The idea of the recce to France was two fold, firstly to find the locations, resources and outstanding cast we needed and secondly to act as a bonding exercise for the Heads of Department. We largely succeeded in the first but appear to have failed in the latter. After three hours sleep Paul, Williams and I have a meeting to discuss Williams' little departure lounge strop. Paul and I assure him he is invaluable to the shoot and persuade him to come to France during the shoot after all.

The morning is spent in the usual manner of phone calls and emails and trying to find something that Sarah will drink when I hear Paul's side of a phone call that worries me...
“Hi Geoff, what's the matter?....Oh, can't do it all?...Ah, can you recommend anyone else?....No?....”
Paul looks troubled and I start thinking, Geoff...?, Geoff...?, Ah! Julie's agent Geoff, damn! We are eleven days from starting principle photography and we have lost our lead actress. Paul ends the call and I prepare for the worst.
“So, Julie is out then?” I ask.
Paul looks at me then starts laughing.
“Not Geoff, Jeff!”
“Who?”
“Jeff, with a J, from the camera place.”
Apparently the fantastic deal we struck for the brand new HD camera has fallen through as they have had the temerity to rent it out to another film company who can actually pay for it up front. In essence the camera was offered a paid job, it should have been an Art Director.

The relief of not losing our lead actress eleven days before we start shooting doesn't last long, in fact only up to the moment when the realisation dawns that although we may well have a lead actress to film we now no longer have anything to film her with ! This is a big decision, we have already lost the HDV camera, the HD camera and now need to find an H camera from somewhere.
“I'll shoot on anything from super 70mm film down to selotape through a cornflakes packet,” says Paul. “As long as we start rolling a week Monday.”

I love blind optimism it's what this film is based on.

An hour or two later crunching figures and investigating options we settle on super 16mm as being the best chance and calculate that with some shrewd deals we can shoot on film for little over an additional £2,000 on the budget and set to work on the phones.
“I want the best f**king deal that has ever happened in the history of the universe,” says Paul negotiating stock with Fuji. He covers the mouthpiece and turns whispers “We can get cheap stock from a company in Madrid but they only sell to Spanish companies, do we have one?”
Williams pipes up that he does somewhere, hidden in the back of a cupboard gathering metaphorical dust and so we're in business.

Although shooting on film is always a benefit in the long run as it ups the quality and therefore value of the film it is more expensive in the production stage than shooting on tape and much more expensive in the post-production phase. I ask how we are going to pay for the processing and how much will it be? Paul replies that he will get it all for free.
“How?” I ask, suspecting another deal involving envelopes stuffed with cash and a few Eastern European sex workers to hide them in their lacy underwear.
“Because I'm a C***!” says Paul, clearly fired up by the enormity of the challenge. He pulls up an obscure number from deep within the address book in his phone and dials.
“Hello mate, remember that deal you didn’t give me thirteen years ago, well now is your chance to make it up to me…!”

Ten minutes and a lot of flattery later Paul has several deals to get all the film stock processed, transferred to tape and then graded ready for output back to film, all for no upfront fee ! Fortunately the person he had called was about to step onto a plane and go on holiday and had agreed more as a way to ensure he caught his flight than anything else. Paul certainly has timing, either that or he really is a c*** ! (His words not mine.)

Stock - check, processing & digital transfer – check, great, only a camera to go, but still, three out of four 'aint bad.

We break early from the office to head into Piccadilly for the Investors Evening. It is being held in a small private members club off Regents Street that only the initiated or fortuitous would ever discover, the sort of place that you have to knock three times on a non-descript door and say the magic password whilst rolling up a trouser leg in order to get in.

Inside is a bar and club built inside an old cellar complete with prison bar grills and stone walls. In one back room at the end of a small labyrinth lies a screening room where eager film makers show shorts to each other and eager feature film makers gatecrash to raise money. Tonight we are the gatecrashers and show three films in all, two directed by Paul 'f2point8' & 'Secrets' and one starring myself called 'Collapsed'. The room is packed and very hot but Paul and I stand at the only door and insist that no-one leaves without paying up, a little like leaving Wales on the Severn Bridge. After each film we chat to the sweaty fainting audience about what they have seen and what we are hoping to do. My friend Dougal who is playing the Hoody character in the film documents it on his digital camera and we post the result on Youtube. The reactions are mixed with the bulk of people liking what we show and one main detractor lambasting everything. It later transpires that he had originally booked the venue that night to show some short films of his hoping to raise money for a feature he is producing and, thanks to the sweet-talking Cassie, we have crashed his party.

After we screen the films we chat to potential investors whilst the band Slashed Seat Affair, whom I have known for a few months and hope to get featured in the soundtrack, play a few acoustic songs from their amazing set. I chat about how great they are to Sam from Excellence Records who introduced them to me and she agrees to become our Music Supervisor on the film. I am negotiating terms on her contract when Kylie, our Executive Producer corners me saying she and Paul have met some Investment Bankers in some of the little prison-like cubicles and that I should chat to them as well. I follow in anticipation of all our financial woes being swept away in one go but they turn out to be quite the bunch of irritating bores that you would expect Investment Bankers to be. Isn't that cockney rhyming slang for something? Kylie lays on some flattery to the red-faced chubby one whilst Paul tries his charm to the uptight pencil-skirted ice maiden leaving me with a self-obsessed sort who wouldn't part with his own money to fund his grandmother's funeral. He tells me he is sick of his career and really wants to follow his unfulfilled childhood dream of directing music videos. I tell him it is important to listen to your dreams and that he should just do it, as we are doing, and that he should quit his job and follow to his heart, but he says he loves earning money too much to quit the job he hates and orders more champagne. Time is short and I sense we are not going to get any investment from these people. I try one last tact and ask him for whom he would most like to direct a music video for? The will to live slips away when he replies... “Coldplay, they're my favourite band.”

I have to leave.

Before I go I am introduced to Iain our Standby Props guy that Seanne has hired. He says hello and doesn't quit. The Art Department is on a roll.

I take in the cool fresh air outside the hidden club to see Dougal abandoning his role as documenter for the evening by pointing his camera at a bunch of attractive women and asking them questions their mother's would not like to know the answers to. Eventually I get to work very late and in a very, very tired state. I have slept little in the past three days and the world is becoming surreal. I seem to recall someone telling me their favourite band was Coldplay, surely that can't be possible, no-one is that dull.

Crew members. 2 gained. 0 lost.

Day 27 Friday 14th September 2007

Ah luxury, if you can call five hours sleep a luxury, possibly Margaret Thatcher and some Trappist Monks might agree, everyone else in the universe needs more. Sleep deprivation is a mind blowing thing, it plays with your senses and makes you do weird things, better than drugs it should be illegal. Knowing that our former leader ran the country on just four hours a night probably explains why she was such a tyrant. We still need camera. Williams, who studied film in Moscow, reveals that he has a Russian contact in Finland who has a mate who knows someone who's uncle has a super 16mm camera that he may lend us. He makes a call and negotiates in fluent Russian and Paul and I draw lots on who is going to fly to Helsinki tomorrow to get it. I don't like Finland and don’t want to go back, Paul loves Finland and has friends there but doesn't have time, neither does Williams so we decide we will have to send Sarah our Production Secretary who has popped out to the Post Office.
“I can't ask her to go to Finland on her day off,” I say. “She's hardly ever left London!”
“Bollocks, don’t ask her, just tell her you’ve booked the flight and she’s going!”
He stares out of the window whilst Williams continues his negotiations, he has settled into the Russian mode so well I am thinking of opening some vodka. Suddenly Paul is excited and calls me to the window. Outside an enormous truck is attempting to do a three-point turn at the end of the road in a space barely big enough for it to fit in. I wonder what is being delivered, probably some kind of aircraft.

The door bell rings and a I bound down the stairs excitedly. The man at the door says he is from a Product Placement company and he has some things for us. He opens up the side of the van which is stuffed full of boxes.
“Which one is ours?” I ask.
“All of it.”
The three of us start to unload box after box after box of goods. Biscuits, cereals, soft drinks, alco pops, energy bars, more biscuits, crisps, nuts, water and even more biscuits. As I'm unloading the final box and I get a text from Am one of the former Art Director's asking if the Product Placement has arrived? Apparently she felt so guilty about taking the other job she arranged for all this to be delivered for us as compensation. I thank her profusely and draw up a short term contract for her as Product Placement. The boxes are finally stacked against the wall covering one half of the office and the futon is moved into the bedroom to make space. We still have to get the grip and lighting equipment in somehow. We settle down to celebrate our booty with a cup of tea and I am confused by the number of cups, surely there is one too many, but no, Sarah has finally revealed her weakness and decided to join us, she tears open one of the boxes and shows her preference, apparently vampires like to drink hot chocolate. As we drink we assess the effect of the Investors Evening and realise that we managed to raise several thousand for the budget so it wasn't a complete loss.

In the evening Paul & I record a video for youtube announcing the film. We get Stéphanie to stand in back ground staring out the window for no reason other than its funny.

Crew members. 1 gained. 0 lost.

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