FILMING - DAY TWO - WORCESTER

James: The awkwardness from the first day threatens to destroy the whole of the film. None of Mike and Beth’s scenes are going down well in the flat, and I am incredibly frustrated. I think Gab would agree that she wasn’t getting the best camera performance on this occasion and it was sod’s law that when the acting would go well the camera would be rough, and vice versa.

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Gabby: This would be fair to say, however we re-shot the scenes between Ann and Mike in the morning and they worked out much better. I found it difficult to keep the camera so that it was reacting to the action rather than predicting it. It was near impossible to hit focus, good composition and read the action well for a flawless take, especially when some of the takes were 7 minutes long. In hindsight even though I wanted they style to be edgy with depth and shifts in focus, I should have shot these scenes with a larger aperture so that the depth of field wasn’t so shallow.

I can remember being frustrated because the sex scenes were not how I had imagined them. This is when I started to realise that because of our limited resources and time anything we made now was actually an adaptation of the script and what we had hoped for. It was difficult for me to get the opportunity to express to James if I had a concern about the way in which something was acted, I felt that if the cast heard comments from me it might confuse them as to who they should take direction from. I also thought that they might think us unprofessional, something that now having Peppermint under my belt, I wouldn’t care as much about.

We film the big scene where Beth and Chris talk about running away, we get a cracking take, but then someone realises the boom is propped against the wall throughout the take, we go again but it is not quite as good. We actually ended up using that first take and nobody so far has spotted it first time, which is to both Jen and Chris’ credit.

James: I’m really shitting bricks at this stage and wonder how we are going to pull this film out of the bag. The frustration eats into your appetite, your sleep, your every move. You can’t stop thinking more and more about how to fix the nightmare. The biggest pressure is that you’ve spent £2000, hired 30 people and put yourself out there. You have this massive want to just do them justice and repay their faith. I’m not using hyperbole when I say that it really gets to everything inside of you. Still – we battled on.