James: This was Ann & Beth’s scenes in the flat at the end of the film. The morale of the crew improves marginally as we tackled the third day although it is another day of frustrating angles and inconsistency by both cast and crew. Gabby: Yeah, I felt that we really pushed Selina as we tried to get the end argument down, again and again and again. The video output on my camera packs up so we can’t attach it up to the monitor for James to watch. From here on in it was a case of James having complete trust in what I am shooting.
James: I’m really doubting myself at this stage and hoping that I’m projecting an air of confidence! The major factor is that you have no time on this kind of a lo-budget schedule, and everything requires immediacy and urgency. However, the upshot is that it delivers a real sense of rawness to the film; it feels like a series of snatched moments that unfold over a day.
Damien Lloyd joined us to take the press kit shots at this point. I feel unfair to him as we haven’t given him enough time.
Gabby: No, we brought him in at last minute as someone else let us down, but he took some fantastic pictures including the main photo of Jen lying on the bed, that we have used for all the promotion of Peppermint.
James: On a lighter note, we got the flat empty in three hours. As Kamaljit Sharma said when we were filming Nightshift for Channel Four: “We are always chasing the time”. How true those words rang for me now!
Gabby: Yeah it was like a military operation. We had to be out before the next day where the renovators where coming in to strip and redecorate. God knows what they thought about our shoddy paint job! It was very strange to be filming quite intense arguing scenes in one moment and then to be packed up and moving out in the next.
James: Toby got the white van back and loved every minute of being White Van Man for the evening.
Gabby: I remember we had a few bits of furniture left sat on the driveway of the flat that people didn’t want back. We had a friends moment where we sat on a sofa (donated by Bob – thanks Bob) with a table, armchair and sat drinking beers. This was a real moral booster as it felt like something had finally gone to plan and on schedule.
We decide to go out for quick drink, I run to the cashpoint and dislocate my knee ( a reoccurring injury), so I stay in with just me and a bag of peas.
