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August 2008
Where to be?
The main question is ‘where to put the camera’ but another one quickly suggests itself: where do you put yourself? Setting up a shot I can peer into Martin’s viewfinder and give notes to the actors or do a bit of crowd control. But when we’re ready to go I’m not aways certain where to look. Miriam has a monitor slung around her neck and there’s the action itself. It’s easy then to get caught in a kind of no man’s land between the two. It’s not a good feeling - particularly if you are only person doing, at the key moment, nothing at all. Martin L focusing, Martin W all ears, Miriam on the script and monitor, the actors in the zone, Camille and Lambert stopping people coming through, Paul loading the clapperboard. To say ‘action’ and then do exactly nothing is a strange sensation of powerlessness.
Walking backwards
We don’t have the time or the money (turns out these two things are one and the same) to lay track and pick up luscious tracking shots of this amazing location. (I persuade myself that such ornaments are unnecessary). So when the camera moves, Martin moves it, walking backwards quickly, guided by Paul, also walking backwards. This delicate two-step makes me think of Strictly Come Dancing. 
Word perfect
Everybody knew the schedule was tight - but not how tight. It becomes clear that dreams of five and six angle coverage of a scene are just that - dreams. Extra time spent on this scene means less for the next one. Getting something perfectly now could mean not getting something else at all. It is a massive relief when we begin to see Harry and Charlie at work - they have their lines down cold and performances already well evolved. Slim pickings perhaps for the outtakes reel but priceless as we try to shoot against the clock.
Incoming!
We have a telepathic understanding with air traffic control at Charles de Gaulle. As we set up a shot, they give a clearance to land. So when we call ‘action’ there is a beat before Martin W puts his hand up and calls out ‘incoming!’ Everybody stands stock still, making a weird tableau vivant for the passers-by. A few more seconds, the plane noise fades and we are good to go. 
Sunshine
For two months I have watched the Paris weather forecast. Rain would not kill the shoot but it would make everything very difficult. Heavy rain might be terminal. So when the sun breaks through it feels like a blessing until Martin L worries about the image being a bit ‘sharp’ or worse. We make like clouds and cast shadows. 
Here.
Rendezvous is at 11:30 at St Pancras for the 1300 Eurostar. The sense I always get when travelling - that you are only one official objection away from being turned back and sent home - is especially acute with seven of us here and a mountain of kit. The x-ray machines take exception to the jib arm’s counterweights. But we get on and get away and are soon whistling across Kent. We are recceing for the train shoot on the way back. Martin Lightening grabs shots from outside the train windows. Martin Wilson listens to the changes in pitch and volume as the train enters the tunnel. Paris in two hours. Fixer extraordinaire Camille and her colleague/boyfriend Lambert are waiting. Lambert has the van parked bang in front of the station (in London there would be a controlled explosion). This and the heavy traffic convince us to make the first executive decision of the shoot - hire Lambert (Paul was going to drive the van). We make Pere Lachaise with fifty minutes til closing. We march around trying to get our bearings and find our locations - not unlike the characters, then… 
Ant and Dec
Imagining the film, storyboarding it, looking for inspiration in other films, planning coverage - we’re trying to do all these things - but tonight all I can think of is Ant and Dec. They always stand in the same relationship to each other. But who is on the left and who the right? And… why? Is there some golden ratio of Geordie presenters? Some magical subliminal effect? What lessons will it have for our film? Should we designate the left side of the screen Charlie’s and the right Harry’s? I’ve been thinking about this too long.
Directorial insomnia
I normally sleep better in a full house. Tonight we have Charlie and Harry staying (we are rehearsing in the village hall) - six of us with Emily and me and the girls. Yet I’m wide-eyed at 4 am, thinking through moves and lines and beats and notes and where the actors go - and where the camera goes and what happens if it rains and what if people are difficult at the Gare du Nord or if the sound on the Eurostar is unusable or if we lose a tape or drop a camera or… I remember Chris Weitz, who directed About a Boy and the Golden Compass, saying that directing was to make a thousand decisions a day and getting any one wrong could screw up the whole thing. We don’t have Hugh Grant or Nicole Kidman or CGI armoured bears or any money at all but I think I understand what he meant. Must get back to sleep…
High Hopes
I buy the Mike Leigh box set at the BFI shop at the NFT. It’s sixty quid: I could probably find it cheaper online but the great man has signed this one and sentimentally I slide over the card. (Incidentally, lots of Japanese people in the BFI shop - I remember hearing how film-friendly the Japanese are. Make a note to subtitle the film and build a Japanese version of this site). At home I watch High Hopes, especially for the cemetery scene when Phil Daniels and Ruth Sheen go up to Highgate and pay their respects to Karl Marx. The lovely touch is the group of Chinese tourists who spill into the shot; the actors barely notice them and carry on with the scene.
Free hair
For many years I had bad haircuts. The problem was editorial. I’d go into a salon or barbershop and it would be ‘What do you want?’. ‘What do you think?’ I’d say (thinking ‘You’re the expert’). We’d come to a weak consensus (‘a bit off here, a bit there’) and the result would be another iffy cut. That changed when I met Kim at 53am on the Golborne Road. She takes total control (she’d make a good film director). In seven years I’ve been unfaithful only twice - both times with regretable consequences. I’m there today for my three-monthly reorganise when I tell Kim about the film. She’s says: ‘Free hair’ What? ‘Free hair. Send the cast up here for their haircuts before you go.’ ‘That’s great - thanks Kim’. Pause. ‘How many are in the cast?’
So many dead lie round
Meet Harry at Bunhill Fields, the City cemetery and long home of William Blake, John Bunyan and 150,000 others. A talk about character and how Gerry would have planned his dream weekend in Paris. His guidebook is clearly important to him. Harry pegs Gerry as a Dorling Kindersley man and we get a copy of DK Paris in WH Smith in Liverpool Street. Sure enough, in the ‘top ten list’ of Pere Lachaise, there are Oscar and Jim.