Day 6

Back in Grove Park again this morning, shooting Lucas and Cleo walking about, and then past Priestly, who quotes a bit of Hamlet at them. Ray also had the brilliant idea of quoting from The Winter's Tale in the scene where he's sitting next to Lucas near the start of the film in the Italian Gardens (so-named after Marconi, who made the first ever radio transmission across water from Weston to Cardiff in 1897 - quite why he chose Weston is still something of a mystery; perhaps he was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, who had a temple in town). The Shakespeare quote really transformed the scene into something quite strong. In another bit of off the cuff improvising, we shot the scene where Lucas goes to a newsagent to buy cigarettes outside a newsagent we were passing on the way back to Grove Park for more Lucas and Cleo stuff.

Lunchtime saw something of an ecclesiastical emergency in that we realised that Chris Dunne's dog collar looks more like, in Adam's words, 'a bandage'. Much merriment was had by all, but it then meant we had to either find a real vicar and appropriate parts of his clothing, or try and make a new collar of our own. This is what Helen, our brilliant make-up artist, managed to do, so we were able to carry on with Chris's scenes. It's good to have Chris down - he was great to work with in Cornelius Crow, and will no doubt become a regular feature at the Regency (the unit's other watering hole, down the road from the Queenswood).

Another quirk of the film came to light today. We were shooting the Dream Roads scene around the Shrubbery (a strange little part of Weston you can only access by going under a mock Venetian bridge), an area I chose for its charm, and the fact that it's quiet. Well, when I say 'quiet' I meant it's like that provided film crews aren't around. As soon as we showed up, there were cars, vans and busses galore, to say nothing of a stone mason with a circular saw cutting big chunks out of Weston's answer to the Bridge of Sighs (the sighs in question being our own). There must be some obscure branch of physics that could explain why all it takes to turn a quiet street into Piccadilly Circus is about half a dozen people, two actors, and a small HDV camera... Needless to say, we had to set the world to rights in the pub afterwards.