Wow. What an amazing day. Some other key members of our cast, Ben Mansfield, Vicky Boreham and Matt Odell came in for publicity shots. Plus we had some really cool pickup shots and leftover setups from yesterday.

[oh yeah, be sure to return to this and the other shooting week
pages because I'm going to add pictures when they're developed]

Ben and Vicky play our heros, Frank McCol and Sister "June", our Batman and Robin if you will, our Kirk and Spock, our Jay and Silent Bob... Having them on set in costume sent a chill down my spine. I'd always imagined these characters and how cool they would look and the image of them in my head was good, but seeing them in the flesh was, creepy, crazy cool, fun, and deeply surreal. We had the bag of prop guns on us and we shot Ben and Vicky pointing their guns in various directions for the trailer. They had such fun doing this, but as I told them if they think this is fun wait till they actuallygetto do actual scenes with guns and swords.

We also shot a couple of clips of Matt Odell as Edmund Wrenfield. He doesn't have a gun in the show but we let him pose with one, and a pair of my sunglasses. He was on set for a total of about 15 minutes but had a lot of fun doing it.

Then we did Vicky's shots from the actual script. The scene called for her to be posing as a receptionist in Dr Bone's clinic and we had her sitting at a desk with the same intercom as we had on Dr Bone's desk earlier in the week, to make it look like they used them all over the building. Movie magic huh?

Vic turned up in her street clothes, but when we called her to the set she'd changed into her temporary costume and looked amazing. All black clothes and really dark eye makeup. We had a few discussions about her costume, and we wondered if she had anything we could use for June in the publicity shots later. She said to me: "I've got a boob tube in the car, I could go and get it if you like..." I mean, how many times does a girl say that to you in a week?

Yes, it's official: Directing movies is the best job in the world. You get to hang out with interesting, funny people, tell women what to wear and how to walk, play games with guns, knives and fake blood, and when the shoot wraps, you get kisses and cuddles from everyone telling you what fun they had and how great you are for writing and directing such a fun movie and casting them in it or hiring them onto the crew. Then you get to mold this raw material into something really cool with music and sound effects. Then you get the pleasure all over again when you show the cast and crew the movie you made. God I love doing this.

We wrapped about 6pm, we made an arrangement to meet up for a wrap party at Channings, a popular bar just down the street from the school. Everyone came to the bar about 8pm and I had my regulation pint and a half chased by about twelve cokes. We talked a lot about the shoot and how much fun the film is going to be to make, provided we have enough persuasive power in what we've shot to get the funding. I found myself getting stuck into talking about the same things, over and over. I figured out I was so blissed out and I was so blown away by this week I could hardly string words together. Mostly I spent the evening laughing at Simon our absentee DoP, who's been working hard on a shoot up in London all week. He was really tired and a bit drunk, and he's stand-up comedian funny anyway, so was hilarious all night if a little scary to those who don't know him very well.

I got up to leave around 11pm and was besieged by all my favourite people saying goodbye. Cue the aforementioned cuddles followed by a warm glow I've only experienced once or twice in my life.

I'm having trouble processing all the information that's pumping into my brain. I'm amazed that we got done everything we had to get done and had such a ball doing it. And yeah the post production on this stuff we shot is going to be a bitch, to say the least. But as I walked back to the car it started dawning on me that, if only for a short time, I'm living the dream.