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.

Second day's shooting on The Sacrament. Well when I say second day's shooting what I mean is that we are into the second day's filming of the demo of the first bit of the movie.

(pic by Matt Kelland, left to right; Phil, Joe Pitcher, Natalie Ball. click for bigger version)

More shots, more setups, more of everything. Today we had the addition of Natalie Ball as Nurse Hellion. Nat couldn't be with us yesterday so we kind of filmed around her. But today we filmed her entrance into the room all dressed in milk white pleather. The costume was custom made for her by our incredible costume supervisor/designer Haldis Gothard, and it looks amazing. People were swinging by the set just to see Nat in costume. She did look fabulous. Her eyes are made up really black so when she widens her eyes the effect is totally electric. We've got so many really cool shots this week. Several times today instead of "cut" I said... well it wasn't cut, anyway. There's something really cool about "getting the shot". The more I do this, the more I think I'm all about "getting the shot".

Had a visit to the set today from Matt Kelland, who regular readers of this blog will remember was kind of a prime mover behind this project happening in the first place. I think the phrase he used was "I think you basically got to stop talking about it and actually make this movie." Anyway it was nice to see him and show him what we were doing. I think he had a good time watching a movie being made. Also he shot some pictures, which is something I wasn't able to do very much, being busy an'all.

Later in the afternoon, one of our actors was having trouble with his lines. Nick only got the script the day before we started filming and he's been up against it all the time we were filming, but this afternoon the pressure stepped up as we were doing his stuff to camera. He fluffed a few times, then that led to drying, and finally I could see he was getting really frustrated. I changed approach a little to compensate. We'd been shooting whole scenes to get lots of coverage, shots we can use to patch holes in the edit, and this was working well with Joe and Natalie who'vehad weeks to prepare. But I decided there and then to shoot small fragments with Nick to allow him the time to focus on it. We ran the lines one by one. He nailed every one of them.

Nick had the toughest time through the shoot and he was the one who came the furthest. Joe and Nat were already two of my favourite actors, but I didn't know Nick at all and he was a bit of an unknown quantity. But he worked so hard in the face of really stacked odds and I have to love him for that. I have a really great cast and I'm really looking forward to working with them on the full length film.

Final day of Easter shoot tomorrow. We'll be getting some other cast members in for publicity shots, and hopefully I'll be able to get a sword or two. I will be packing a bag of prop guns too. Oh yeah we'll also be filming Nick's capture (Nat clubs him in the head with a hammer) and Nat leading him down into the torture room. We'll also be performing a pickup shot or two and Vicky Boreham (as Sister June) posing as a receptionist in Dr Bone's clinic.

After all the hard work of this week it'll be like playtime.

First day's actual shooting after yesterday's prep work. Got in about 8.30am and let the Skeleton Crew into the studio, where they set about setting up the green screens which had dried overnight. I asked them to put a grid of dark green camera tape blobs on the screen to help with matchmoving.

Then I raced over to the school to pick up Haldis, our costume/make up supervisor, who brought the costumes with her. For a costume budget of £40 she's tailor made one wonderful sleazy vampire nurse, a brilliant all white vampire doctor, and a detective sargent.

Dr Bone, our vampire doctor, is beautifully and creepily played by Joe Pitcher, and he turned on a truly chilling performance. We have a small cheap track, and some of the shots which track into Joe when he'sin costume send shivers down my spine.

I spent between 9am and about 12 noon rehearsing with the actors, then we set up for the first shots. We broke for lunch around 1.45pm a little behind schedule, but finished around 5.15pm so ended up only 15mins late.

The day went very well. Our stand-in detective, Nick Whitley, who only got a script yesterday, wasn't off-book yet, but he worked really hard to get it down all day, and I gotta love him for that. We'll work on his performance again tomorrow, and I'll try and direct him better. I was at a bit of a loss what to say to him at times, and I think his performance suffered. My fault. I must try to BE BETTER.

After work got home dog tired to see that the first direct debit bill for ages has been bounced by the bank, which means Oh Joy I'm running out of money again. Sigh. Hopefully it's not going to be too long before the house gets sold. Might have to get out another small loan to tide me over.

But all that can't touch me today. For the last two days things have been going so well with the film I've been walking on air. Watching the monitor and seeing Joe and Nick running the scene, saying my words with lights on them in front of a green screen... it was surreal. I never really believed it would happen, even up to this Monday. But it's happening, all because of some good friends who have expressed their love for me in one of the most tangible senses. They made my dream happen. It don't get any better than that.

Today was a really odd day, one of the strangest of my life.

This week is the initial shoot for my film, "The Sacrament" and up till this morning, despite the fact we are shooting tomorrow, we didn't have any green screens. But this morning I went to pick up some green screen paint from the school's paint shop, and lunchtime we secured a van to transport some old theatre flats from the school to the studio. Around 3pm we started painting them and by 6pm they were done. That was amazing, and "The Skeleton Crew", Chris Sealey, Emily Key, Julia Chiavetta, Rebecca Moffatt, Felix Pickles Harvey and costume supervisor Haldis Gothard were all working hard to make this happen.

Several strange things though. The initial idea for this film came from a conversation between myself, my friend Matt Kelland and a guy called Chris Nuttall who apart from many cool jobs he does is Tim Burton's 5.1 sound guy. So get this: the green screen paint we got is leftovers from "Corpse Bride". Weird enough. But one of the flats we painted over was a scenic art project from a few years back of "Beetlejuice". Good omens, clearly, but very strange co-incidences as everything happened in isolation.

I feel the gods of cinema are with us, and just letting us know they are keeping an eye on us.

Spent a relaxed Easter weekend, doing very little apart from worrying about the shoot next week. Thursday and Friday Mia and I were alone, watching movies and just hanging out together. The kidscameback from their break in Cornwall with their mother on Saturday morning, then Sunday and Today just chilling and eating chocolate.

Ain't life sweet?

Heard today that Nicki, that friend of mine's wife who had the brain haemorrhage, died today after a few difficult days in hospital. I was really upset about that. I didn't know her very well, but everything I ever heard about her informed me she was a well loved wife, mother, partner, daughter and person. My friend is devastated by the loss of his wife, and why wouldn't he be? When a perfectly healthy 40 year old woman pretty much drops dead on one of the happiest days of her life, what else can it do to you?

My heart goes out to my old friend Clive Arrigoni and his four young children. In his heart rending email which he sent around to everyone who wished her well, and I respect him for having the wherewithall to even DO that, he ended with the following which makes me cry every time I read it:

"Last night as I kissed the children goodnight and gave them the cuddle I had brought home for them from their mummy, Helena said "Is mummy an angel now?" Yes she is, and she always was."