THE SHOOT....

There were a number of hiccups on the first morning of the shoot which made beginning a little strenuous. When we went to pick up the equipment, there was nobody there to issue it to us within the designated time.... This delayed us by an hour in starting the filming, and also meant our cast were waiting for us outside the location in the rain.... This was really quite worrying as we were already working to a very tight schedule!

When we finally got to our location and set up, we realised we had a broken cable. We couldn't film without it, so I got back in the car and drove all the way back to the university. It was rush hour at the time, as well as there being major roadworks along the way, so it was a two hour round trip. By the time I got back, everybody was frantic, and there wasn't a lot we could get done in the remaining time, so we agreed to meet earlier the following day to try and get as much filming done as we could.

Despite the extreme stress at the beginning, somehow we did manage to get everything shot.

We had enormous fun with our cast, improvising scenes around costumes and props, and a certain watermelon crept into most of the scenes.... I personally think the greatest success was the development of the writer character - who we created from scratch. He was not present in the original script. We loved the irony of 'sabotaging' a script already written by a poor frustrated writer - by including the character of a poor frustrated writer whose work had been sabotaged.

Here is another frustrated writer, who, like our 'Owen', becomes rather psychotic:

We sincerely hope that the original (and fabulous) writer of our script does not succumb to a similar fate.

We attempted another tracking shot, using the same beloved skateboard that created the tracking shots in Booty Call. Oh, the memories. We had learnt from out mistakes though, and set up the scene much faster and in accordance to the camera position.

As producer, I spent most of the shoot driving madly around Bath, ferrying around cast and crew, buying emergency props, going to and from the supermarket and chippie to feed the ravenous crew, making vast amounts of tea and coffee, doing a lot of setting up and clearing up of rooms before and after using them for scenes, calling people for scenes, figuring out logistical problems, and generally boosting group morale in times of enormous - ENORMOUS - stress.

As well as this, I spent a lot of time liaising with the owners of the property, and somehow also managed to find the time to act as an extra in a few of the scenes.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole filming process, and even the stressful bits were extremely worthwhile and satisfying. There were some fantastic happy mistakes caught through improvisation that excite us a lot....

I think I can safely say that the whole group is very much looking forward to the edit.