Need to keep blogging, so much going on!
Well, here is a publicity shot of our Lauren in our movie "Much Ado About Lauren". This is Abi Murray, who is doing brilliantly and truly lights up the screen.
So Abi is now rehearsing the pantomine over in St. Albans so we won't be filming anything with her until January. Need to film lots of other stuff though.
So in the last couple of weeks we have been trying to film as much as posible with her.
We shot one scene where the character Becky is told she won't be in the play and ends up attacking Lauren. Went well! Catfight! We then shot a quick scene in a corridor which comes much later in the movie.
We also filmed as much of our "dining room" scene as we could. Things do suffer when you rush! This is a difficult scene and we only had about 40 mins with Ellie and so I went ahead and filmed, only to realise that I wasn't filming at 25fps! Which may seem incidental but does make a big difference to the "look" of our movie (video is shot at 50 fps and as we are shooting on Hi def we can adjust shutter speed and achieve a more cinematic look.)
We carried on filming when I had adjusted the setting, and did well, though it is noisy in that dining room, but the stuff with the cards worked well. Richy and John were excellent, and great physical comedians. We'll do some additional filming in the new year, as there's some good stuff we missed out from the scene.
Shot a scene around John's house, which is right towards the finale, we were going to shoot outside, but glad we didn't as it soon began to rain very hard!
We shot a corridor scene with Jack and Abi, where she tells him she is in the play. We got there in the end! I am learning that with film you can get away with a little wayward line learning as you can almost go line by line if you have close ups, so you can flick back and forth between characters.
Loads more to do, but we currently have a 50 min film! About halfway. Learning a lot (even at my ripe old age, how Orson Welles put Citizen Kane together at 24 I'll never know!) Computer technology is helping a lot, I am able to fix a lot in editing, and I am learning how to cut and paste alternate audio takes over the visuals so that the sound is a lot more seemless. I can also adjust lighting.
I spent two days on a "real" movie set last week. I was an extra in "Mad, Bad and Sad" which involved doing some work in a casino and then a bar. Got to meet Meera Syal (briefly, she didn't seem very happy) and also was given a line (!) to say to the guy who plays the cafe owner in Jack Dee's "Lead Balloon". A nice guy and got to chat for a little while before he had to lose at blackjack and stagger about drunk. My line? Okay, here it is. "Hard luck mate!" I went for disbelief, sorrow and ridicule!
The tour has come to an end! "The Word Made Fresh" concluded on Sunday November 25th in Luton (at LCF, my home Church.) It was a great and emotional night. The Church were so loving and helped to make such a memorable night. I was given a Noah cake! One of my best performances which I am glad about, because the whole thing was filmed for a DVD which should come out in January. It's been a good but long tour, and I'm glad I was stretched, but I feel I want to be stretched some more. But not really regarding travelling!
Matt Summerfield and the team took us out for a nice meal to conclude the tour and I was presented with a lovely souvenier poster to commemorate all that had happened. Urban Saints and Matt are brilliant, I really must write some more dramas for them!
By the way, my book of 20 drama sketches, entitled, "Dramatic Set Ups Volume 1" is now available from a Christian bookstore in Luton! Just £10, well worth it!
Now preparing for the Nativity service this Sunday (5pm!) and I have to say I am loving working with some extrememly talented 11-14 year olds. They are bringing some 10 year old scripts very much alive! Must do more with them next year (I think I feel a panto coming on!!)
