End of week ???? of filming!

Just realised it's been a while since I have written about the movie I am making, and as my good buddy recently reminded me, a while since I have written about any movie at all!

Haven't been to the pics for a while, but I saw the Pixar rat movie a few weeks ago and loved it. Moviemaking with love in every frame. A classic, and one of the best films of the year, animated or otherwise.

I sit here typing, feeling excited and very optimistic about, "Much Ado About Lauren". We have been doing a lot of filming and I have just edited together around 35mins of fairly completed footage.

What have we done? Well we succesfully re-shot the low lit scene with Rich, John and Simon. Went really well, and still very funny.

We shot a nice scene with the boys outside in the quadrangle at the school, which looks good. That was an example of finding something to shoot because an actress wasn't available to work on the scene that we were scheduled to do. Nice picnic tables!

We keep trying to film as much with Abi as possible before she goes off to dance in a panto for the whole of December. So we are really filming out of sequence at the moment and our "party" scene is probably going to have to wait till next year now.

Shot the post "drunken text" scene between Simon and Abi, worked fine but we nearly always seem to play "avoid the cleaners!" There is so much that goes on behind the scenes with a film like this, shooting on the hop, trying to get what we can before all the other elements take over and take us away from what we're doing. But we are getting there, and the jigsaw pieces are truly starting to fall into place!

Two days ago we filmed Simon's favourite scene so far. What he has always termed as "The Kissing Scene", although I have to say by the end of the movie there will have been a fair amount of kissing going on!

This particular scene is where our principal characters rehearse a kiss which is in our play within the movie. It went well, plenty of takes, because I thought Simon would appreciate it! Then Lauren's boyfriend bursts in and hits Greg in the face and upsets Lauren. All went well, and it was good having the energy of our "villain" Jack, playing Justin, back in the film.

Yesterday we filmed a nice little corridor scene which also involved the lovely Ellie, who I am determined to get in the film as much as possible because she is talented and a real screen natural. Simon and the boys were involved as well, and the wonderful Abi, who is also a huge pleasure to work with, and gives up so much of her spare time to help us. She was brilliant in the moment she had to confront Justin and I couldn't have ever hoped for a more lovely, talented, hard working, cheerful leading lady in our film!

Lots more to do and artistically this is one of the hardest, yet probably most ultimately rewarding projects I have ever been involved with. I have been involved with theatre almost all my life, but in ten years time this film will still be able to be put into whatever strange movie viewing device we have then, and viewed in the way that I intended.

Just as I finish this entry I also want to "big up" Simon Wade, who is a great friend of mine (I love his whole family!) and has been there from my initial furious texting that took place when the idea for this movie popped into my head. We laugh at each other and make fun, but this film would not be happening without this young man. And Simon I will always be in your debt for helping one of my dreams come true, (not the one where some of our leading ladies lather each other up in a jacuzzi, although surely we could write a scene like that very quickly!) I mean this actual feature film endeavour! Simon helped with the script, got his friends to be involved and, of course, sought permission for a crazy 37 year old film maker to wander around a high school filming students several days a week. Simon is funny, brilliant, a great actor and a great collaborator and friend. And I salute you sir!! Let's finish this film, before we watch England NOT participating in Euro 2008!!