Surgery

Simon stitches the thing together with infinite care and patience. Cutting around ‘holes’ in the action, making continuity glitches disappear, creating almost invisible cuts and passing the dialogue between the characters with precision and panache. Paul and I are in a hospital waiting room, while a beloved relation goes under the knife. Except we are in theatre here and you wouldn’t say to a surgeon - ‘yeah, nice work - maybe a bit to left?’ I had envisaged a lot of the smaller decisions we have to make - but couldn’t foresee how apparently small points explode into big questions of narrative and tone. ‘It sort of depends what kind of film we’re making’ quickly becomes a catchphrase of Simon’s.

Does it work?

However many times you make the film - imagining and sketching it out, writing and re-writing, selling the idea and persuading people to be involved; finding money and organising it, going out and shooting it - it all comes down to this: closing the door of the edit room and sitting down to watch the thing unfurl at twenty-five frames per second. However many other times you have to do it, this now is where the film is really made - and all the decisions you have made up to this point will be vindicated or found out. Just underneath the pleasure and interest of the process - the hundreds of possible editing choices and the enjoyable debates they occasion - is one overarching question: does it work? As Simon, our editor would say: ‘don’t worry - there’s something we can do about that.’ But we do worry.

The producers

We got the idea for the Oscar and Jim Executive Producers from David Mamet. His piece on parasitic producers (‘What do they do between golf and shopping?’) was originally in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/apr/09/davidmamet) and is reprinted in Bambi vs Godzilla.

He really doesn’t like them: ‘They sell all parts of the pig but the squeal. And then they sell the squeal.’ I was talking to Tim Malbon, a web guru who runs Made by Many, when the idea emerged (probably from Tim) that Oscar and Jim could rehabilitate Executive Producers, turning them from parasites into angels, making the film possible. It was a shot in the dark but to come back from the shoot and find people from all over the place signing up to be involved with the film is breathtaking and wonderful.

We now have producers - and people wanting to see the film - on every continent: the backing is beginning to be a serious contribution to the cost of the thing while the community signing up is building, one by one, a core audience (it’s also putting the pressure on - but that’s OK). Thank you everyone - we’ll be in touch later this week by email to you all with some more stuff from the shoot and to ask for your assistance and advice on a couple of thorny issues.

We start editing next week, so we’ll have moving pictures - and a trailer - soon. Two very intelligent people have now said ‘where’s the synopsis?’ and I while I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, I will make sure we put something suitably intriguing up here soon. Phil Casey’s on a well-deserved holiday but the poster is on its way too.

Nightmares

On the shoot a fractured sleep pattern includes a reliable ‘rewriting hour’ at 4am. In the mornings I present these rewrites: removing the word ‘that’s’ from a speech of Harry’s and the words ‘you too’ from one of Charlie’s. Home for days now but the 4am rewrites still come. So do the nightmares - versions of a classic anxiety dream (being unprepared for an exam, late for a wedding, etc) - in which we have finished filming but have completely forgotten about scene ten, leaving us with a senseless montage of a film. The nightmares look a little bit like this…

Of arms...

I have mentioned the counterweights for the jib arm a couple of times - the one bag in the van that everybody wants to avoid. For a while it looked as though we would lug them under the channel and back again without ever calling on them. But Martin saw possibilities - and eventually we hoisted the arm three times. I don’t know how the shots will work but the camera aloft makes a fine sight.

...and a woman.

Miriam: script supervisor, assistant director, continuity person, monitor wrangler, one woman second unit, trooper, star.

A wrap

Danny Broderick, our chaperone on the Eurostar, appears at the concourse cafe and tells us it’s time to go through. The mountain of kit has spread like a landslide. From somewhere Harry finds a huge cage on wheels - the kind of thing you might see standing full of bread outside a shop in the morning. We load it all on and roll through ticket check and passport control. Everything has to come off for the x-ray machines which take exception, again, to the weights for the jib arm. We’re in coach one, just behind the nose of the train, at the far end of the platform.

There is a gentleman sitting in the seat we want to shoot: he stays wonderfully unperturbed as we set up around him. We move off and Danny finds him another, better seat, one without a camera peering at him. There is a metal bar for breaking windows across the window we want to film from and Danny temporarily removes that. Train and camera rolling now, Danny even gives us a cameo appearance while the rest of the people in the carriage play cards and chat like proper extras. Everyone is fine about being in the film.

Martin W remains good-humoured about the sound, which changes pitch as we enter the tunnel. We run the scene once, twice, three times. The space and the time put a limit to how many angles and performances we can get - in that sense it’s a microcosm of the whole shoot. I’m hoping that these limits - of time, space, money and technology are actually helpful, forcing us to keep it simple and so help the telling of the story. We’ll know when we edit.

We’re supposed to catch the moment of exiting the tunnel but when England arrives I am rubbing a smear from the window, desperately trying to lean out of shot. And that, as they say, is a wrap. There is time for celebratory plastic glass of something and then St Pancras is here and we are last to disembark and say our goodbyes and be out into the night.

Sweet

The giant mechanical departures board is one of glories of the Gare du Nord and gives us a lovely focal point (and an interesting angle) for the penultimate scene of the film. In this shot you can see departures to Cambrai (where, as every schoolboy knows, tanks made their debut) and Laon. I’ve played cricket in Laon (I know, very ‘Netherland’). It’s a long story: we thought we would be playing and staying in Paris, so the Hotel du Commerce in Laon was a bit underwhelming. I’m sure it’s a great place.

Paul is worried about the train scene but relaxed about the station. I am the other way round. I cling to our photocopied permission and show it to everyone and anyone. In fact everyone is as relaxed as you can be in a station at rush hour (even the lady whose tea and coffee concession we camp around). To keep her sweet I buy teas; to keep everyone else sweet I put sugar in them. But it’s that Lipton yellow label stuff that comes pre-sweetened. The station is now buzzing - and so are we.

Crowd control

Shooting on location without any crowd control is an opportunity - to get a bit of real life - but also a worry. How will the Parisians like us? They are of course world-class ignorers which suits us fine. Those that do show an interest are mostly encouraging: ‘Bon courage’ or ‘Bon tournage’. In the cemetery my menu French is tested when I have to explain what we’re about - but just as many people are asking us the way to Jim Morrison. Lots of times Martin, with his documentary flair, encourages people to come through the shot. But then in the station with rush hour beginning and Harry and Charlie standing before the departure boards, some static is created: for a minute there is a force field between camera and actors that none dare penetrate.

Voila!

Almost all the photos on this blog are taken by either Camille or Lambert - including this self-portrait. Lambert pilots the van with Parisian aplomb - and keeps people out of shot. Camille handles everything else: rustling up Strepsils or extras to swell a scene or milky coffee (she can’t approve of it but she can get it). She appeases officials and attends to the needs of the crew. Her catchphrase is ‘Voila!’ which roughly translates as ‘mission accomplished’.

Real People

The sorts of films I usually make don’t often involve actors. Training films are regularly fronted by a presenter; corporate documentaries frequently involve a voice over artiste. But the stars are usually ‘real’ people.

So I was worried about the actors. Would they have to be pampered? Would they do what they were told? Would they help to carry the bags? Would I have to get tough, have a row, read people their fortunes and risk ruining the whole team ethos thing. Of course not. Everyone pulled their weight, did their own jobs and those of many others who would normally fill the credit list. And with good humour. Charlie & Harry were totally professional and wonderfully well-rehearsed, full of ideas and keen as mustard. Good actors. And ‘real’ people.