Producer's
Pre Production Diary

Part 5
Monday 27th - Wednesday 29th August 2007

Being a bank holiday we decide not to work. Ah the extended weekend. Some respite. I'd lounged around all day Saturday just hanging out with Stéphanie and catching up. In the evening we went to dinner in a restaurant courtesy of Mike Mendoza the radio presenter I work with and Kelvin, another work colleague whom I somehow manage to get £100 investment from. Good. Only £47,900 to go...and then the rest !

Today our extended weekend is also the premier of another film I am in called “The Zombie Diaries” a low-budget British horror film that is screening at the Odeon West End as part of the 'Frightfest' horror festival. We head to Leicester Square only to be confronted by 900 people dressed as zombies staggering around dripping blood and body parts on the ground. The screening is a great success and a sell out and afterwards we hold a Q&A and then repair outside for photos, autographs and press interviews. My mind wanders to a year in the future and the prospect that we will go through this with elephants. I hope so. But that is a long way off yet. I meet Williams who introduces me to Rhys our new 1st AD and Julia who is our new Production Co-ordinator. I like them both and they like each other, in fact they would make a great couple if they weren't already so.

I abandon Stéphanie in a bar with Kenny my agent and some friends and meet with Paul again to audition two more actresses in a room above Jeremy's office that resembles a second-rate downtown Las Vegas strip joint. One actress is excellent but not quite right for the role, and the other one is just plain terrible. She has no idea of the character nor the idea behind the screenplay and I would rather burn every existing copy of the script rather than have her bastardise the role. Thankfully I can put my matches away.

Crew members. 1 gained. 0 lost.

Day 12 Tuesday 28th August 2007

After the euphoria of yesterday, the idea of what to aim for, the acclaim at the end of the hard work whereby you prostrate your efforts on screen to hundreds of people and hope they stay awake despite the dark, comes the inevitable come down. I wake early ready to start the third week of preproduction with vigour and guile only to be stopped dead in my tracks by the phone.
“Hello,” says a voice in an Australian accent, it is supposed to be our latest Art Director's first day on the job but I can guess from the fact that he has called in rather than arrive at the office, what is coming...“I'm sorry mate, I've just been offered another job, a paid one, really good money and I really need to do it...”
I thank Tim for his honesty and tell him not worry.
I break the news to Seanne and Paul, repost our call for an Art Director on various film making websites and spend the rest of the day drawing up investment contracts in time for our Investors Evening.

Ah contracts, if I had to sum up film production in one word it would be that little nine letter countdown conundrum. Now for the numbers round, 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 10, and the target is....our budget! Even Carol Vorderman would struggle to make the budget work with our resources, which is why we have dumped that thankless task onto Williams.

The Investors Evening is being organised by Cassie French the actress playing the role of Fahra the receptionist, a part that was originally a non-speaking role but has since grown into an interesting little character.
Hopefully on 13th September we can dazzle and amaze some rich people into handing over their wallets, or failing that, just tap all our friends and family.

Paul arrives at the office and I break the news about Tim to him. He doesn't appear phased having been through this before several times.
“There is always one job you can't fill on a shoot.”
He grabs a sheet of paper and a blue marker pen and writes ART DIRECTORS and scratches seven lines underneath it, one for each Art Director, before pinning the whole thing to the wall. I look at it and have the strangest feeling that we won't be stopping at eight.

I finish off the Investor information and email it off to be printed then spend the afternoon perusing numerous websites of varying degrees of legality with a view to buying a gun for the Soldier character. As he is a French soldier he has to have a French weapon, a Falmas, which is not exactly the top seller in the American replica stores. I eventually find one and fill in the details only to discover they don't ship abroad. The one in Hong Kong will ship abroad but is asking about five times the amount for the exact same gun. I keep up the hunt and eventually find and purchase one. On the final page is a 'comments' section for the seller, I ask Paul if he wants to add a comment?
“Yes,” he says keenly. “Tell them I want it quickly to shoot things with.”
“Shoot what?” I ask.
“Art Directors.”

Crew members. 0 gained. 1 lost.

Day 13 Wednesday 29th August 2007

Half way through week three of preproduction and we have our first miracle, it comes in the guise of an Iranian called Lewis who takes a quick look at the wireless network, presses what seems to me to be fewer than a dozen buttons and voila, makes it work for the first time. I have been on the phone talking to innumerate call centres trying to get this thing to run without success and he does it in less time than it takes to boil the kettle. Maybe that was where I was going wrong, I didn't offer the people at the call centre a cup of tea.

I celebrate this momentous upturn in events by sitting on the futon I just found courtesy of a neighbour who was like me, having a furniture clear out, and I happily tap away adding and deleting names from the website as appropriate. One name I add is that of Lewis under the title of IT Support. Genius would have been appropriate.

Now there is no longer a queue for the modem, both Stephanie, Paul and I can use the internet at the same time, which would be wonderful if the lap top she was using hadn't decided to break.

I get a call from Greg, a friend whose HDV camera we are planning to use for the film and who also has a stedicam kit which he is happy to offer us, along with himself, for the duration of the shoot. Such generosity is rare and has nothing whatsoever to do with the emotional blackmail I laid on thick to him having played the lead in a feature he made last year (and not yet completed) entirely for free, he still hasn't paid my expenses. His reasoning being that he has had little work lately and may have to sell his beloved sports car to pay me, to which I instantly suggested he could therefore invest in our film. Until he does so I am still without my expenses, still, he is going to pay for it now....

Or is he...?

He calls to say that he has been offered work on the Ridley Scott film in his usual guise of armourer and has been offered more money for three months work than we have for our entire budget. How inconsiderate of Mr Scott, jeapordising our entire shoot just so he have someone to hand out the guns at the start of the day. I'm sure Greg would argue, rightly so, that he does more than that as an armourer but I am a little worried here, one way I managed to persuade Paul that we could make this film for such a pitiful amount of money is the fact that we had access to a free HDV camera, stedicam kit and operator. Now we have none.

Mmmmm...

Greg senses my disappointment and offers his profuse apologise, I tell him not to worry, after all if he gets paid that amount he can pay me my expenses! I ask if we can still borrow his camera but he is somewhat reluctant to hand it over, can't think why. Actually I can, there is a whole issue about using prime lenses with the HDV camera, it involves bulky adaptors on the front of the camera which adds to the weight and tips it over the maximum allowance for the type of stedicam kit he has. Also the adaptors are damn expensive, it would be cheaper to tear down my apartment and have it rebuilt than buy or hire a little box that clips onto the front of one lens and on the back of another.

Williams comes round and Paul and I show him the tapes of the short listed actresses from the audition. We ask his opinion but we have already decided, it is Julie, it has to be Julie. Hopefully she hasn't changed her mind or been offered a paid job like our last Art Director...

Ah, talking of which...

I check my email and and get a few replies from the latest advert and forward them to Seanne, hopefully one of these will last longer than the current record of about three days. She replies an hour later saying she has spoken to two of them and is meeting them both tonight. She sounds happy and relaxed which hopefully means she has finally found the right person.

As half of the shoot will be in France I start to translate the contracts into French, ah contracts, welcome back, I've missed you guys these past few hours.

Crew members. 0 gained. 1 lost.