in unit base (still loved – but not on set) and recycled paper cups found their way on to the shoot. BUT – heartbroken though I was – many of the crew took their mugs home with their crew t-shirts. I learned what I needed to do next time to make this work, AND I have so many more ideas of how to make our film making credibly friendlier for the planet, whichever bit of it we’re shooting in. We’d love to hear from anyone out there who has ideas to do that. If we can – we’ll try them.
So – Mug 7, was mine. The 7th is my birthday. And there’s a rather blurred photo of someone’s much loved Jack Russell on the other side. I love making films, but it IS hard, and you have to be a bit of a terrier to try and get things done RIGHT. You just have to stay focused.
Friday October 9th 2009
“Can’t we just light the fuckers here? ” Miles
For nearly the whole shoot we have had the four guys together (as the script requires). This has been nice in one way – but early on we became aware of the problems of constantly shooting a ‘dinner party’ in terms of angles and coverage. On many occasions, with things happening so slowly, I wished the idiot writer, had foreseen this and written a few more scenes with just two guys talking…
Today however, we’re on Freshwater West and JJ Feild and Benedict Cumberbatch have a moment alone together. So, I go off with Adam Robertson and Tom Burke to film some stuff. Our second camera/B crew have been totally amazing throughout – great characters who created their own infectious team-spirit. As well as being the second camera for the scenes of the four stars, they have also captured so many great shots of the doubles enjoying the miraculously warm weather. (In fact earlier on they nicknamed themselves “28 Sunsets” as they set out in a 4×4 to capture the “magic hour” of every evening in the schedule.)
So we’ve run both cameras pretty much all day, every day. Our camera department budget, and most alarmingly our film stock budget, has doubled. With my producer-hat on I had to explain this to our financiers, but when they saw just some of those sunsets they seemed happy… No that’s a lie. Not happy. They just didn’t shut us down. “They seem happy! Let’s move on…” is just what I told anyone who asked about it.
Today I get to muck around a bit though, getting some stuff of Burke dropping little pebbles in a rock pool contemplatively – only to have Robertson drop a boulder into it from behind him. In doing his shock response Tom makes the most hilarious roaring noise – once again proving his comic genius.
These scenes are nearer the end than the beginning of the journey and over the next few days we will shoot some of the saddest, as the shoot draws towards a close. But tonight we film a firework display and the comedy of the camp catching fire. It’s a long night. The hours I spent in the script wondering how we will manage to shoot this mishap are about to be answered.
We are now well into October. The temperature drops. We huddle in the dunes as the last flocks of birds leave for sunnier climbs. Darkness descends and the props guys send a rocket down a wire into the tent, treated with fire retardant to make it burn slow enough to catch on camera. (It still goes up in seconds)
Then we shot the actual fireworks. JJ, Tom and Adam are brilliant fools on and off camera and, as he watches the ill-judged display above them (a section of the script I titled “My Firmament Falling Down” in a very early version) the look on Benedict’s face pretty much says it all…
By midnight it’s freezing and as we pack up for the day and hurry to warm cottages, I’m aware that the gracious welcome of this coast may be about to run out.
Thursday October 8th 2009
“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.” Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Despite nearing the end of the shoot it seems I am still the only one who can draw out cash for the film’s daily expenses. With alarming regularity the production office tell me to go and withdraw about seven grand… sometimes ten!
This is annoying as it forces me to leave the set for half an hour or so, which I dare not do, or it means I race off during lunch – which means I don’t get to check-in with people and our daily problems… and I don’t get to eat! (Our caterers are amazing and I love and NEED lunch.)
Today the call for cash was urgent so I raced into the nearest town to get the money. The first time I did this, a few weeks ago I learned that withdrawing seven thousand pounds on a normal Wednesday afternoon from the Barclays Bank in Pembroke is not possible.
The teller laughed and called other staff over to laugh at me as well. I stood there, dusty and tired, missing lunch, holding open a cotton sack and glancing furtively at my watch.
“Seven thousand!? Here?! We don’t have that, Love!”
“Oh… I assumed, being a bank and all… Uh, how much CAN I have… ?”
At this point it was starting to sound more like a hold up than a legal withdrawal, but with less satisfactory results. After much debate they worked out that if I raided another two branches I would be able to make up the seven grand. They phoned ahead to warn them of my arrival… from another world. Film world.
Anyway – we have learned to order cash in advance, but it still annoys me that I have to leave set today to go into the bank.
While on my way there I suddenly come over the brow of a hill and a rare sounds echoes through the Land Rover. My phone is ringing. I have barely had a signal for nearly five weeks so this is an event. But it’s not good news.
“Vaughan – you need to come on set. The council have turned up and shut us down.”
We are filming at Freshwater West today. A stunning beach where filming for Robin Hood and Harry Potter also occurred. But to be exact – at the moment we are doubling up the location and using the interior of the toilets in the car park (where JJ Feild is meant to have his Rolex stolen by the Angel Boy). Apparently a cleaner arrived. Didn’t know anything about us and called his boss, who called his boss, who sent a man in a van with an order to cease and desist or the police would be called.
I won’t bore you again with the ‘time vs money’ problems of this shoot but suffice to say THIS. CANNOT. HAPPEN.
I skid to a halt. The crew are sunbathing around the dunes besides the car park above the beach. Benedict is in costume playing frisbee with some of them. In the centre of the car park is a Pembrokeshire County Council van. A tall man who is “just doing his job” is leaning against it.
My arrival causes some stirring in the crew. Whatever I am about to do I’d rather it didn’t have the audience, but it can’t be helped.
I walk towards the man, let’s call him Steve… I actually think he was called Steve… So let’s call him Dave, and as I do I try to work out something, if possible, about him, to help formulate a plan for my approach. I am no Sherlock it seems – and I’m getting closer – so, for some reason, with tone that suggests I’ve missed him terribly – I say “Hi there! How are you?”
Though as a desperate producer I am prepared to bend my morals in this encounter I decide the moral high ground is one I’ll try first and I begin with the most abject apology for wasting his valuable time. His expression softens, but I realise he is also now considering how valuable his time that morning actually is, and that perhaps, hanging about in this car park is… well… a fairly normal use of it.
Nevertheless – that I value it more highly than Pembrokeshire District Council intrigues him if not endears me to him.
I shepherd him to our catering truck and soon a coffee is in his hand. I have made the necessary call to our location manager Tom from the car on the way and Tom assured me the suitable permissions will be in place asap. The problem is that there is no evidence at all of this and this ‘Dave’ – not only the guardian of the toilet, but currently holds the completion of the entire film in his hands.
I can’t recall exactly what I said, but I know it was in the vain of Ford Prefect in the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide’ convincing the council Rep’ to lie down in front of his own bulldozer so Arthur Dent could take a break from protecting his house.
I basically managed to confuse the timing of the necessary phone call he would get with the message that we can recommence filming, with the act of our actually recommencing the filming. I was verbally back-dating the former with the latter to make the latter possible immediately, as the former was of course ‘a forgone conclusion’, which therefore made his staying here only a further waste of his time, as we would be already be filming anyway, ‘though of course he is welcome to stay and watch! Love to have him there!” – but it would of course mean that he was unable to drive away to get a signal that would definitely mean he could receive the phone message that gave us permission to recommence the filming, which we were already doing…
He scratched his head. I made fast circling motions with my hand behind his back – the signal to the crew to recommence filming.
A short while later, as Dave drove away with some cake, our breathless location manager (dear Tom Jenkins) turned up with news that we now had the permission to use the toilet and explained how the error had occurred (not his fault at all for the record.) It didn’t matter. We had dropped a few minutes, no more. And the scene was being completed.
As the First called lunch I sighed and got back in my car. Co-Producer Kelly stroked my head. “Well done. Where are you going? “
“The fucking bank!”
“Oh… I’ll save you some lunch.”
As I drove out of the car park again I remembered the words of Douglas Adams, one of my favourite writers; “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
October 3rd 2009
“It’s not your fault. It’s just really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlucky” The Beachcomber
Hugh Bonneville is here to help us do the impossible.
In the film James, Miles, Davy and Bill stop for coffee at a cove littered with flotsam and jetsam. Amongst it they are surprised to meet ‘The Beachchomber’. This eccentric man is one of the characters that make the trip something of an odyssey. He tells the boys a strange story about how he spends his days looking for a lost consignment of faulty, brown Darth Vader action figures. They were swept off a container ship nearby some years earlier and he believes this cove will eventually be the place that they are all washed ashore by the rolling tides. It’s a nod towards the part in so many of us that are searching for something that we may never find.
It’s been a favourite part of the story for most people who have been involved in the development. I love that The Beachcomber gets interpreted in so many different ways. It is meant to throw up questions about what makes life worthwhile. And it’s lovely that the Beachcomber instinctively sees the gentle kindness of Davy, having spent too many years alone with his thoughts, suddenly remembering the value of community, and friendship; in needing people, and in being needed… But OH MY GOD… this little episode is running at well over ten pages and we only have a day with Hugh to shoot it. I brace myself for a day of fighting to get things shooting faster than ever. (The bit of my job that I hate.)
It’s 6am. I’ve been running around a while already trying to sort out the day’s fresh load of compromise when I’m told that Hugh has asked to talk to me. Immediately I think something must have gone wrong. I know his hotel is nice and we haven’t forgotten his breakfast – he can’t have been here long enough for us to fail him in any other way surely? I look around the morning mayhem – maybe he has.
I knock on the door of the green room where he is changing and preparing.
I’m thrilled that he has taken time out to come do this roll. I have been a fan of Hugh for so long. He seems the most ‘natural’ sort of actor on stage and screen with a gift for gravitas and exquisite comic timing – and here he is – staring seriously at the pages of the script. He looks up with an equally stern expression and I am ready for the complaint, in fact I almost apologise involuntarily. Of course the complaint never comes. He breaks into a broad smile, assures me that he is comfortable, happy to be here and looking forward to hanging out with Benedict, JJ, Tom and Adam. Then his stern expression flicks on again and he tells me he wants to talk about the script.
“Oh!” I exclaim. Rather taken aback. I have sort of forgotten that’s my job as well.
I sit down opposite him as he launches in to a detailed question about the meaning of one of his early speeches. Only now do I notice that he is wearing alarmingly small, denim hotpants.
Thankfully the shock subsides when I realise these are half of his ludicrous costume. But I don’t have the time or inclination to over-examine this as Hugh rattles through the ten pages asking if he can move the odd line. Cut a bit here. Add a bit there… He even says that he remembers a line from an EARLIER DRAFT that had a phrase he thinks was important. He’s so right. It IS important. I tell him that he should put it back if he’d like to. A few minutes later, he’s done and I leave him pawing over the words. I walk down the stairs with a spring in my step. It lasted five minutes, but it was the an insight into the incredible talent, skill and knowledge of a REAL PRO. A no-nonsense, business-like, approach to the job of bringing the Beachchomer to life the very best way he knows how. I am so proud to have been the writer (and producer) that will benefit from it and it is again proof that actors are horribly underused in the development of films.
I am determined that any film that Western Edge Pictures makes will have this input from as early as possible and that the writer is always in the room to hear it. And we’ll make damn sure that this all happens long before the actor in question is wearing his denim hotpants.
I tell a runner to “take more tea to Mr. Bonneville straight away!” – she looks at me confused as it’s only been a few minutes since she did exactly that – I just want to give him SOMETHING – and it’s all we have. “And make it hot… or strong or something!”
A while later. We are on the rocky cove. Hugh looks hilarious but the women on set seem suitably pleased to gaze at him. His performance is breathtakingly good. He makes catchphrases of some the smallest lines – wistfully opening the door to the pain and confusion in the soul of this lost man with just the subtlest of gestures and intonation. It’s a masterclass.
But as ever I’m worried about the time. We cannot waste a second today. And Hugh is getting progressively colder and more uncomfortable as a light rain starts to fall and dampen his hotpants. Then something rather wonderful occurs to me. Today nature is on my side and in a way that couldn’t be more apt, she is on the side of our Beachcomber. We CAN’T run over time and it isn’t ME that has to hurry the proceedings at all today – because the tide is coming in.
I notice that the sea is now lapping at the feet of Moritz, our young lighting apprentice, who is holding a reflector at the edge of our ‘set’. He is Bavarian and made of too stout a stuff to even acknowledge it, but nevertheless the Atlantic has decided we should move on and it won’t take no for an answer. I sit back and watch Hugh. He must be tired, but doesn’t complain.
‘Time and tide wait for no man’ and at last we are done. Hugh is taken to meet a train. I won’t get to see quite how good his scene is for some weeks yet. His day on set seems like it’s been at least two.
At this point I’m told that we don’t have a night security guard and someone has to stay there all night to watch the vehicles, make sure the pig is roasting properly for the next day’s carnival scene, then turn on the kitchen truck at 3 am to power the freezers and heat everything in time for the crew’s breakfast. I sigh.
The last of the crew leave. I sit alone with a beer in one hand and my ‘Night Security Torch’ in the other. I sit on the bonnet of the Land Rover looking at the cove. The pig is rotating slowly on the spit – looking at me every 37 seconds as if to say “You think you’ve got problems!”, the seagulls are settling on the cliffs and the tide is starting its endless turn again.
On Adam Robertson
Adam and I met while playing teenage school boys in a ‘Taggart’ feature – his first job out of drama school. I was the good guy, he was the bad guy… our roles in real life soon reversed. Adam is a moral compass. (You just have to know how to hit it when it gets stuck.)
After years of friendship, during which we had both made the mistakes in life that most of the people I find I like best seem to have similarly made, we went for a long walk. On our walk I told him I had been thinking that he should join me in a new kind of film and theatre company. By that time Adam was about to start running a vegetarian food business out of Borough Market with his lovely new wife Anna, but acting and producing had always called him away from the various other businesses and sensible jobs he had done so successfully.
A week later he’d read all the stuff I’d written so far and agreed that he wanted ‘in’ on the company, which we then named Western Edge Pictures. We sat on the South Bank and decided pretty quickly that we wouldn’t make a ‘short’, as so many industry insiders in the UK feel is necessary. We wanted to go straight to a feature.
“Any ideas?” he asked, as we watched the grey Thames oozing towards the sea in front of The National Theatre.
“Well, I have this idea about some boys on a camping trip in west Wales…”
One of the first things I did in writing the story was cast Adam in my head, as Bill.
Adam is a good man. He cares about people and the world equally. His goodness is infectious to most people, and hilarious to me. His goodness has a bluntness. A straight, heavy, indelicate absurdity that no matter how sincerely expressed – I just can’t take it seriously. (Of course my seat in Hell is already paid for, but recognising the humour in his finest quality is at least what makes the character of Bill so watchable in Third Star I think.) You can totally see in Adam’s role, even though their views are poles apart, exactly why the other boys – indeed why we ALL – would love to have a Bill in our lives – and why I need Adam Robertson in my own.
So, skip forward to pre-production. It becomes obvious that Third Star is going to be a bit ‘bigger’ than we first imagined and the producing is going to need both of us full time. Adam immediately stepped aside from acting. He didn’t NEED to be a movie star. The film was more important. But a strange thing happened. The more we auditioned guys, with Adam reading Bill for guys trying out to be James, Davy and Miles, the more obvious it became that no one – no matter how good – was going to replace him as Bill. It seems crazy now to imagine we wouldn’t have cast him.
(It also seems crazy to imagine that we would have made the film without Kelly Broad who we brought in at this point to replace Adam in production. Another lasting friendship and partnership was created there – but that’s for another day.)
Over the coming months the cast was solidified around Adam. And he was unwittingly still providing me with dialogue for the film.
“Biscuits… they’re great on their own – but dip them in tea – it’s a whole other journey.”
A direct quote from Adam in the office that he would repeat as Bill on camera a year later.
That’s not to say there is no divergence between the character and the man. The complications of real life are after all inevitably greater than those of any invention. Adam is also considerably brighter than Bill (no matter how well he hides it.)
He is sensitive and passionate and for all his confidence and bombastic Alsatian pup-exuberance, arriving on set threw him a little. After all our hard work on bringing our first Western Edge picture to production, exactly as we planned to, I noticed a rare uneasiness about him in the first few days. Eventually I was able to ask him how he was doing and he admitted to being a little in awe of what we had achieved, and a little humbled by the opportunity to shoot in that location, with such a great crew, and with such a heavyweight cast. I was amazed. No one could deserve it more. No one could understand how we had got there more clearly than he and I – but where I, thrilled though I was by all of it, had begun already to be frustrated by the small scale, his humility was touching. Where so many men about to star in a film would find their ego taking over – he experienced a fleeting moment of doubt in his otherwise sure-footed stride though life.
Within days of course he was well into the groove. He went up a gear in fact. There are still so many ‘Bill moments’ that make me laugh. And his delivery of the line “Why can’t you take an overdose like normal people?” that he so effortlessly imbues with the innate humour and the gut wrenching tragedy simultaneously, as only great actors can, is just one example of his huge talent.
Any actor will tell you that playing close to yourself is the hardest gig you’ll get. Adam had to get his version of Bill spot on and all the while receiving less care than I gave to the other cast. He triumphed.
We opened the film in his native Scotland, at the Edinburgh Festival. Adam had won one of the festival’s Trailblazer awards fro exciting newcomers and was determined to enjoy the experience “to the max”. I realised, in a rare moment of warmth, that seeing that big-hearted freak on the red carpet in his kilt was pretty much all the reward I needed for the journey he and I had shared. His joy was typically unfettered, uninhibited and honest. Somewhere between an overgrown Hobbit on his way to a rave, and a young Sean Connery – as if shouldering the mantle of being the next King of Scotland would be as easy as breathing.
Long live Adam Robertson.
Wednesday September 30th 2009
“These are for thinking – these are for dancing.” Harry Sivell, most days…
We’ve moved from the coast to a farm/hotel, Giltar Grove, which is owned by old family friends. (I say that we’ve moved from the coast– we are in fact about 500 meters from the cliffs even now, but for a change not actually ON a cliff).
The Joseph’s have been custodians of Giltar Grove all my life. Old Joe Joseph had been a friend of my Dad. I think of my Dad, who died a few years ago, so often of course, but something about being back in Wales and specifically about being my own boss for the first time has made him all the more present in my mind. He was in PR, but would have made a good producer. A confident smile and an acute sense of the ridiculous are key skills for producing.
I used to come to Giltar Grove with him when Joe was alive too. We’d fill sacks of manure with Dad and then stay for drinks and cake in the house. And now, in my many hours of need on this film, Joe’s daughter, Sarah Diment and her husband have turned their home and grounds over to THIRD STAR and adopted me (and the loud and messy crew of 50 who follow me about at the moment.) The extended Joseph clan all live on the farm in various houses or in other farms in the hills around us. It’s special. They are special. And every time Sarah mentions my Dad I can’t help but think he’d be overjoyed that I was here with my circus and them.
The house is doubling as the home of James (Benedict Cumberbatch) and today we are shooting the opening scenes of the film where James is enjoying a birthday, his last, and the arrival of his companions for the coming adventure. The designers have a lot to do to make the party look real… come to think of it… where ARE the designers?
As Benedict relaxes in the sunshine, in his 40’s suit and wide brimmed hat, ready for the first shot, news reaches me that the set designers are sick and can’t work.
Most days this wouldn’t be too bad. They make sure we have the right cart and kit, and they make sure the campfires are lit and sustained, but the coastline does the rest… It’s not too ‘design heavy’. Today however is one of the two BIG set ups. Today they have to design a party and all its trappings. They have to bring a family home to life.
It’s not normal for crew to go sick. It’s not really possible. Everything is too specialised, too dependent on each crew-member being the cog of the rolling wheel that CANNOT stop. So crews are used to being hardy and carrying on. And the designers – the Campling brothers – are tough as old boots and so this is particularly unlucky.
Mild panic sets in. We are working too slowly as it is. I’m at a loss as to know how to fix this and now we have no set! I know we cannot stop, or slow down any more than we have…
As ever Kelly Broad (co-producer in this venture) laughs with me and then sets off to do what she needs to do. She rallies the runners to become the designers. Richard Campling appears from his deathbed to give some pointers and relevant info. I’ve never seen a man look so ill who wasn’t actually in the wing of a hospital where normal people shouldn’t go. To make things worse for him all the info’ he needs to impart is about what ‘party food’ they have a bought already or suggestions for what we should get. He visibly heaves with every mention of cocktail sausages.
We’re going to waste time, but there’s nothing else to do… And then, as Kelly sets about transforming the dining room I hear there is another problem.
James’s sister is played by the beautiful Nia Roberts, dressed by Welsh designers TOAST, and she is standing by, but her boring husband – from whose arms she has strayed in to the embrace of Miles (JJ Feild) is a no-show. It’s not a big role of course, but his appearance as part of the ‘normal’ happy family life is vital.
We cast our eye around the male members of the crew or any passing male from the Joseph clan… He’s got to be a bland, generic, banker type… All agree it should be me.
(I’d like to think this is based on my previous acting experience…)
So – a runner is dispatched to pick up new clothes for me. I run from beside the camera to the makeup department where I shave the producer’s stubble. My hair is given a side parting and I put on some glasses. With the help of the “smart casual” look I am suddenly “Mike… Banker”. It’s horrible.
Eventually the party has been thrown together and I find myself, after a long time away from it, ON CAMERA again.
The scene involves Bill being bored to tears by Mike at the party, with Davy looking on sympathetically. Then Miles arrives…
So we end up doing loooonnggg takes, WITH SOUND, where I am having to ad-lib to Bill (Adam Robertson) about nothing in particular but in character. Being as boring as possible, with only the odd prompt from him if I run out of steam. (While I do this I am aware that the party set design delay has eaten more time than Tom Burke has eaten prop food.)
Now- it’s also relevant to say here that Adam has been one of my best friends since we met as young actors, fresh from drama school. He was my first business partner in Western Edge Pictures and therefore we know each other pretty well.
Take One: I set off rambling about buying wine online. As we make eye contact I see the slightest tweak of a face muscle that denotes Adam’s attempts not to corpse – and I’m gone. We both break into raucous laughter and the camera has to be reset. (Time and film wasted by me.)
Take Two:… I ramble about wine buying and the internet and again Adam is grimacing, looking away from me as he tries not to laugh and again I crack…. and so on…
Take SIX: I feel the giggles coming first and take a sip of juice to try and control it. It works. But this gives Adam the chance to speak. (Adam is a huge talent but ad-libbing, I’m sure he’ll agree is not his strong point.) “And you also collect… shoes?”
I collapse. This time we’re laughing so hard we can’t remain on the chairs and Tom Burke is helpless also.
No-one is saying anything or complaining. I am of course ‘the boss’, (in fact there is apparently a crowd around the monitor) but I am all too aware that if this were not me I’d be getting fucking impatient and trying to get this moving faster.
As the takes roll by the agony increases…
TAKE TEN: Now I can’t look at Adam at all. I am focusing on a point on the table and just trying to speak as dully as possible, trying to actually listen to myself, but without fail I either hear Adam snort, or catch Tom’s face out of the corner of my eye and I’m gone again. It’s humiliating to be exposed as having a total lack of control!
By the afternoon we have moved to the scenes after the party and ‘boring Mike’ is blessedly consigned to history. I am back in work gear and myself again – and trying to get us shooting faster. There’s an Exec from our finance partner’s (Nigel Thomas from Matador) on set for a visit and he can see the problems we’re having getting this film shot on schedule. I’m so glad he wasn’t there for my ‘performance’.
In the evening I have dinner with him in the beautiful, ancient Plantagenet Restaurant in Tenby. Nigel is good fun, but tough. He’s a veteran of many films and talks me through my options. I have tried them all already. “Ah well, he says…”, calm and benign as ever. “You’ll finish the film on time.”
“Will I?”
He smiles knowingly, remembering perhaps what it was like to be in my shoes once and glad that he is no longer there…“Yes.” He says. “ You just… will.”
I’ll be on set by 5 a.m. again, solving problems, but we order another drink. I realise there is a producer’s club, and I’m in it.
I think of my Dad again… He’d often tap his head and point to his feet and say “These are for thinking these are for dancing.”…
September 12 2011
“My @thisisthirdstar DVD has shipped this morning. All is beautiful.” @linnetdust, Twitter
Third Star was the first film we made at Western Edge Pictures. It was my first time being on a film set where it was my name above the door. I loved it. For all the adventures it lead to…
There are LOTS more Third Star behind-the-scenes adventures with Tom, Benedict, JJ, Adam and my amazing crew, but there are also many interesting (screenwriter and producer) forrays cropping up, as I move on to the next films with my team. It’s time to mix in the current with the retrospective. So, just because the DVD is coming out, don’t think I’m leaving Barafundle Bay behind.
I love that this part of my career began with Third Star. The film was all heart from the beginning, sitting alone in my study, and continued to be both inspiring and gut wrenching as we trekked through raising the finance, on through production and right through the release. Sure, it was tough at times, but I also had the time of my life and made so many friends I will have forever. That’s the real joy of the film business I think.
I am posting a link to the ‘shooting script’ – ThirdStar_Script_Draft19. For those who are keen enough to inclined to read it, you’ll see there are some scenes in there that didn’t make the final cut. In some cases this is a shame, in others I’m so glad they never made it. But here it is warts and all. “The past is a foreign country…” I wrote differently there.
Anyway, I know there are some writers following this who may find that interesting. It’s draft 19 which, actually, wasn’t the last but it’s not too dissimilar from the first… long before Barafundle Bay became Third Star…
After getting its premiere as the closing Night Gala film of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in the summer of 2010, Third Star was released theatrically in London and Cardiff on May 20 2011. From that moment the strength of the passionate support that existed from the fans of the film seemed to take over. And we were astounded.
Due to fan demand it was held over at the Empire Leicester Square, then rolled out regionally in the UK and also played at over 40 screens – from NYC to New Orleans – in the USA as part of the “From Britain with Love” program. In many cases it was booked thanks to the fans who followed us via on Twitter and Facebook who lobbied their local cinemas to show the film.
Third Star is a small film about big ideas. We built it on a lightweight budget, but with ultimate faith in our heavyweight cast. The reward for our belief in the film and for the efforts it took to bring it to the screen was in the unprecedented demand from the ever-faithful fans.
I f you were one of them – Thank You. Thank you so much. I can say with all honesty that as a demographic, we soon found out that you are intelligent and actually really… nice. There’s no better word for it! We also learned quickly that you’re really knowledgeable about all the things we really like too…
We have been inspired by you – and releasing Third Star has lead us to develop a slate of projects we believe you will love, and also to find ways that you can be involved from as EARLY in the process as possible in making those films and bringing them to you.
We loved having you around – and we hope you will all come with us on our next adventures.
On Benedict Cumberbatch
There is definitely something alien about Benedict Cumberbatch. This was exaggerated the first time we properly met. He arrived late, he often is, but with the flurry of apology that he means utterly, and sounds faintly bored of having to give so frequently. He was wearing his crash helmet and wet weather biker’s jacket. It was a modern style so had the moulded Kevlar pads and bumps that shaped his body like an exoskeleton.
He is immediately intelligent. He’s on his front foot and yet asking questions. One instantly gets the impression there is no depth to any conversation he is not willing to plumb.
Over the long casting period we discussed with him many times, which of our four leads he could play. What makes him different from most of the actors we saw was of course that he can play so many different parts. Again it’s the hint of ‘shape-shifter’ that gilds his gifts.
At first I was loathe for him to play James (thinking he may play another role). I felt that having become well known for playing Stephen Hawking so brilliantly he would be perceived as some sort of a “rent-a-cripple”… But there was something I needed in James that so few people could portray. And of course Benedict understood it immediately, which is why he is one of the great actors of his generation.
James is a hero. We have to love him. We have to understand why the boys love him and will go to the extreme they do with him… But he’s also a bit of a pompous dick. I like to think this is what makes him believable. All these characters have flaws because we ALL do.
But it takes confidence and belief, total artistic commitment and an amazing lack of vanity for a young actor in his first real leading role to know that he can play this character on the edge of likability and get away with it. Of course Benedict does.
The ability to play these complications is another matter. He is of course just a brilliant actor. All the boys were. For me his most impressive ability, as I have said before, is to be technically brilliant, while all the while looking as though there is nothing but gut reaction going on. Watching him physically train to play James (He dieted, ran the cliffs and swam in the cold sea), and also delve into the meaning of every line in rehearsals, and then plot the effect of his illness on his body and mind as it would be in each scene (shot in the wrong order), while all the while being a joy to be around was impressive to witness. To see it as one performance in the final cut was remarkable.
He is rare even amongst the acting breed. If the character description says handsome: he is. If it says Nasty: he is. Older: he is… Younger: he is. For this reason I just can’t wait to see what he will become.
Working with him was a delight. I learned so much. It was so often easy to see what he was like at ten years old. He’s a giggler, and a brilliant mimic and, like the other boys, he thought nothing of carrying kit up the steps from Barafundle Bay, even after having been on camera all day.
When we cast him in Third Star, his role in Sherlock was yet to make him the global star he is now. This of course did so well for us in to one respect and yet his schedule, by the time we released, made it impossible for him to do enough press. Fame had swept him up. And yet, when we talk, I am really aware that he is enjoying it by revelling in the experience of the work far, far more than any of the perks of it.
One evening long after the shoot he called me to ask if he could come to my home to watch Have I Got News For You. “Sure. Why?”
“Because I’m hosting it?”
I sat and watched him watching himself. He was thrilled that he “got away with it”, that his suit looked nice; that his memory of people laughing at the right times, on and off script, were real. He was edgy throughout and so relieved when it was over. It was strange to see him so effected by it at first– but of course I realised he was having to be himself. Like the great chameleons of the stage and screen, having to decide on a version of himself to go on camera was a risky business for him.
I’m not sure to what extent that was a turning point, but throughout that period I really felt he had to adjust to life as Benedict Cumberbatch in some way – and he found his feet. Whatever personal doubts he had had, that were inaccurate, are far fewer now. Being really appreciated for what he does best has made him happier in his own skin… So he can spend the rest of his life enjoying wearing other peoples.
September 24th 2009
Davy (Tom Burke) “That could have been bad”
Today the crew are assembled to film a tricky leg of the boy’s journey. In the story, having found the going a bit slow, they decide to cut out what may be a day’s walking at their current pace, by lowering themselves and the fully laden cart, down the cliff face on ropes. So we are in the quarry near Barafundle Bay, which has a vertical cliff face that’s used for teaching rock climbing, and a mains power source in a hut that also has plumbing.
The Face-pullers – JJ, Benedict, Adam and Tom – are milling around in costume in a clearing at the top of the cliff. There’s a qualified team of rock climbers playing with bits of rope that will lower them down. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing with the rope but they’re experts and they seem cheerful. There’s our jolly paramedic standing by for this, our biggest ‘stunt’, with his seventh cuppa of the morning, served from the giant kitchen truck, which is within feet of us for the first time in two weeks. And the rest of the trucks are here too and parked on concrete not sand or cow shit. And there’s a real loo! It flushes and everything!
And so – sure – the rope-fiddling seems to be taking a tiny bit longer than normal – but today is already shaping up to be a good day.
No cows. No sea birds. No tide coming in. No boats moored in frame. No walkers sitting in shot painting infantile keepsakes, before going home, having pissed me off on purpose, to eat boil-in-the-bag-cod in front of Songs of Praise! Anyway. You get the picture – TODAY – is a GOOD day.
I go about my business, making sure we are ready for various other things that are coming up. I have a chat with our new Key Grip, the theatrically named, Warwick Drucker, about laying track (that man can LAY –TRACK – by the way. Neat van too. Brilliant. I make a mental note.)
Oh – did I mention the sun is still shining?
So then I go up to the top of the cliff for a gentle investigation into the time. The Face-pullers are still relaxed. And there is some amusement amongst the Rope-pullers. One of them wants to tell me something. He’s a local guy, part-time fireman. Typically handy looking. He has concerns about the paramedic.
“The paramedic?” I say.
“Yes.”
“But he’s great, he’s been really helpful… and he loaned us a quad bike.”
“Well he’s not a paramedic.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He treated one of the crew a few days ago when his hand was sliced open!”
“Well he’s not a paramedic.”
“But… he’s got a uniform and an ambulance!”
“Well he’s not a paramedic.”
I look down that the tubby and affable ‘Paremedic’. The rose tinted view fades and I see that his uniform is a tatty green fleece with a badge sewn on. His ambulance is an old Vauxhall Carlton with the word ‘Ambulance’ stuck on the side, and the whole thing looks like it’s been carrying fish bait for a bit too long. It turns out that this is because it’s been carrying fish bait for a bit too long.
I turn back to the fireman-Rope-puller. “….But…But he… What?”
The fireman tells me that the ‘Paramedic’ is well known to the local emergency crews. He allegedly has his own radio scanner and listens-in to emergency calls. He then likes to turn up first to accidents, especially those involving pregnant women, to lend a hand… He also runs a sex shop on the side… Apparantly the BBC made a documentary about him.
“Sorry. Could you say all of that again?”
The colour drains from my face. Behind the fireman-Rope-puller his colleagues are tying Benedict Cumberbatch to a rope that looks thinner than ever and they are about to dangle him of a cliff edge that is suddenly higher and steeper. I tell them to hold on a moment and go for a chat with the ‘Paramedic’.
I ask him if he is qualified as a Paramdic. He tells me he is not, but he IS qualified as an Special Emergency First Aid Assistant or some balls…. I ask if he is insured. He says he is. I ask if he can prove that. Now. He says the paperwork would take some time to find… I ask if he has ANY kind of credential on him. He takes out his wallet. It looks like it has been used to shovel the fishing bait into the ‘ambulance’. Inside it he finds a business card of considerable age and usage. It has the name of a private medical training company and a phone number so old that its London dialling code places it at least two decades back into history. He asks if someone has said something… I don’t answer.
I take it away and race to the office. We phone the number – it doesn’t exist. We look into how we found him. He had added himself to the Welsh Screen Commision database. We took this as a credential enough it seems. We were wrong. I ask Kelly Broad to find a new medic because the current one is going to need medical assistance himself in about five minutes.
I go back to set. He is still there though a little sheepish now.
“If this is a company that provides medical training that you paid for I should be able to call them.”
He thinks about this rather too long and says. “See, they aren’t so much a company, but an… organisation I started in order to-“
GET OFF MY SET. NOW.
I am shaking with rage. He drives away quietly. I get a bit shaky. I realise rage has been joined by fear. Fear of what happened there, because of what nearly happened – because of what could so easily have happened.
At the office the amazing Ms. Broad has been on the phone.
35 minutes later Adam Robertson is tied to Benedict. They are half way down the cliff because the new paramedic has arrived. He is tall and clean shaven. He is quiet. He has a big shiny Ambulance and a fluorescent uniform. He has an oxygen tank and foil blankets. He has the benign expression of a man who has just washed his hands and can resuscitate a dying woman without getting an erection. He has more qualifications to be there watching no one get hurt than I will ever have for running the whole shebang.
But he doesn’t have a quad bike he can lend us.
But hey – the sun is shining on the Face-Pullers, Rope-Pullers and on Warwick’s track. The smells of cooking from the kitchen fill the quarry and maybe… just maybe we’ll catch up the hour we lost. Maybe.
September 20th 2009
“Satan says to a film producer, ‘If you give me your eternal soul I’ll make sure you’re next film makes $200 million.’ The producer thinks about it and says ‘OK – what’s the catch?’ ”
I’m getting used to answering thousands of questions every day. Until today the first has been ‘Do you want coffee?’ No longer. The runners now know that I will have been on set since dawn. So the answer will be – YES!
We’re on the 4th day of the proper shoot and being the guy where the ‘buck stops’ for so many questions is what I am here for. But – an embarrassing problem is emerging. The crew keeps quoting scene numbers and I don’t automatically know what happens in 23, 69a, 42d…
I don’t know whether they expect me to know as a producer or just assume I know because I wrote it. But I don’t. I don’t like numbers that much. I’ve seen the script move around a bit of course and sometimes, to be honest, I have watched the actors rehearsing a scene and thought ‘Wow. I thought we’d cut that bit’.
Anyway. We are on the cliff above Barafundle Bay. The sun is shining beautifully as ever for the boys arrival at the bay. We aren’t allowed to close the beach, but it’s REALLY early on a Monday morning and the first coastal path walkers have been asked very politely to divert slightly or wait a short while so we can shoot the beach at its – remotest.
We have thrown caution to the wind and splashed out on a crane for the camera. It’s kind of a giant see-saw, to rise the camera smoothly above the boys and capture on film the virgin beach way beneath us.
The crane guy is here for one morning with his wife. I like him a lot. He has a neat goatee, tattoos and the look of a sporty Iron Maiden fan. He has a small, but immaculate A-Team van (always a sign of a great crewman). I naively I ask where the crane is.
As if by magic, much in the way that Marry Poppins unloaded a floor lamp from her carpet bag, a whole crane quickly and efficiently comes from the small van and in no time at all is ready to use.
Could it be that at last, something is going smoothly? Thanks to Dan-the-crane-man and his professional attitude the faffing is quashed and we are ready to shoot the deserted beach…
Then – I am called to the camera. Matt, the 1st AD, is rubbing his brow with exasperation again because, having masterminded the position of all his runners to block every path to the shore, we have now have just two members of the public who are refusing to move. I peer down at two small dots in the middle of the beach.
Apparently this has been going on for the whole set up of the crane and numerous members of the crew have tried to beg and plead and cajole to no avail. I am of course at the end of this line and the couple on the beach are now costing me thousands of pounds every minute.
I run down the steps that skirt cliff and across the soft sand. I sink to my knees, panting like a Labrador, beside a middle-aged couple in what look like matching jackets. The lady has some watercolour paints and a sketchpad at the ready, and the man has the facial expression of tax inspector with indigestion and haemorrhoids, who has just found out that his favourite Elaine Paige LP is scratched. Suffice to say I dislike him immediately.
Nevertheless I stick out my hand and smile cheesily and before I can speak he barks at me “Go away. You are harassing us!”
“That’s funny.” I say “You don’t look like you’re a rude person. When people smile at me and try to introduce themselves I have been brought up to be more polite.”
This is opening gambit is a gamble, but he begrudgingly shakes my hand. I tell him my name and that I’m in charge and he tells me his – let’s say it’s Harold Git for the sake of this.
He then complains for five minutes about the abuse he has received from my crew. The Git-hold up has now meant that about a hundred people are now happily watching us from various points. They are all delighted by the manners and sweet natures of my young Runners. That these Runners have all turned this off ONLY when dealing with Mr. And Mrs. Git is really unlikely (yet, I’m already seeing, understandable.) Mr. Git then explains that they have driven for an hour for Mrs. Git to paint her view and that’s exactly what they are going to do.
I ask if there is anyway way she could paint the view from elsewhere on the beach where they are not in shot.
NO. In fact he gives me a look that suggests I have just asked for something akin to asking Michael Angelo if he could use Artex on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel instead.
I explain to Mr. Git that I need them to move for a short while, because we don’t have the budget to paint them out digitally, and so their stubborness will jeopardise a whole day’s filming.
NO.
I explain to Mr. Git that we are a small independent film and that losing this shot today will mean we can’t afford to reshoot; we won’t get the crane back; and will never catch up with the schedule.
NO.
I explain to Mr Git that we will donate some money to a charity of his choice if they would move twenty meters up the beach to sit beside a dune, which will hide them for five minutes!
NO.
For a moment I sit staring at Mr. Twat (Or was it Git?, I’m now changing to TWAT). He tells me to go away and stares at the sea. His tawdry wife’s MASTERPIECE is in its early stages, but I can already see that moving them will not be a great loss to the art world.
I can think of two options only.
One: I go up to the costume truck, put on Miles’ costume, tell Matt to roll camera, come back, drag Mr. Twat down to the sea and drown the bastard, possibly saving me time now and even money later on with divers and water tanks etc. This is preferable, but I imagine there is some film industry small print that precludes it.
Two: I had thought of something that was sure to make him move. Something that only a producer would understand I was capable of doing. (Something that only a producer could be proud of.) I was about to earn my wings…
Look. I’m so sorry, but as anti-climactic as it is, I just can’t write here what it was that I actually said. But, as the sun beat down, with all the crew and members of the public now watching this little scene from so far away… I told the Twats something that made them agree to move for five minutes.
I ran back up the beach, up the endless stone steps off the cliff. The crane drifted the camera up above the boy’s heads to show the wonder and splendour and majesty of their final destination. It really is beautiful.
And I’m going to hell.
On JJ Feild
In writing these pieces up I realised I wouldn’t really give time to the digressions I would like to… I love a good digression, the possibly reasonless meandering of the mind that one is forced to follow in the hope that maybe, just maybe… anyway.
I have wanted to give time to each of the leads in Third Star. A profile piece if you will. I was never on a set before where the work ethic of the crew was so inspired by the dedication of the actors. They can be regarded as mollycoddled talking props. Not so on our set! They never moaned or complained and they never lost concentration nor – and this crucial – did they ever lose their good humour or willingness to muck in. So I’m going to do the four the boys one by one – starting with JJ Feild.
I first met JJ back way back in time – when Snickers were called Marathons, when we all believed that the appeal of Take That would never last… and when I plied my trade as an actor too.
We waiting outside a room for a job than neither of us got. This was unusual because it certainly seemed to me that he got most of the jobs we were both considered for.
JJ’s had an interesting upbringing, (his father is the British mystic and author Reshad Feild), and he went on to a ‘normal’ acting training at Weber Douglas. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t seem terribly out of place anywhere or with anyone. He’s obviously creative and can turn his hand to any sport. Interestingly he’s very political – (though I would always try to avoid these debates as Adam would always get involved and bating him amuses me too much and I didn’t have time.)
He possesses an old-school charm that is incredibly rare amongst the actors of his generation. The mixture of a calm and classic style with the unquenchable hint of rogue. He is in many ways a blond, very British, Clark Gable.
His laugh is raucous and he can’t help but clown around. Usually on our set this involved his humping one of the other boy’s legs as soon as the opportunity arose. He’s committed and incredibly knowledgeable about the way films are actually made, and never gave up fighting for the best shots and the best takes. Even when off camera his back was so badly injured he could hardly stand, he still carried Benedict up those rocky paths to Barafundle Bay again and again.
Of all his earlier roles I think the first that showed me what a really great actor he is was his performance in Pride at The Royal Court opposite Bertie Carvel. As one of the characters he played in Pride (a repressed homosexual) he had to portray burning self loathing with the facade of character who has found life, seemingly, all too easy – though all the while struggling with his true identity. In other words – he mastered the art of playing dark depths with a subtle lightness that the audience gradually became aware would eventually break with a cataclysmic bang. It was gripping for that.
His lightness is of course not easily played. It drives me mad that so often the good-looking lead is ignored when the ‘Rain Man’ character is awarded gongs for (forgive me for quoting Tropic Thunder) “100% retard…”
That these roles are more difficult is a phallacy. JJ IS charming and likeable, but of course being so close to versions of oneself and still being thoroughly entertaining and believable is much harder than ’doing a funny voice’.
As Miles JJ was the perfect choice for all the reasons above.
Miles is competitive and successful. He is a man who has the world at his feet and yet is terrified of all his well hidden failings. His fear is quite literally fear itself. He avoids facing the inner truths by being brutally honest externally with those around him. This makes him arrogant most of the time as it requires the apparent self belief of one who doesn’t bat an eyelid when hurting anyone’s feelings. We should feel is even capable of savagery when this willingness to confront the truths outside him requires it. He is in short – the one you want beside you in a fight, but don’t expect gentle counselling afterward.
JJ understood this instinctively. He could of course carry off the rogueishness with aplomb – but I think he found the ability to KEEP being heartless, KEEP being cowardly in the face of James’ plight, the hardest challenge. Of course in the end of the film we understand it all. It’s remarkably simple. “I’m scared.” is all he really has to say… But the bravery of this collapse, for a man who has created himself as the one you can rely on in your darkest, darkest hour – is chilling and beautiful. And all thanks to something all actors say – but few can actually carry off… “Do it in a look.”
I am so lucky to have been able to spend time working with him in rehearsal and of course on set. And our friendship will, I hope carry us through many future films. His latest outing as Union Jack in Captain America is likely to give him a greater global film profile, but I will always be thrilled that he took the long walk in Wales with us.
September 19th 2009 Afternoon
Miles (JJ Feild): “Well, you really showed that tree.”
It’s another sunny afternoon. Tom, Benedict, JJ and Adam are lying on the grassy cliff top above me for a scene where Adam (as Bill) hurls the tree that he has lovingly carried throughout the trip, over the edge into the sea.
Some 12 feet below where they are acting is a ledge, a small ‘golf green’ of grass sloping towards the drop. This is where I am standing with Tom Rogers our lovely assistant location Manager (known as T’other because his boss is called Tom as well.) Our job here this afternoon, out of sight of the camera, is to catch the tree before it descends into the rolling Atlantic.
The night before filming (because somehow they had been forgotten) we actually bought four trees that are identical. Any biologist will tell you that this last statement is impossible, but they similar enough. The problem is that they were expensive and they are already taking a battering in the natural course of filming for three days.
It’s important that Adam throws the tree, which he swings like an Olympic hammer thrower, with all the pent up anger of a man who sees the freedoms of his younger life slipping away. So we don’t want to be too constrictive in urging him to aim for a safe landing.
It’s an emotional scene and as usual we are pushed for time. The first effort lands easily near us. The second seems to be heading out of reach, but drops short on the rocks above us. The next few takes don’t get as far as the throw and T’other and I get lulled into a sense of false security.
While I wait patiently for the slight adjustments in performance, new lenses, and film reloads I fiddle with my phone as if doing so will make it find a signal (I know it won’t). So I stand there and again I am aware that for the five weeks of filming this – cliff path above the sparking sea – is my office.
ACTION! There’s the emotional rant from Adam and – knowing that every take may be his last chance – he gives this throw some serious welly. Suddenly there is a tree sailing through the air over me and towards the edge. Without really thinking about the consequences of losing the tree verses losing the tree AND me, I run after it. Its plastic covered root-bag hits the glossy grass and it shoots towards the edge. I dive for it and tackle it a couple of feet before it goes over. Only T’other has witnessed this foolishness I think, and I’m rather glad. (Even though I’m comfortable with the “Don’t do as I do – do as I say” school of producing.) My daily safety concerns for the crew should also apply to me. BUT only my co-producer Kelly Broad really understands the constraints of our budget as I do, and I realise that, though she may have done it in heels with far more style and grace, she would probably have gone after that tree too.
Grazed but in tact I return the tree to the film’s designers (the brothers Campling). The tree has been injured and as we set up for another scene I see that Johnny Campling is super gluing fallen leaves on to the tree’s wounded twigs. The magic of cinema.
Today – June 3rd 2011
J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play “…and straight on till morning for many days.”
In the course of the current roll out of THIRD STAR I’m doing lots of Q and A’s around the UK. I really like it. (I like Q’s and I like A’s – what’s not to like?) The people who come to take part are, of course, film fans and so I have something in common with them already. On top of that – talking about the journey of this film with strangers, while I’m not one for counselling, is in some way cathartic.
One of the most asked questions though, is why the title or why the title had to change?
For a long time the film had the title “Barafundle Bay”… anyone who’s seen the film will be able to work out why (unless they’re dumber than the leader of the RMT). If you haven’t it’s because that is the (real-life) place that Benedict’s character wants to see one last time with his best mates. It started as a working title and stuck.
Film investors want to know in advance that a professional who sells films – a ‘Sales Agent’- thinks it ‘might’ make its money back. Our Sales Agent came on board very early and told me that the title had to change. This didn’t bother me too much. I had always hoped that in a very wordy film a line or phrase would leap out me. It never did.
Jump ahead three years and sure enough I have spent the entire time having to spell out the title to EVERYONE who we meet, phone, cast, and employ. For some reason people take a long time to get it even though it’s phonetic.
Before I know it the shoot is over, the edit is drawing to a close and I still don’t have a title. We’re rapidly approaching picture-lock, the grade and our title designer needs to know what the film is called.
At this point of course there isn’t just me, hiding in my study. All the parties who have joined the film are giving their opinion and we are now naming the film by committee! Some of the suggestions are so bad that I am ready to take my name off the film… “Forever Loved” was an all time low.
Eventually, as I was actually researching something else, I saw an old illustration from Peter Pan and thought that Peter’s instructions on how to get to Neverland might work. I like the fact that James would misquote things – hence Third star instead of Second – giving Miles the opportunity to say “Fuck. No wonder we’re lost.”
In J.M. Barrie’s original tale (in the 1904 plays), Peter led Wendy and her brothers to Neverland by flying ‘second to the right, and straight on till morning for many days’, though it is stated in the novel (written later in 1911) that Peter made up these directions on the spot to impress Wendy, (This in fact struck me a very James thing to do.) Wendy and Peter then find the island only because it was out looking for them. (the genius of Barrie.)
In the 1953 Disney film, Peter Pan, the word ‘star’ is added to the directions Peter speaks: ‘second star to the right, and straight on till morning.’ That phrase is widely quoted, and was used again in the 1991 movie Hook. But the less said about Hook in a film blog the better.
The title THIRD STAR had arrived and was quickly signed off. The link to Peter Pan is inalienably British and subtly enforces the idea that these are Lost Boys and that in a way, James never will grow up.
I liked it, but I didn’t love it. The two words in isolation made it a bit tougher and more ‘boysy’ – which was good. And the aim of a title that would travel all over the world was achieved – but it took a brilliant bit of design to bring it to life. Franki Goodwin, who designed the poster and titles, picked the perfect typeface but crucially added the simplest four pointed star as the dot of the ‘i’ and suddenly it felt like ‘our film’ again.
The link to the stars, and fate, and travel had long inspired this film and now we’d come full circle. So, that’s the ‘A’ in more detail than I can usually give to the ‘Q’…
But here’s some other stuff I found out as some nice wider reading.
Did you know:
The third brightest star in the sky is Rigil Kentaurus, otherwise known as Alpha Centauri, which literally means foot of the centaur.
It’s also known as Rigil Kent, Toliman, HR 5459 or the even catchier, HD 129620… (Anyone looking for unusual baby names may want to add that last one to the list.)
If you’d like to take a look, here’s where it is… Right Ascension: 14 39 35.9 – Declination: -60 50 07 (Yep… right there.)
Although its ‘Apparent Magnitude is -0.27’ its ‘Absolute Magnitude 4.4’ (Hey – we all look different in the mirror.)
This beautiful astral body boasts the Spectral Type: G2V (…I KNOW!!!!!)
But our THIRD STAR… is also sometimes known as Proxima Centauri.
Why? Because it’s the closest to us.
Yes. At a mere 4.3 light years… (not the brightest star – not the second brightest – but the third brightest star)… the THIRD STAR is the closest.
Take a look tonight. Raise a glass even, as many a traveller has since before we knew quite how we all hung together in this big bright universe. Good on you Alpha Centauri.
September 19th 2009
“One day, in a week, a month, a year, on that day when God willing, we all return to our homes again, you’re going to feel very proud of what you have achieved here in the face of great adversity.”
Col. Nicholson from ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ Directed by David Lean, Written by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman.
The sun is baking. I thought my problem would be keeping the poorly paid crew with me in the rain and mud… so I budgeted for beer at night. I never budgeted for the bottled water and sun screen we would need in West Wales in mid September… (it can’t last can it?) But James’ lines about going to the his “favourite place on earth – to Barafundle Bay” make more sense when it looks like this – and today is our first day shooting on the actual beach.
Some of the crew haven’t seen the beach that at the moment gives the film its title and they are all suitably awestuck by its beauty… This joy lasts a few moments only as they soon realise that we have to carry ALL our kit down the steep steps to the sand. It’s the only way down there. And we have to carry it up again everyday we’re here.
I grab some sand bags that are used as weights for the camera legs and lighting stands and even on my first trip down the cliff I realise what a physical task this film is going to be – and how fucking mental it seems to be carrying sandbags onto a beach.
Eventually we get everything down on to the shoreline and start shooting. The scene involves Adam’s character trying to comfort James, who has had a rough night. Jo Evans’ make-up is great Benedict looks really, really ill. We roll camera… there is something almost ethereal about Benedict sometimes. And as he lies in Adam’s arms near the high water mark, it’s obvious that there are going to be some very special moments in this very special cove.
It’s just as well… having had the best of the early light we have to move all the gear to the top again for the next scenes in the schedule.
The steps are steeper and longer when you’re going up… as I get to the top for the first time I look down and I can see that the crew are all mucking-in, carrying not just their stuff, but whatever needs to be taken from any other department. Benedict, JJ, Tom and Adam are amongst them carrying gear as well. This is the team spirit I always hoped for and it’s the only way we will get this film made.
I head down the steps again. Every crew member I pass has a good natured jibe at me. From the fitter members of the crew I get stuff along the lines of “Couldn’t you write about a beach with a fucking car park?!” from the rest – this physical challenge is now hitting home. They just about manage to grunt swear words at me. It takes several trips for most of us to get all the kit back to the trucks on the cliff top.
I daren’t think about how many times we will have to do this… I think of The River Kwai and start whistling.
September 18th 2009
“DAVY: If the cart breaks…”
On a cliff top. (The novelty has yet to wear off – but then the sun is still shining.)
The First AD and I are worried by the pace we shooting. I’d like to be cracking the whip here, but even though there isn’t much dialogue in this scene I am very aware that this little moment could be one of the most important in the film.
We are running both cameras to catch it. One fixed and one being hand-held in the back of my Land Rover. The camera team squash in there too.
If they scratch my car I’ll be livid.
Adam who plays Bill (and has been one of my best friend’s for years) has suggested taping a DV cam to the Cart too. (This is one of his good ideas.)
The shot is still being prepared… The coast path here looks perfect. It strikes us that it looks too perfect! In fact it looks like the fucking 6th fairway at St Andrews! The grass is smooth and even and green. Uniformly trimmed by the fierce hand of mother-nature into this perfect lawn that stretches a hundred miles. I hope we have enough wilderness shots ahead of us to give the film texture.
I think there’s something funny about our paramedic. Firstly his ambulance is a rusty banger with the word ‘Ambulance’ stuck on the side. Secondly his med-kit box looks like he sometimes keeps live fishing bait in it and has done for thirty years. Still – he comes from an official data base and seems a nice chap so I pay it no heed…
Just as the Ist AD is getting we are ready.
It’s a scene where ALL the boys climb on James’ the cart and ride it down a hill. It seems a meaningless little stunt, but if it looks like I hoped it would when I sat alone writing the script, it will be an instantly recognisable image of freedom and ‘boyhood’ and friendship.
We’ve tested the speed and route for the descent. Benedict must steer the unstable three-wheeled cart with Adam hanging on the back, JJ on one side, and Tom Burke on the other. It’s liable to be very bumpy and fast and near the cliff edge…. but the stuntman is happy and therefore so am I. And the minutes tick by and I’m more concerned about time now than ever… (If we drop a scene we may never get it back.)All cameras are ready including, Jamie Stoker’s stills camera. Matt the 1st the first calls ACTION.
The cart rolls forwards the boys jump on… it slowly gathers pace and jolts down the hill along the cliff edge faster and faster…
It looks amazing. Adam roars with delight! They look they’re having the time of their lives. They are.
The shot is in the can. And it’s good, but there isn’t time to enjoy it. We move on…
(Little did I know at that moment that it would become one of the iconic shots of the film and that one of Jamie’s snaps would be used by designer Franki Goodwin to create the poster…)
mug7 