End of Week 4 of Filming

So we have been working on this movie for a month now! It seems much longer! But as we are fitting in filming wherever we can, around school and people's busy schedules, it is going to take quite a while longer. We have shot 14 scenes (only 62 to go fact fans!)

I am out of bulbs! The bulbs that cost £10 each! Got to order about 8 more for safety, we need our lights! I think the budget for this film, before advertising etc is going to be just under £1500. Not that much in movie terms (peanuts is an understatement, this budget would buy Tom Cruise's lunch on one day of any of his recent films.) But that is a lot of money in the desperately trying to stay married terms!

I brought in another talented actor friend for a cameo this week. The wonderful Jools Georges who I have acted with many times over the years. She is a brilliant comedic actress, and great to have around. She played a form teacher. She also brought her beautiful daughter Annabel with her, and the girls loved her, and helped out by holding her.

Scene went well, but we had to cut occasionally when Annabel was missing her mummy, or just wondering what on earth was going on! This scene is the 2nd half of the first scene we shot in the school, we now see Greg entering the classroom and seeing Lauren once again after being accosted by Becky.

Jools was great, as was Jack and the rest of the cast. We had a good amount of extras and that makes all the difference, adds to a convincing "school feel."

The next day we shot another common room scene, and I also shot a quick fill in scene of Abi (playing Lauren) walking down a corridor looking for the right classroom, which will be cut in earlier before the scene where she meets Greg for the first time.

We were a bit against the clock as Ellie who plays Caroline (excellent must give her more to do) had to be at work by 4, so we shot all of her stuff and then found convincing ways of shooting reactions and stuff to what she had said previously.

Then shot Richy, Simon and John, all of their bits around the girls sequences. Took a few takes but we got there and it does all cut together nicely. Current running time of Much Ado About Lauren is 23mins. Of course when we finish filming everything, we could be well over the two hour mark, so will probaly have to make little snips all the way through the film to meet our hopeful running time of around one hour forty five minutes.

Shot a quick insert flashback with Simon at his place, when he is dispairng at the computer keyboard. We have shot this once before, in a hurry I might add, and when I looked at the footage I discovered you could see me clearly reflected in a poster on the boys wall! Looking forward to cutting in a flashback scene into context, these are what will make our movie different and hopefully very funny.