Day 9

Today was potentially the most confusing and demanding day of the shoot, in that it's the one day of the film where we have the most hands on deck, mainly in the shape of extras for the cafe scenes. It was also one of the few scenes to not be shot in sequence, as the main cafe scenes - between Lucas and Ogilvy - happen early on in the film. The reason for this is quite simple: the cafe we were using - the Heritage Coffee House in Wadham Street (does great veggie good!) - is only shut on Sundays, and we couldn't shoot during the week as that would have meant recompensing them for a day's lost trade, which we couldn't afford, and we also couldn't shoot it last Sunday, as Chris (Ogilvy) wasn't available.

Things got off to a slightly slow start, with Steve Dineen coming down again to do his final turn as the by now rather sympathetically sad, rather than annoyingly sad, Paul, who is now faced with the prospect that he won't be able to get to the Cravatter's Guild Conference in Torquay (something he boasted about to Cleo in the car just after he picked her up). We then re-made the scene where Ogilvy and Lucas head off for the Dream Roads, the consensus being that the scene was working a lot better (probably due to a miraculous absence of busses, taxis and buzzsaw wielding stonemasons).

The main cafe interiors were all shot with Rich's patent Two Camera TM method, which again speeded things along nicely, although, as we haven't had a shot list for the entire film - a partially deliberate ploy - it was a bit of a headache trying to remember what coverage we actually needed. Again, the reasons for this are due to the nature of the story: when Lucas and Cleo are together, there is a definite 'conspiracy of two' feeling, conveyed by knowing, troubled silences, looking away, minimal dialogue. When they're with other people, however, things are different; they wear masks, play along, try to pretend that all is well. So with Lucas and Ogilvy, we need to have as much 'normal' coverage as possible, and keep the Bogo Tarr stuff on the back burner. One splendid moment occurred during the wild track, when Stu called for general cafe ambience. Suddenly, everyone was a percussionist, moving tables, coughing, clattering knives and forks etc. I even reiterated Ray's words from Wednesday: 'Any chance of another, dear boy?'

The final hour or so of the day saw us shooting the scene in which Sally's character buys a dress for her 3 year old niece. We shot this in my sister Lois's shop Mya Rosa, with Chris's daughter Catherine playing the shop assistant. As the clocks went back last night, we lost the daylight at 1700, meaning that Rich had to frame out the window onto Waterloo Street. Again, 2 cameras were called into play, one on the good legs (my tripod; the hired tripod, which came with the hired camera, turned out to be shit, hence being called the Bad Legs) and the other gaffer taped to a shelf.

I now feel like I'm heading towards a state of relief: we've broken the back of the schedule, but still have two very demanding days to go. Thank God for licensing hours, I say.