Monday 6th April 2015.
I found out yesterday that today is a Bank Holiday. Bank Holiday doesn’t mean very much when you’re self-employed. At best, it’s a day where you still work but the only plus is that maybe you receive slightly fewer phone calls. But on this day I decided it was best to not do any work. Instead, I met my brother at Mile End to go cycling around London.
Cycling is my new obsession. It began a few weeks ago when, desperate to avoid doing any work, I jumped on the tube to Mile End and rented a Boris Bike. I zipped around East London for many hours and felt like a kid again. I kept going on about it to my brother Dave and today, he joined me.
We started at Mile End and rapidly stormed through Victoria Park, and then along the canals leading to Angel. From there we dived onto the streets of London and hastily zoomed on down to Covent Garden, ignoring many traffic regulations before stopping for coffee and lunch.
We continued for many hours on our clunky Boris Bikes and saw more of London than we realised was possible.
Tuesday 7th April 2015.
Today I filmed some showreel scenes with the actor Damian Cooper. Damian is a terrific actor who’s done plenty on the stage (he also produces his own work) and has already amassed a ton of showreel material. He’s working with me to fill in those gaps to flesh out his reel a little more.
We filmed at his place, in Blackheath. I am a self-shooter; which means whenever I shoot on location I’m lugging a huge suitcase around full of lights and tripods and other bits and pieces; while also carrying a big camera bag. Sitting on the train is not so bad but then when you come out the other side, lost somewhere in Blackheath, it’s walking to the location that’s always a drag. I guess it’s my fault for refusing to drive.
Damian is a terrific actor. We did two scenes; in the first he’s a manipulative creep, in the second he’s getting dumped for binge-watching TV shows behind his girlfriend’s back. Damian’s equally at ease doing comedy as he is with the serious stuff. This is rarer than you think – every actor thinks they can do everything but in my experience, people tend to be strongest in one particular area. I’m no different when it comes to writing. I’m good at writing about human relationships, but I could probably never write an action movie.
In the evening I had a Skype meeting with a girl called Lauren from up North. She’s 21 and looking to get a showreel. She did acting in college but has never been to drama school, and doesn’t have any screen acting experience. I told her to think seriously before getting a showreel. It’s a lot of money to spend and you need to make sure you’re ready for it. I think a lot of actors dive straight into getting a showreel from scratch, but are you better off being patient and doing some more courses?
It’s a tricky thing to deal with. Historically – the advice has always been: build up your reel material by doing unpaid short films and student stuff. But now the people making those projects want to see a showreel before they cast you, so actors are stuck in a real Catch 22.
If Lauren wants to go ahead, I’ll still create a reel for her. She seemed driven and who am I to dictate what type of training or experience a person needs? But I told her to think about it. I am always there a year or two down the line if she does some training first.
Wednesday 8th April 2015.
Today I filmed a showreel with Simon Crudgington – who’d travelled down from Nottingham for the shoot. I had never met Simon before. We did the preliminaries over Skype, and then I wrote three scenes for him.
The first scene was a break up scene, where he finally gets away from the girlfriend who doesn’t support his creativity. In the second scene he plays a high flying manager who is great at business, bad at love. In this (purposefully) awkward scene, he spends his time desperately asking an underling for texting advice.
The shoot was complicated a little by obsessing over something that had nothing to do with filming. I received an email notification that my new bike had been delivered, but it was nowhere to be seen. I got in touch with Bicycles4U and they said it had been signed for by a David M. Well I don’t know anyone called David M. I went up and down my street knocking on every door, asking if anyone knew who David M was.
Meanwhile the actors sat around waiting for filming to begin, but I couldn’t let go of the bike issue! You may think this sounds a little insane but for me, you need a clear head when you’re directing. For whatever reason, my brain was fixating on the delivery, and I needed to figure it out!
Eventually, I found it – the box was sitting in my building after all, hidden in a hallway and signed for by a David S!
We finished the scene. And then the actors helped me build the bike.
But there were parts missing. And the parts that weren’t missing, were often broken. Basically, I’d been sent a dud. In my mission to buy a cheap bike, it’s possible I’d bought the worst bike.
Not one to beat around the bush, I immediately got in touch with Bicycles4U to arrange a refund.
And then we jumped in a cab to the next location to film our final scene of the day.
Simon is a great actor and I think his whole reel will be strong – but it was this final scene that I think will be the strongest, and I’m sure it will get him work. It was a scene about being a whistleblower. Simon’s character releases 400 classified government documents on Reddit – but moments before doing so he starts to panic about his situation.
He totally nailed it. As did his scene partner, Joseph Tregear. I am at the level now as a filmmaker that (I would hope) most of my scenes are good. But occasionally, a scene goes beyond good. A mixture of the right script, the right actors, and the right moment in time, and you get something golden.
And look at the screenshot, he even looks like Edward Snowden!
Thursday 9th April 2015.
I had a showreel meeting scheduled with a guy called David, but he had to cancel due to a job coming up. It always makes me slightly grumpy when people cancel, but then I am also happy whenever an actor gets a job or an audition. We’re due to reschedule when our schedules permit – which is looking tricky right now.
I was potentially stuck in the office all day due to having to wait in for the delivery guy to take the shit bike back from me.
He turned up around midday. As soon as he took the bike, I headed out to buy a better one. It was clear instantly that this was a better bike. To begin with, unlike the Bicycles4U one, this ride has working brakes (very important).
An hour later I was out on the roads of London exploring on my new bike. A little daunting but I tried to keep to safe routes – before I went a little overboard and found myself on the Cycle Superhighway heading towards Stratford. I came across Bow Roundabout and, remembering the fatality figures there for cyclists, I swiftly escaped the road and headed off down onto the canal path, which I much prefer anyway.
I got back to the office around 3.30pm, a little exhausted – and then realised I had a ton of writing and editing to get through.
I worked on a new reel for the actress Leonie Zeumer. Leonie is a terrific German actress -(Best Female Performance at Overlook Film Festival, Rome 2014). This wasn’t a showreel from scratch, I’m just editing the material she has. I got through an edit, not entirely satisfied with my work, but sent it over to Leonie to see what she thought.
And then I cancelled my evening meeting. Yes, I know I just said people cancelling makes me grumpy, but then I am a hypocrite. My cycling exhaustion mixed with need to get some scripts finished meant that I found the decision quite easy.
I just wish that I’d also found the writing easy. I wrote for a bit, struggled, and then went home and watched registered for an Amazon Prime account, and watched two episodes of ‘Transparent’. It’s a great show. Jeffrey Tambor is such an incredible actor. Forget drama school, people should just be forced to watch Tambor do his thing. That would be an education.
Friday 10th April 2015.
Today I filmed a showreel with Faye Christall. She had quite a specific idea of the type of scenes she wanted. Luckily they were mostly comedic, which is my strong point. But then that can always backfire — when an actor knows what they want and knows you can do it, there’s a pressure to make sure their instincts are right, and that you can deliver.
Like I wrote about previously, there are so many elements that need to go right on the day. Will the actors gel? Will everyone know their lines? Will I be on-the-ball when it comes to directing?
It went very well. Faye’s Liverpudlian accent added to the comedy scenes, and for the serious scene – it added a surprising depth to the piece. In it, she talks to her best friend about her suicide attempts — and in the midst of filming it became clear to me that Faye could definitely get work in soaps. Or maybe her accent just reminded me of soaps. Long term, I think she’ll focus on comedy, but in the short term, would be great to see her getting a few castings on British soaps – I hope the reel will help with that.
After filming I sat down with Adela Leiro, whose reel I’m shooting next week. She gave me a few scenes she’d filmed with the Met Film School and we discussed whether they’d be useful for her reel. There were some nice moments and the footage may be useful in addition to what we film next week.
I should also mention that an advert I’d written for The Shave Doctor was being filmed today by TDV Advertising. Here’s a shot the director Terry Davenport sent over to me from the location.
After that I had a meeting with a student from Bucks New University, who needed to talk to some film professionals for one of her projects. She asked me a heap of questions about my work, how I got started, and much more. It was interesting to me because I never really verbalise my views on my past and where I’m heading. Her questions enabled me to really think about my own career and also what I think about the film industry.
After she left I jumped on my new bike and headed to my parents house to show off my new wheels. And by pure chance my Mum was able to give me some dinner, result!
After a brief catch up I needed to head back before dark.
In the evening I watched a few more episodes of ‘Transparent’, which I’m really getting into, and had a brief phone conversation with an actor called Thomas Wingfield – finalising our filming details for next week.
And then I did a second edit of Leonie’s reel. Much better. And we’re both very happy with it.
I went to bed around midnight, which is surprisingly early for me. While I slept, my short play ‘The Proposal Update’ was making it’s New York City debut as part of ‘BritBits’ by Mind the Gap Theatre and Videograf.
Saturday 11th April 2015.
After waking up I immediately watched the stream of last night’s performance.
It’s a weird experience seeing your own writing directed by someone else, and starring actors you didn’t cast. It’s something I need to get used to as I want to work more as a writer than anything else.
There were some nice moments in the performance, and I think the actors are great; but I think it can and will get better in coming nights. The comedy didn’t really come out in the performance – but I think this is the first time they performed in front of an audience. Will be interesting to see how it progresses. They’re all being streamed live – you can find schedules and details HERE.
And then at 10.30am I had a meeting with an actress called Biunca who lives in Dubai. Her day job is working as cabin crew for a major airline – which means she only had a 24 hour window in which to meet me. She made to to my office within hours of landing (on no sleep) and we figured out what kind of scenes would suit her.
Now she’s gone, and I’m finishing this blog. Later on today I need to sort out some details for next week’s shoots, and then I’m calling it the weekend. Which hopefully means that tomorrow, I can have the day off!
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