As I mentioned before, we had three shooting days last week. A quick scene with the truck, followed by two mega scenes in a flat in Sussex Heights, which involved some complex dialogue and a great deal of shouting. Amazingly, Lamb, Keaton and Angela all seemed completely confident with their lines.

There were, of course, a few challenges. One scene was a dinner party, which meant I had to concoct a meal and sort out the wine. I’d specifically asked the guy in the shop for clear apple juice, but somehow ended up with cloudy. So, late the night before, I was tearing around various petrol stations hunting for anything transparent and apple-related. I’d originally suggested Spaghetti Bolognese for the meal, but as Angela pointed out, this might lead to……complications such as rebellious strands of spaghetti during filming or enthusiastic slurping and sauce splattering over the actors’ clothes. She suggested chicken, potatoes and beans instead, so five minutes before “Action” saw me frantically shoving plates into a microwave. The dinner party scene went surprisingly well, and I was genuinely impressed with the actors’ performances.

The next day was the big argument scene, and the issue there was that I wanted plenty of movement. The trouble is, once you introduce movement, continuity becomes a bit of a nightmare. In the business, this choreography is known as “blocking”, and I probably should have given it rather more thought. Still, we had time on our side, and after a few takes, Angela and Keaton settled into a reliable pattern. We also shot a few quick Zoom call scenes, and Nicky Patching kindly stepped in as a delivery driver. Thanks, Nicky.

Our final scene was filmed around sunset, which, of course, comes with it’s own lighting headaches – everything changes so quickly that each take looks slightly different. But, with some clever improvisation from Morgan and plenty of perseverance from everyone else, we got what we needed.

That’s it now, other than a very small corridor scene I still need to do with Angela. We may still need to pick up the odd extra bit later, though I won’t know that until I’m further into the edit. So, I guess this is the moment when I’m supposed to say “It’s a wrap”.

I did very little for the rest of the week. It was SO nice not to have that bloody shooting schedule hanging over me. We will have a wrap party, but I think it’s best to leave it until January – everyone’s far too busy in the run-up to Christmas.

I’m extremely grateful to everyone who made this possible. It’s been hard work, but tremendous fun! Thanks to all the actors and everyone who helped with the locations, including Mark Tournoff & Gosia Stewart for allowing us to film in Manchester Street and Nicky Patching for letting us use her house in Seaford. Thanks also to George Prince, who supplied the truck and allowed us to film in his yards. And to Tom & Julie, who helped with social media, graphic design for the posters and general organisation. Thanks to Andrew Cawdery, our tech support and transport guy, who made everything so much easier. Obviously, thanks to Morgan Andrews, the DOP and his legion of extremely capable assistants, Adam Price and Alistair Lock on sound, and the many supporting artists who brought the call centre to life, and anyone else who helped us out. Special thanks to Angela Munnoch, who’s been with me from the start and has been invaluable as AD, wardrobe, script supervisor and general moral support.

I now face the tasks of editing, music, marketing and distribution – another steep learning curve, and I expect it will take several months. I may not blog quite as often for a while, and if I do, it will probably be fairly esoteric stuff about editing and Davinci Resolve.

To misquote Churchill: “This is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end…. etc”