So yeah, in London I had Marlon, plus I was making sense of the kit. “We didn’t know what you were for in London,” says Page. “But you’ve been mister Aberdeen.” Phew But let’s see how they do tomorrow. It’ll be whatever. I’m ahead now. But weirdly I’ve been pulled off a job I could do.
One of my best friends has been having a terrible time in terms of internal monologue, and it peaked around the London dates of this job. I picked up her cat in the gaffer van to introduce to Frank. It’s fucked when your friends lose the plot. I’ve known it before. I’m waiting and hoping for balance again. I can’t talk about it without sadness or interpretation. But her cat just looks so ridiculously happy in temporary shelter with Frank. I’ve landed on a wonderful flatmate. And they have landed on an effortlessly delightful companion.
Little boyboy will be here a bit longer while my friend makes sense of the world. I am told by people I don’t know that she’s recovering. I hope she is.
I’m off to sleep. Sorry. can’t keep my eyes open
We are at a disused train station in the north of Scotland.. The lights I only just managed to get up here are in full use making things look pretty. The team is working tighter now and we are learning to anticipate one another’s ways. I was very very drunk last night. They kept buying me whisky on very little sleep. I noticed it this morning. My brain has been bleeding all day, but fortunately it hasn’t been a pressing long day at all. There were stormy teacups regarding batteries and cards, but we are all getting used to the occasional tornado. It is largely inevitable when we don’t know what the shots are.
Right now the moon is up and it’s peaceful here. The wind is in the trees. We are all getting excited at the possibility of some aurora activity this first night when the dark is longer than the light. Perhaps some of us will drive up and see it.
It’s a team of nice people making a thing. No dicks, unless it’s me. Some personality for sure. Occasionally temperatures run high but at no point is anyone being toxic. It’s hard work and long hours but I’ll miss it when it’s over. And the longer the team stays in place the better we get at anticipating each other.
My hangover has an effect on my memory though. This afternoon I gave the smoke machine to the gaffer and adjusted my runsheet to make note of the exchange. Then I completely and utterly forgot the whole exchange as if it had never happened and was utterly confused when the thing wasn’t in the Zarges. Must be getting old. “They’re on your head, grandad!” Well it WAS my birthday yesterday.
Everyone is looking at the stars. I’m gonna get out from under my little easy-up. I’m just sitting with the tech at the moment wondering if I’m gonna be needed, and writing this down now so I don’t have to hammer it out exhausted before bedtime.
—
Which is now. I had the mother and father of all bubble baths. Now I must sleep. Tomorrow morning it’ll all start again. Two venues. So long as the weather holds out we will be fine. Rain is a ruin. Nights like this are just a joy.
This morning we drove down a path to a cliff. The grass is high after a wet summer. No cars have gone that way this year but for Hannah and Fiona this morning. They are ahead of us in a light Range Rover.
I’m driving a transit van today, full of camera equipment. It’s heavy.
“The path is fine,” says Paul. A bit bumpy but fine. Keep a steady speed, stay in second gear.” He sends us off.
“Thanks mate,” I say, and then to Dan I say ; “Bless him, telling us all how to drive.” The truth is, with this van on this road, he’s right – it is better for us to go in fast but first gear manages the weight. We ride low. The grass will overheat or even bottom us. I’ve already lost one van on this job, through no fault of my own. I’m doing this properly, even though the grass fucks with us.
I push my momentum as instructed and as feels practical. I’m in driver head. My concern is for the vehicle. I’m driving very much to the needs of the situation.
The range rover ahead of us is floundering from driving too slow, I think. I have no ideas who is in it. It’s just an unusually hesitant bellwether. I push on, hoping my understanding in a trickier vehicle will help them gain the confidence they need in their offroader to stop risking swamping and get to the end of the field. This is uneven ground but it isn’t bad compared to Sardinia / Uruguay / Saudi and plenty of the other places I’ve had to throw around a front wheel drive when it is only 4×4 possible for these guys. Ha! You just need to understand momentum and know when to stop. To the cliffs is an easy drive if you are vigilant. You might get bogged or overheated, but you lower the chances massively if you use momentum.
But… suddenly the car ahead of us stops. I stop too, at the top of a downward slope so I can continue. There’s a good 40 foot between us – I’ve been trying to slow down so they can solve what I’m assuming must be a problem with their car which has been making them crawl.
Fiona gets out. She yomps up to us.
“She looks angry,” I say to Dan. “Nah mate, it’ll be logistics. She needs to give us a permit.” “Actually yeah, that’s likely it. It’s not like we’ve done anything.”
Fiona arrives at my window and she’s shouting and not breathing at all. The most incredible invective. Horrible. How does she do it and not fall over? This is my friend and my boss. Literally the nastiest anyone has ever spoken to me in my entire life. It was everything I had not to say “Go fuck yourself”. Absolutely gobsmacking unprovoked RAGE. Looking back on it I guess that’s the trust thing. I trust her, and I trust Hannah. We are friends. Friends can be cunts to each other.
How much damage have these Americans done that I can drive correctly and with experience over rough terrain and my friend can literally verbally assault me with everything they’ve got for no reason? Limmy told me years ago: ‘These Americans – you can’t let them hurt your friendships.”
“If that had been me I would have walked off the job,” says Dan. She is mum of two boys. So was my poor mum. She defaulted to a tone that sees results with them. But… it is only effective if it is your children who owe their freedom to you.
I’m trying to eat the poison. I’m the bottom of the hierarchy on purpose. I’m the whipping boy. That’s the hope. I’ve got no ambition to be mister whoopywooface. But just because I set myself up as the whipping boy does not mean that my friends are free to flail me like that. Nobody should ever speak to anyone like that.
I’m generally just trying to make things nice when I work. It’s something I’m extremely good at. It’s all I give a fuck about. I’ve got old friends on the shoot: Hannah, Fiona and Dan. Very different types but I care about them all very deeply and we have all pissed each other off on this job, but thankfully we all love each other. The material we were shooting will hopefully be lovely, even if it is getting harder by the day with the lack of a first AD. You have to tell people what you’re doing ahead of time or they’ll lose faith. Thank God we have a fantastically kind gaffer. I sent the drone guy to him as he was trying to balance interior to exterior. I’ve never seen anyone so amenable. Alongside that, I experimented when wardrobe and art were with me and I had the only walkie. “You have to ask Hannah if you want an answer. If I ask she’ll just be vague and slightly belittling.” “No she won’t,” said Dahlia and Olivia, and so we all shared my walkie and observed how they both got answers and I got fobbed off.
Friends, eh? That’s why some people pretend to be better than real. But I know she’s going though stress. And it is mostly glorious.
It’s a lovely lovely set. Tonight we managed to get everyone together in one place with the excuse of a late call tomorrow and my birthday. My heavily refined “Unthreatening Alien” routine allows everyone to be their best selves on jobs like this. I’ll go right out there and say that my special skill is to bring companies together without anyone realising I’m doing it. I know when to clown and when to shoot energy, and I give no fucks about your hierarchy nonsense.
Goodness me. It’s my birthday already. Midnight just happened.
It’s long hours. Too long when it keeps happening, particularly when I only slept an hour or two on the drive up. I’m not kicking off yet, but I’ve started standing in myself again.
Today was tight in terms of production. We overran but nothing to do with inefficiency. Just art. Art cares not for we nor time. Art be art. Alexis could just do it again forever but here, thankfully, we have multiple producers on set to tell him to hurry up.
I’ve been on some sets where a producer shows up just occasionally and everyone stands up straight. The day is slower and interrupted with ancient things that have been considered and pointed. Their individual taste might dominate an interpretation on a line or scene that happens to be underway. Then they leave and everything feels a little wider.
We have an abundance of producers on this shoot. It’s weird as we all have to be on our best behaviour. But… This evening one of them was with me after a long shoot where the location manager held up a short bit of wire and said, at half nine in the evening; “This is the length of the piano frame.” The keyboard is three times the length of it. “Nah mate you’ve measured the width,” I tell him. But the doubt is sewn. Suddenly I’m having to carry the piano frame with Tom, out of the van and into the office, where we build it and of course it’s fine. But it means I’m writing to you from the bath at half twelve, and because the hotel won’t reserve parking, we have to unload everything precious at the end of the day when their lot is full, and then load it all up again earlier than we want.
It’s my birthday. All I have to think about is logistics and production. There’s so much to do.
Last year I was pretending to be a bent town councillor. This time I’m ops. Next time? Who knows.
I’m knackered. This is all you’ll get from me. But it was beautiful today and efficient. If only I had the head to record it. We had to use a stately home to build a convincing tenement flat. With all the kit, and interiors only, we needed the space…
Two hours from location and my van’s temperature gage suddenly goes from cold to DANGER. Then without ceremony, up pops the engine light and an alarm goes off This is all in about a second. And then the power leaves the engine like running out of fuel, and my steering goes all 1970 and I’m at 50mph on a dual carriageway with no hard shoulder a 3 tonne dead bit of metal on wheels, hauling thousands of pounds worth of lights. Steam starts pumping up the side of my window. I instinctively have floored the clutch so now I’m coasting. And just in front of me is a little Shell garage with a shop outside. And my momentum takes me up the hill, out of the way of all the traffic and I come to a juddering halt perfectly parked and jump out onto grass through a cloud of stinking steam. My guardian angel is once more covered in bruises. I don’t know how she does it.
Still, fuck. I pop the bonnet. An RAC van drives up into the forecourt and asks me if I’m someone I’m not. No, but could you have a look when you’re done? He might. Lucky.
The coolant tank is totally empty. There’s liquid all over the engine. Hmm. I ring Dan first as I know he’s close behind me. Don’t want him to pass. I’ve been crawling. He’s been spanking it. I tell him the circumstances and then go and see what’s available in the Londis.
They sell coolant. Also oil etc etc. I go back to the van and it is clear nobody has ever unscrewed the top up hatch for coolant. There’s ancient pine cones. Bits of dead pigeon. Some of that will get in the engine. I clean it a bit and Dan rings me. “Is it a Shell garage? Hang on, I think I see you.”
Suddenly there’s two of us. He was very close behind me. Things are better already. I buy coolant. We pour it in and it vanishes. The RAC guy comes over and sounds the death knell. “Right. It’s cool now. Turn the engine on and see if it runs.” I do. It does. “Yeah these Citroens are known for it. The cooling system goes. Was it only blowing cold air?” “YES!” “Did you just put in coolant? Look it’s all on the floor now. Went straight through. You can drive it a little bit. But you stopped just in time. You’ll fuck the engine if you try and drive it properly. Thermostat is gone. Likely it went first. Did you get any alarms? Likely not. If the thermo goes first, the bang is all you know of it.”
Dan and I get on the phone simultaneously. Everyone is in airplanes right now but for Hannah and us. I ring her. Dan starts ringing recovery companies. I tell Hannah the situation. Dan finds a huge respected recovery firm an hour’s drive away. He asks me for my company card. I give it to him because my job is to get that van and the contents to the site. AA, RAC etc, all very well but they won’t tow it 2 hours to an obscure country house. Home or an approved garage like Mister Crook ahem Clutch. It’ll be almost 500 quid to tow but it’s Friday afternoon in North Scotland and the fact they can tow a 3 tonne lowloader 2 hours for us is a fucking miracle. “Don’t book him, wait there must be another solution! Wait!” says the phone and I don’t wait because we have to do this now and we can’t balance options because time is not on our side here just before the weekend.
It’s cool again. We put the key in. We park it in the Shell forecourt. Surrounded by CCTV it is safer than it would have been at any of those shit hotels I couldn’t sleep in last night. I lock and check. I give the key to the lady behind the counter to keep in the till. We already have a relationship cos her brother lives locally and has a tow truck, but it is too small. We’ve thought about it.
Tomorrow there have to be lights at the shoot. That is the entirety of my job today. Then the lights must be moved. These things are set in stone.
Aberdeen Enterprise closes at 5. It’s half two and it’s about a two hour drive. We know there’s a Luton there. The gaffer’s guys have booked it for us. We go.
“Someone needs to stay with the car,” we get. Dan has a full tech van. He can’t leave it in Aberdeen to drive a Luton. Everyone is flapping but the two us. No, scratch that, everyone is flapping but Dan.
I notice my impostor syndrome for the first time cos I love this work so surely I don’t deserve to do it, aye? I flush that out and it is replaced with a deep conviction that we have made the right calls here. Delay would have brought disaster. £500 to be able to shoot? The fucked van is safe. We need the unfucked van for tomorrow. Boom.
The gaffer tracks his van as it is full of GPS. Dan and I get to Aberdeen and rent the new van. We part ways. I beat the gaffer and the fucked van to site. The gaff comes next. Then the van, and a guy from the AA.
He’s gonna look at it. I feel a moment of churn. “The thermostat is gone, I think.” I say. He goes digging. If he says “You chose reverse instead of sixth” I’ll never live it down. “Fuck there’s a great big hole. A the thermostat is gone,” he says, and I walk away tall. It is exactly as I told them. I hand the van over to the gaff. Should’ve driven it to Aberdeen himself anyway. And just like that, he was unpacking the tech van.
I got the kit to the shoot. Tomorrow is sorted too. And it all happened pretty much on schedule. Half an hour later booking the tow and that driver might think of the Friday night home time and prefer to sack it off to watch the football, to say goodnight to the kids, get some rest.
Having backup with Dan was impossibly helpful as I might have been too nice and waited and got us all fucked if he hadn’t reminded me to hold my ground when I know I’m right. I’ve known him for decades. When he said he found a tow that can carry us, I gave him the Pleo card without even thinking. That was the division of labour. “One call the office, one call vehicle recovery” I’m not even sure which one I would have prioritised if I had been alone.
Then noise about masks and batteries and lists and things. Then bed in the most incredible huge vast bed. They’ve booked me a wonderful room here.
First, a hot bath. Which is where I have been all this time, and from whence all these paragraphs have sprung like little salmon, flapping into your pupils. Splot. There. Want some more?
I’m not the Virgin Mary, Joseph or baby Jesus. I’m the donkey. Definitely the donkey.
It all started to go wrong in Warrington. Only about ten past one in the morning, but I’ve been up since 4.30am and have mostly been run off my feet. I realised I was tired. “Time to stop,” I thought. “I’ve cracked the back of it.”
I’m driving a lowloader full of lights to Aberdeen. It’s cold and the van only blows cold air. I hadn’t left London until after 9pm as I was dealing with personal matters after work.
Holiday Inn Warrington is the nearest place. Cheap. I carefully reverse the van so it’s parked with the back against a wall in a well lit camera covered part of the car park. I open the door and a man with a torch is standing there. “Whole place booked,” he tells me. It isn’t. We go back and forth, but he’s adamant. So I drive 5 minutes to the Premier Inn. They let me in the door there, after I have once again painstakingly parked safely. “We can’t book you in. It’s too late. The system won’t let us. And there are no rooms ready.” I am aghast, but take it in my stride. She’s ok. It’s the man with his hard back to me on the computer. She makes me a latte. 2 sugars. It probably saves my life. “Try the ABYSS”, she advises me as I’m slumping back to the van. “The… the abyss?” I query. Yeah. There’s an Ibis in town. Ahh. Eye-biss. Not Ibb-iss. Common mistake. No room at the Ibis. Back to the abyss.
Driving through the dark now I shout at Google to call a number of hotels en-route. Some answer. Some are friendly. They’re all “full”. They all recommend another place just down the road that is also full. M6 on a Thursday. It’s where it is all happening. Liars. One place has rooms. I drive to the parking lot. It feels unsafe and my load is precious. I leave.
Hours pass and the coffee is fading. I’m crawling up north still though, and I find another Travelodge, and this one is in a service station. It comes with the name of the road. Travelodge Lancaster M6. I don’t bother parking until I know, I just leave it with the hazards on. Fucker won’t even let me in the door. By now it’s half 2. He tells me to go to Barrow through the intercom. On the way back to the van I start laughing crazily and then my whole face explodes with tears. I go and put diesel in sniveling like an idiot. I put more in than I need.
Ever the optimist I try one more time. Travelodge Burton Northbound. I’m recovered from my emotional thing. There’s a friendly Saffer at the desk and he’s clearly lived. No room at the inn though, but he gives me some tips about where to sleep in the van. “I’d do it but I’m SO COLD,” I tell him. “I just want a shower.” He shrugs.
Adrenaline kicks in. “Oh fuck it all I’ll just drive to Aberdeen,” I tell myself. And I go back into the abyss.
Thankfully the South African at Burton Travelodge has sewn a seed that germinates as I see a sign for a truck stop. I’m in Penrith. Junction 38 Truckstop. It’s lively at half 3, and friendly. I get advice about how to avoid the military vans and their noisy fridges. I’ve just heard about Putin cutting the fuel again so I top up diesel ahead of the run. Then to the cab. Actually, this is the safest option. This stuff is worth a lot of money. If I’m in the van it’s safe overnight.
No blanket. No pillow. I wrap myself as well as possible. I snatch a few hours of fitful something until the dawn wakes me. I’m writing this in the cab. All my muscles are tensed from cold but I’m not shivering. I have rested in some fashion. Tonight I’ll have to do it properly. I’ll make sure the radios are charging and I’ll have to supervise the tech van in, and I was wanting to draw up a new photo list as the kit has changed again. I can do these things. But will I ever be warm again?
If I had thought about it I could have brought a thermos and a blanket, even a wee pillow. It might have been an adventure. Next time. Next time.
I’m gonna wander back to the truckstop and see about that bacon and eggs. I’m so cold.
I thought yesterday would be peak tired. But no! Wow.
Up with dawn. Uber to production. Marlon is late again. So I get all boxes ready for loading and categorised. Load is smooth. Page wants the bedsheet. She doesn’t need it but she wants it. We get to venue two hours before anyone who knows what we need, so we unload the lot into Underworld at Camden.
The place we put it is the wrong place. I have to move it to another place, which also turns out to be the wrong place. Why the hell wasn’t I on location scout? It’s cost-cutting to the point of madness. The director is keeping some rented sliders that he will literally never use. He is pretty much entirely shooting on impulse and they take TIME to set up and balance. Mister “oh and now I’m going over here” will move on before they are set up. Could have had a person instead of them.
My concern today has been hugely for a young actress who is frequently being filmed with no sound for background shots. It’s her first gig and she’s literally a teenager. None of us realised that she’d had her suitcase filled with bricks yesterday and she had to carry it a long way. She’s a trooper. She’s one of us. But… she kept quiet until it gave her blisters. Yes, if you give an actor a suitcase, put some weight in it or they might carry it like it is nothing. But there’s weight and there’s weight.
Yesterday I said we need a first AD. We do. Today I felt maybe we want a combined first and second AD. A first, someone to call the shots… that would be great and helpful. It would save all the “are they filming” WhatsApp messages. “Ok silence on set, camera rolling and …” (the ghost of sound past shouts ‘SPEED’) “ACTION!” … something happens… then “Thank you that’s a cut…” “Ok set back we are going again, great job” etc etc. That’s helpful. It’s actually close to vital for logistics and morale. But added to that, for that poor young woman, the human who just takes the time and HAS the time because it is their job, to say: “Hey what you’re doing is great here just so you know. The director needs this from the next shot so how do you think that might be achieved? Ok interesting but maybe if you do it like x…?” “That was brilliant from your perspective but actually it would look nicer if you walked down this line here, as the light in the camera really picks up on that track, but what you’re doing really tells – remember you can swap hands mid shot with the suitcase, people do that in real life when something is heavy.” The poor thing was being given unplayable notes. Someone needs to translate that shit. This girl is bruised, disillusioned and knackered, simply because there’s nobody whose job it is to translate. First job, untrained, easy mistake to make. I know it. I did it. It’s why I trained. Lucky. I trained just before I broke my body and my voice by being obedient to people who don’t know what they are asking. Wendy Alnutt, Wyn Jones, Ken and Patsy and Peter taught me so well at Guildhall – in a golden age – how I had to take care of my longevity in this career. And I’m still here. Directors like ours today… he’s brilliant… but he will break your body by mistake because he forgets to think about you as a real person. It’s all the art the shot the feeling. Do it again again again again again.
You learn to be able to say “Mate, this suitcase is too heavy. I’m gonna get blisters.” But it takes time and confidence to be able to do that. So people have to say it for you first. And I wish I had noticed and done so.
End of the day we are in the rain, again with very bad comms, freezing cold, she’s still walking in the rain with that suitcase. The bricks aren’t in it anymore. “She couldn’t wash her hair in the shower last night for her fingers. They’re so strained they don’t work,” says her mum, conversationally, having noticed that I’m belatedly trying for some pastoral care, and just happy to find someone here who is talking to her daughter like she’s a human being who has needs.
But… I dumped this all haphazardly with Lou and Frank. I must sleep now. More madness incoming. All will be well. At the HEART of this job is an incredible graceful human being. Their kindness and fortitude will hopefully be the dominant force going forward, even if they are, inevitably, the last to arrive and the first to leave. My observation of them has been fleeting and distant, but has left me extremely impressed. I’ve met many very famous humans and rarely do they balance heart and earth so completely. And that makes everything brilliant really. These concerns are just detail. I’m involved in something beautiful.
Day two of this wonderful madness. Up at fuck o’clock and Marlon was late so I got to have a moment of stop before the van came in to get me. Then off. We have numbered and labelled all the tech now, even though it keeps changing. At one point I literally found myself volunteering to step in as a first assistant director, as this is the thing we are most visibly lacking. The information dissemination. Obviously I can’t come in as first now, and it would be weird. But I’m trying to streamline information dissemination by sending a million WhatsApp messages all the time forever. Nobody really knows when the shot is moving on unless they happen to be standing next to the director. He’s an auteur, beautifully artistic, but very used to working on his own and in a rarefied atmosphere. “Now just … just let the music carry you. Get lost in the music, and an m we will film you!” “That’s not the way it works through me.”
I’m at my usual coalface, quietly stopping things exploding before they become visible. Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid, like when the tech van was sent to an address over a mile from the shoot and then treated like the driver had fucked up.
It’s all made a little harder because I’m being micromanaged by the same person who sent the wrong address so if I even snatch a moment for a coffee after being pretty much the only person with no lunch break and knowing deeply and completely that there’s no way in hell anything is going to explode in the next ten minutes, I still get a call telling me I should move some fucking boxes. The call doesn’t come because I imminently need to move the boxes. No no. The call comes because they’re quick enough to notice I’ve gone off site, but slow enough to fail to understand that they can trust me to do more than my job. “The talent was incoming”. I knew where the talent was. I had plenty of time and time to spare. I needed a moment. I’m made of meat as well, and need to feed and use stimulants.
Which is why this blog might feel rushed. I’m home now and actually feeling very much reconciled and like this is a solid team. This blog is always just the record of a day. I think that the biggest lie of all is the myth of consistency. We change our minds all the time. It is only when we entrench that we start to become Rishi. But we are led to believe that it is somehow shameful to change our minds. Nah. I shift my views with the tide and I hope I will until I die.
There’s an idea of consistency at the core of this. I like them all. They are all competent. We are a big team, working hard, making.
The hours are always long. I’m happy though, doing it. And if I’m moaning into my blog it’s partly because I have already taken sleepy medicine and then realised I’ve got to rush this fucker before I sink into this heavy and delightful cushion of dream that is already beckoning.
Oh man I’m exhausted and this is just day one. Thankfully it’s a lovely team and the ructions that had me concerned are already smoothing. I was a little frustrated last night that I didn’t stop a decision that was made to hire a piece of kit that was both very expensive and – to my sensibilities – more effort than it’s worth. You really need 3 people to operate a Ronin 2 and I’ve seen the shoot plan – we don’t need it. Certainly not for over £400 a day. The team seem to have all spoken to one another at last now and agreed on this and they’re gonna chalk it up to experience and go a bit more low-fi for the steadycam stuff. And save a mint in the process.
The usual jumps at the start. I found my judgement under scrutiny when one of my drivers showed up for work looking too casual. I totally get it. Dress comfy, drive comfy. Why be uptight about it? Again I think it was just teething problems, and tomorrow he thought he might show up in a suit for contrast. The shoot itself went very well, and I am happy with how my drivers acquitted themselves. I sourced the gaffer through a very dear film director mate and he’s so chilled and competent. My camera guy is all over it too and I’m sure he’s got some useful footage. He just had to calibrate himself for the team he’s on. Like an acting company, everybody has to find their shape on a film set – even a tiny one like this. We are always working to a deadline, and you can’t fuck up when venue hire and staff costs are so high. We got the shots we needed. I reckon we got some lovely shots, not that I ever got had time to monitor the monitor or see the rushes. At one point I was caught and hid under a table with the make-up for about ten minutes while a beautiful grand piano was deliciously noodled and simultaneously filmed on two swirling cameras. I was happy to be in the room. I can already feel that this will be a lovely thing to watch and I’m thrilled to be a cog in the machine even if it is a cog that will wakeworksleep for the next ten days or so, and carry all the heavy stuff. Lunch involved grabbing a triangle of sandwich off a table as I walked through, and took place probably about half 4 for ten seconds. Even when I left the building for 3 minutes to return a tablet to a driver I was rung up on WhatsApp. My one attempt at getting someone to get me a coffee coincided with a sudden unexpectedly quick van unload. Lots of things needed and very few people, all of whom have choices about how they behave.
Stress is voluntary. Seriously. You don’t have to do stress and you probably get the thing done better and certainly get it done kinder if you pull stress out of the equation entirely. It helps nothing. Ever. It even slows you down cos you stop breathing properly.
I think this will be lovely but right now it’s Ronin this and Gimble that and is the lens the right lens and why is the director insisting on that lens when it’ll cost us over £300 a day because it weighs so much we can’t pull focus on the ronin we have? Tristan met me after work and put his finger on it. “Director is insisting on the crap lens to make sure everyone jumps when he asks them to jump.” Of course. Expensive ego trip. The DoP seemed to have a workaround, but this director is super chilled in person I’m told, but he’s Cali. So he exerts his thing via equipment instead of shouting. I can buy into that, to be honest. I’m just here to help it all get made. Let them have their battles. All I care about is that it is efficient and pleasant when we actually start.
Today has been inventory and getting to know the team. The focus puller is ALWAYS OCD. This guy is no exception but its like he wants to live in the production office, and he listens to a load of YouTube videos that contradict the lived experience of the DoP. I like him. I have skin in the game though as I booked the DoP so I want him to be brilliant and loved so it reflects back on me darling.
The DoP lost my happy imagination traction when he started being heavy handed. I love him lots but he was shouting instead of talking today. Sometimes there are actors on lovely jobs who somehow reckon they are “better than the job”. Honestly my dears, if you’re better than the job, don’t do the job. Stet. Unless you’re willing to be gracious. There’s always someone else who will be happy to have the job. Either do it fully and kindly or go sit in front of Netflix.
Behind me there’s a storm. It came in slowly with hard static. Now there’s hard rain. I really hope we aren’t under the gun for the outdoor shoots. Not tomorrow, I don’t think, but soon. We are about to cover a lot of ground.
Tristan drove me home cos he needed a self tape reader for two tapes. We did them both. Then I cooked for us both. God we ate well but I’ve had no down time whatsoever but for that twenty minutes in the car. And now I’ll sleep with what is currently a crazy loud storm noise outside the open window. I could close the window but I’m pretty sure that this storm will end up chased by more heat. I’d prefer to wake naturally than to boil into my early start. But I’m gonna drug myself with Actifed. Night fun friends! zzzzx
AlBarclay 