Do

Elephants

Pray?

Director's Daily Shooting Blog

Day 31 Friday November 1st ...

12.31pm

A hundred percent record has been achieved. Something was missing at the start of the days shoot and thus we are delayed!! Alessa gave the desk diary to Sarah and Sarah gave it to Williams. It has only just arrived in the nick of time to be shot on as an insert! Williams thought the table football was first. He is right. I switched it with Roger for lighting reasons but still it should have been here.

12.45pm

Now I have seen that the desk diary is absolutely unusable. Yet another mistake. It needs to be redone. Seanne didn't check what Alessa did yesterday. Again she trusted blindly someone without quite enough experience. I have just called her. The incredible thing is that this is not surprising in the least! Anyway, as always, we will overcome.

Now we must shoot the Football table inserts first.

4.37pm

Just completed the inserts. The football table was tricky and the desk diary was never perfect. We will have to touch up the desk diary in post. More time but in the future not now. The final slate was number 590. The clapper board I have taken to go along with the boards I have from my previous three films.

Julie just sent me a final farewell text from the Eurostar en route to Paris. Although I have included many times in this blog the texts people have sent I choose not to include this one. I prefer, selfishly, to keep the warming words she wrote to myself. I was touched beyond belief by the things she said from the heart. It came in about 12 parts and by the end of it tears were flowing down my cheeks.

7.08pm

Home now. The shooting is all done. Complete. As the ill fated Marechal Ney said in 1812 "I have fired the last shot and crossed the river Nieman. I am the rearguard of Le Grande Armee."

How do I feel? A strange mixture of hollowness (a cliche I know) and elation. I feel empty yet fulfilled. I am proud of what we have done, what we have achieved though I am saddened that it is over.

At the wrap party last night it was a similar mixture of joy and sadness. Jonnie and I elected to say a few words. I let Jonnie got first. He talked about when he first passed me the script on May 18th THIS YEAR and thanked all the crew for their hard work. I knew he would thank them so that instead of saying the same thing I said sorry, sorry for being demanding, for not compromising, for shouting at times, for being inpatient at others. I wanted to apologise to everyone involved for my faults!

Making a film is inevitably an ego trip. On this film, because of the subject matter, there is a inevitable dichotomy in that fact that I am all too aware of. As a director you have to make decisions, to choose between possibilities. When you choose one you discard another. That's how it is. Two days ago, for instance, Yoram came to me with a little idea of how he thought the motorcycle courier scene should go. I didn't use it. It didn't fit in with my plan for the scene and thus for the whole. If it had fitted into the whole I would have used it. A film is the sum of the parts. Not a load of separate bits. Only the director can see all those separate parts unified.

Rhys for five weeks has given me suggestions. It was only in the last two days that he came up with something that fitted absolutely into the master plan for the film. He hadn't been disappointed once when I had turned down his ideas before. I thanked him for having the energy to keep offering me things. In the end he gave me gold dust!

People like Roger, Seanne, Jade, Jonnie and recently Marc have offered me many many many things on the film. Creative ideas that can be used or not used. I am the filter for them. If they fit they are used. It is hard not being a filter without any sense of ego and that is without considering having my own ideas, which are near endless!!!

After thanking everyone I said "Be proud to have been a part of Do Elephants Pray? I am proud of the film we have made. I hope you will be also." Then we showed two minutes of the film that Caroline had cut together mute with a song by Francoise Hardy as music.

Although ungraded and in the wrong aspect ratio, watching the footage was mesmeric. We were all affected. I had not seen most of it myself and everyone else had not seen a frame. Julie was overcome the most. She finally saw what great work she had done. Steve Norris and many others were ecstatic. Jonnie and I at one point were mesmerised by our combined opus, the cinematic results.

The cast and crew present were stones that I had collected by hand from Broceliande forest, at night, near the broken wall that Malika gives her speech and that I had given to Marina to take back to London. Marina had done for me some BRILLIANT paintings of elephants on them. I wrote personal messages to each cast and crew member on the back. I asked Marina to write on mine. Amazingly it started "When I first met you, I was absolutely terrified of you..." I had no idea that was the case!!

There are just 37 stones with elephants on them. That shows how small and compact the unit was that made this film. By invitation, I made a cast and crew present for a film called "The Oxford Murders" six months ago and 98 of them weren't nearly enough to go round. 200 would have been more appropriate.

None of us few who have been on this journey will ever forget it, that's for sure. For many of us the film is a huge towering milestone in our lives. There is a shared bond, a kind of love that permeates the whole cast and crew on this film. It has been special. Unique. Unforgettable. Wonderful.

11.36pm

Looking forward to sleeping loads. Tomorrow I will be back in the sea of humanity, back with "everyone" as Joyce would say! Except of course, I am not the same person as before, I am changed. As well as a better film-maker, I hope as a better person too!

Anyway, on Monday we will look at the budget, see for the first time actually how much the film cost and how much short we are. I hope not too much!

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED MAKE THIS FILM. BE PROUD, AS I AM, TO SAY "I WAS A PART OF 'DO ELEPHANTS PRAY?'" WE HAVE MADE AN AMAZING FILM, A FILM THAT IF ATTEMPTED BY NORMAL MEANS WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my shooting blog. Instead of a daily blog, I will now write a weekly post production one at the end of each week.

Paul Hills

Cast & Crew presents... Elephants painted on stones !

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