Tuesday 27 October 2009

Day 4: Revenge of the Finale

The night everyone had been dreading for weeks turned out, unsurprisingly, to be the hardest day of the whole shoot so far; the finale showdown scene by York Minster.

So it didn't take 85 hours but it felt like it, the time ticking away from 6 on Monday night to 6 on Tuesday morning. Various crew and cast, including me, have what we hope isn't swine flu, and the CrimeFighters had to stand in the most exposed, windiest, chilliest spot in York between midnight and 6am dressed in t-shirts and lycra.

But in retrospect it could have been much worse; I'd been dreading the cold, the rain, drunken townies, all that. And it was only cold in the last few hours, it only drizzled for the last hour of the shoot, and the only passers by we had were more drunkenly interested than disruptive. Apart from the taxi driver who shouted 'Dickheads!' at us during a drive-by.

The crew were totally brilliant tonight and carried us through the tough shoot. Paul's comprehensive shot list was adhered to and crossed off methodically, and despite several fuse trippings and loss of lights, we powered on through the fatigue and cold and got the scene. Jenni and Paul only took a few moments to rest:

This week we have done so well to get nearly all the shots we planned, but there have been a couple of instances where we've had say, seven camera setups planned to cover a few lines of dialogue, and because of time have had to merge them into the same shot. That's what got us through tonight, and I don't think you could say we compromised the finale scene at all, bar a few shots we had to drop. Considering there are over 100 camera setups in that 10-ish minute scene, we've done amazingly.

We're getting there, but tonight is another high-density shoot in the Old Starre Inne, during which we have to line up the shots and knock em down. But at least Day 4 is over. Phew.

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