ELEPHAN

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Producer's
Pre Production Diary

Today the final draft if the script is written. Using the notes garnered from yesterday’s rehearsal I rework several key scenes cutting some dialogue and adding other. Paul approves the changes and one of Sarah’s last jobs on pre-production is to email out the new script to everyone involved. Another delivery truck rumbles up and drops of boxes and boxes full of film stock. My fridge is cleared out and transformed into a celluloid cold storage facility. This is it, finally the reality. In six weeks we have come from planning to shoot on HDV tape to having a fridge full of Fuji stock.

I head off to Cristina’s to get my hair cut in Callum style, thus shearing off my somewhat beloved wayward locks that I have been growing since having my head shaved for the film Too Many Bullets barely a week after Stéph and I first visited Brocéliande forest in October 2005. From there I hightail to Jade’s for a final costume check. Julie is there having her fittings. I am under strict instructions not to see any of her costumes as Paul wants each one to be a surprise, particularly the one she wears for the lake scene, the climax of the film. From the delighted cries echoing from the other room next door the wait will be worth it. From there I cross London to Seanne’s for a quick final pre-production meeting. Paul & Roger are en route to see the camera test rushes from Monday but I am forced to decline the chance to go as I have to be at work in an hour.

This is the last time I have to spend all night pressing buttons, talking cynical nonsense and answering calls from insomniacs, in knowledge of this being my last night (at least for six weeks) some of the regular listeners call in and wish me luck. I leave at 6am feeling joyed by the experience for the first time in months.

Shooting Script gained 1.

Day 35 Saturday 22nd September

I sleep in as much as I can making the most of the fact that the office is strangely quiet and this is the last day I will get to lie in until November. When I finally drag myself out of bed I print off as many contracts as my not-quite-up-to-it printer can manage in readiness for tonight’s cast & crew social.

We all decamp to Paul’s substantially larger communal garden than mine and I get a chance to meet many of the crew members that have been hired over the last six weeks. Swiss Daniel the eventual winner in the “Who can have the most Art Directors on one film?” contest, Scottish Kate the newly promoted focus puller, Spanish Jose our gaffer, Croatian Marina with the knackered Merc, Malaisian Sound recordist Axle, plus a troika of Italians Seanne, Donatella and Cristina, Venezualan Williams, Israeli Yoram and Australian Grace this truly is a cosmopolitan cast and crew. Pete, the “Making of..." Director, films us as Steve the stills photographer takes some much needed portraits for the website and I thrust contracts under people’s noses and persuade them to sign the next month and a half of their lives away.

I end the evening soliciting a cash investment from my friend Dougal who is playing the Hoody character. We are still woefully short of the amount we need but every pound helps. So, this is it, pre-production is over we are ready to roll.

Pre production. 1 gained. 0 lost.

 
Day 36 Sunday 23rd September

I get up very early, far too early to be healthy, and for the second weekend in two weeks Stéphanie and I head to Wiltshire, this time to collect my father’s car. I plan to get there and leave as a soon as possible before my father realises what lending me his car for six weeks actually entails but home cooking and a million mother-lead questions force me to stay late into the evening. She asks me if Stéphanie is alright as she looks a bit peaky (mother-speak for ill), I assure her we are both fine and that it is probably just the stress from moving to London from Paris only to have her life invaded daily by an apartment full of people talking about filming permits and aspect ratios. A quick ride on my father’s train that he has built in the garden and she’ll be fine.

Paul texts to say that he has discovered Pete our new “Making of Director...” asleep in the dumpster outside his house, very hungover having apparently lost not only his car keys but also his car. I wonder if this is some kind of omen.

Fully fed and ready for battle I thank my parents for everything they have given me over the past few months that have enabled me to actually get Elephants into motion and we drive back to London. Stéphy is unusually quiet, hardly talking, my mother is right, she is looking a bit peaky. This unnerving silence lasts throughout the three hour journey as I listen to a local unsigned band playing on Radio Berkshire and continues back at what remains accessible in our apartment, namely half the bedroom and a thin sliver through the lounge between the two desks. Even the tiny bathroom has tripods and gels in it.

After an hour or so of much needed last minute character work she comes in and sits on the equipment free half of the bedroom (the bed) with a cup of green tea for me. This is by no means unusual, what is disconcerting is that she looking rather worried. I ask her what's wrong? She is quiet and reticent to answer. This is not like Stéphy and it troubles me, she has put up with a lot in the past few weeks but even someone as tolerant as she is has her limits. I fear she is either about to take a knife to me, reveal that she a terminal illness or wants to go back to France, out of the three I would probably choose the knife. We sit in silence for a few minutes more sipping hot tea and staring at each other in the way we did when we first met.

There is something she doesn’t want to tell me which means by default it must be something I don’t want to ask her about!

Finally, no doubt sensing I am never going to pluck up the courage to prise it out of her, she opens up...

“I missed my period,” she says. “I think I'm pregnant.”

In six hours time I have to wake up and get ready for the first day of a six week shoot in my first leading role in my first feature as screenwriter and producer. I was hoping to get a little sleep at least.

Timing, as they say in comedy, is everything.

I give Stéphy a deep hug and with true English stoicism ignore what she said, hoping it will go away...