Week Three was a change of pace compared to the first two weekends of mania. We welcomed Heather May into the Quandary Productions vortex, while Liam Gilroy took over the camera reins, as Stuart Almond’s hefty ‘Swashbuckler’ moustache caused him to be so weighed down, he was unable to film.
Saturday was spent on small, fun scenes and montage moments. We took our time with them and had a nice relaxed day before heading into the centre of Lincoln at night to capture our first exterior night shots (all looking nice). These took a while thanks to the inhabitants of Lincoln-town who decided to get started early on their festive drinking. Quote of the night came from a belligerent Yorkshireman shouting ‘HAHA, HE’S FAT!’ – I can only assume he was referring to my character’s ego.
Sunday was a complete change in tone as we tackled the heaviest scene of the film, putting our actors through the ringer. Even the runthrough (which was meant to be a minute or so, just to get an idea of where we wanted to take the scene) ended up as a nine minute outpouring/soul-search. All of the takes were excruciating to watch because of the emotional outletting (one in particular was a choker). I’m confident that’ll come across when the film is finally released.
Once we were done with all the catharsis/adrenaline/exhaustion we took things back in the other direction, with two of the funniest scenes of the film – one involving a date gone wrong, the other involving one character recalling the grimmest story in history (blackest comedy moment ever?). It was nice to sit back for the majority of the weekend to just enjoy directing and the technical side as I wasn’t in many of the scenes.
In more interesting news, we’ve decided to enter ‘NARCISSIST’ into Festival de Cannes, meaning I’ve had to start editing two weeks early, in order to reach the March 16th deadline. Assuming all goes to plan, that means the film (once all the DVD extra features are sorted) will most likely be ready early April.
