Director's Weekly Post Production Blog WEEK 72 Saturday March 21st...

I did the script tweaks in Spain. I also managed to play a couple of games of poker although I didn’t do well.

On Sunday I went directly from the airport to Welwyn Garden City, where my father was transferred to on Saturday. He was speaking clearer but was delusional, complaining of snakes in the ward, a huge python crawling over his bed and a cobra hissing in the corner. He also said that my sister had come to visit him. I double checked with the ward sister just in case it was true. It wasn’t.
“I’ll leave it all to you” he said at one point.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, not much. Six hundred and twenty quid!”

It did occur to me that the money could help pay off some of the creditors!

On Monday Jonnie confirmed that when he comes next week he is likely to bring some new investment he has found, be it lower than the amount my father promised! We will meet next Tuesday to do some admin.

That day also Charlotte Fung from Molinare called to say that they were back on track now that “Damned United” is finished and that we can re-commence de-spotting this week.

On Tuesday Axle texted me saying that she had done a half marathon “for cancer research, for people like your father!” How sweet dear Axle is!

The next day Andrew Dearnley called to say that Thursday I could finish the de-spotting. That day my father was now seeing flying rats and somehow my sister had been watching him through the window.

His ward is on the 4th floor of a tower block.

Thursday night Katie, Caroline and I finished reel 6 de-spotting. I had bumped into Caroline on Wardour Street earlier in the day. She was marvelling at how decisive we were on the edit last year compared to the documentary she is cutting at the moment. I told her she could attend the de-spotting if she liked as she expressed a desire to do so.

Reel 6, though, must be the dirtiest reel ever cut together. Over 200 spots to be corrected in the last 5 minutes alone! Reel 6 unfortunately was not the last reel to be de-spotted and by 9.30pm we had run out of time and thus still not completed the task. At the beginning of the week we were 81% of the way through. Now I estimate we are 92% of the way through the process with just two thirds of a reel to do.

In the mean time I am still working on the end titles while preparing “The Power” and trying to raise more money for DEP.

Soon, I believe, this will have become the longest and slowest post production process of my life. “The Poet”, with all its money, was a mere 30 weeks. “Secrets” (a short film) was 40 weeks due to a producer issue – she disappeared from the face of the earth! “Boston Kickout” was maybe 55 weeks due to running out of funds. “The Frontline” I think was about 80 weeks for similar reasons.

At this rate we will exceed that but I hope not.

Over the last few weeks, I have been reading the last major work by Rousseau – “Julie” which is much influenced by the Richardson novels I read at Christmas. I am currently half way through. Soon, though, I will have to put it to one side as the documentary I worked on last year is coming back next week to shoot some extra days. This will mean travelling to Manchester again.

At the weekend I was telephoned to tell me that my father was transferred from Welwyn Garden City back Lister hospital in Stevenage. When I went to see him there they had no record of him and sent me back to WGC. At WGC they sent me back to Stevenage. A total fiasco. Apparently their new computer systems are not working properly.

On Monday I finally tracked him down. He had stopped hallucinating and was just very forgetful. I played dominoes with him and he couldn’t remember the numbers only a few seconds after checking them.

On Tuesday Jonnie came to the office to do some Admin. We filed contracts and processed a couple more payments to creditors. “A drop in the ocean” springs to mind.

The next day I got an e mail from Andrew Dearnley at Molinare. We were given more de-spotting time on Thursday. Later that day I met Florian Knittel who is in London for a few days. We met in the Blue Posts and then went for a Chinese. Florian told me about his time over the last few years at Film School. We remembered “The Poet” that we shot together. Florian was the best assistant a director could have, instead of giving me stress, he took stress away and as “The Poet” was the most stressful film I have ever done that was a great help. 8 months of pure hell. If Cristina Corazza had been on that film, she would have hung herself!!

At the Thursday session we completed the final reel. Steve Knight filled in for Katie Piggott who was away. Caroline also attended again as she seems to enjoy the de-spotting. We divide the screen into three areas and watch closely, shouting out when we see something!

This coming Monday we will check all the de-spotted reels. If they are fine we can move on to the titles. That means we are currently 99% of the ways through the de-spotting and just 4 weeks away from completing (providing there are no more delays).

This weekend the Formula One season opens again. I am despondent of Lewis’ chances thanks to the McLaren not being up to speed in winter testing.

I am sitting in the Palace Hotel, Manchester. I am shooting another 3 days with Coco, Huevos and Toro for the documentary “7 days with Foster”. Norman will arrive tomorrow to visit the old Victorian terrace house he grew up in as a child and we will be ready to film it amongst other things.

As luck would have it, this is a race weekend. I am recording both the race and qualifying and will watch them both together as soon as I arrive back in London. Now the game is to try and not learn anything about what happens in Sepang until that moment. In any event I imagine Lewis will not win it thanks to all the problems McLaren are experiencing on and off the track.

This week my father improved and I fully expect him to be allowed home in a few days. A social worker will visit him 3 times a day to check that he is OK. I will see him next after the shoot is completed.

On Monday the checking of the de-spotting was postponed until Wednesday to give them more time to output the cleaned frames. That day Caroline attended again so that with Katie Piggott and me, it made the three of us checking the work. We were full of optimism, talking about the titles (the next stage) and also doing a small digital fix on one shot to take out something extraneous to the shot.

Our optimism soon faded. It became apparent quite quickly that something was wrong. Somehow reels 1 and 4 had not been properly cleaned. We were finding things that we had already found. And sent to be done

After 4 hours we had to give up in frustration and disappointment. I have no idea why this happened. Katie was as incredulous as I was. As Andrew Dearnley had left I had to wait to find out the reason. Afterwards I went to meet Florian Knittel again who is back from Scotland. We had a farewell drink as the next day he is back to film school in Germany. The short film he had shown me, “Nightblind” was absolutely wonderful and we talked about it a lot and how you need to have certain amount of carefree attitude to film something elegant. That is something that was quite true in the forest in France on DEP.

On Thursday I left a message on Andrew’s voicemail asking what had happened on reels 1 and 4. I am waiting for a reply now.