About a week ago, you might remember that I finally received all the components for a new video editing PC – more powerful than Herr Flick’s Binoculars. You may also recall that the power cables turned out to be too short, rendering the whole thing a bit useless. Thankfully, Bill came round last week with new cables and assembled the beast. It now sits quietly simmering under my desk and, after installing Davinci Resolve 20 and loading it up with all the footage we’ve recorded so far, it’s proving more than capable of handling the job.

Saturday was spent running around like a blue-arsed fly in preparation for Sunday’s shoot, which took place in a set of offices in Kemp Town. We’d rigged the place to look like a call centre and brought in 16 supporting artists to chatter away whilst wearing headsets. They all did a brilliant job, as did the main cast. We also shot a few scenes in the meeting rooms – slightly easier to manage logistically, but still pretty full-on for the actors. Sunday’s shoot for Automatic featured Lamb Bennett, Lucy Mabbitt, Jamie Langlands, Simon Willshire, Sam Stones and Gosia Stewart, all of whom delivered excellent performances.

Many thanks to Mark Tournoff, Andrew Cawdery, Tom Waterton-Smith and Julie Russell for organising props and coordinating the supporting artists. We couldn’t have done it without you. And a special shout-out to Bobby, Gosia’s friend’s dog who, all things considered, kept remarkably quiet during takes.

Next up: the “House” scenes on Tuesday 29th July, so we’ve had a busy Monday preparing.

Solid progress.