Digitising continues

James: Gabs comes in to do the digitising whilst I show prospective students around the University. Gab and I have an informal agreement that she is better at editing than myself and I did the writing, so she’ll head up the post-production process. I note in my diary that I am hideously irritable at the moment, so this is another reason for Gab to edit.

Digitising Begins

James: Gabs and I finally sit down to start editing Peppermint. It is almost a month after the shoot finished, but until now we haven’t had the heart to even face the project. I think we still loathe it and don’t want to touch it.

This frustration boils up over the simplest things. Gab and I disagree on the best way to digitise tapes. We get so little done. I think we are still tired of the whole project.

Gabby: It’s actually understandable. The biggest thing either of us had edited before was about 15 minutes and that was usually documentary. This was entirely different. We hadn’t had the heart to look through the tapes and compare the logging notes to what we thought of the takes, so we couldn’t decide whether to digitise the lot or trust the logging sheets. In retrospect we had such little footage (17 tapes shot in DVCAM so there was only 30-40 minute footage on them), we should have just brought the whole lot in.

Also I hadn’t worked out the best way to divide the media up in the bins. Do you break them all up when capturing or capture in chunks? Looking back I would capture the scenes in chunks and then create sub clips later on. Its less fiddly to line up the tape and is easier to reconnect media if it slips out of place. All this I know now looking back, we certainly didn’t know it then.

Returning Kit - London & Worcester

James: Gab and Toby head back to London and drop the kit back at the hire company and I realise that I have been charged twice on the camera filters, so I get on to them about returning the money to my card so I can have some cash.

Gabby: As I deposit the kit back in London I have a very strong feeling that I don’t want to go anywhere near the 17 tapes that collectively make up Peppermint. The though of this made me feel sick.

James: That night, with Jen still in tow, we head down to perform at Monroes for an acoustic night. Toby Mountain, Tim Dobson, Larry Smith and myself all play. It is a fun night, and many a drink was had.










Gabby: Many.

FILMING - DAY NINE - WORCESTER

James: Jen’s exterior scenes go down relatively easily. We are incredibly pleased with the public toilet sequence and get really excited that we have a film on our hands. I’m relieved that in the space of 7 days and two half days we have made this all happen.

Gabby: That day we were really on the home straight but utter exhaustion had kicked in the trawling from one location to another grabbing shots. This takes up the very last of our energy. We shoot the last bit in the street at night, which was just an additional scene that I suggested we film in case the end seems all too abrupt. We are down to James, Larry, Jen and myself. We call a wrap but it’s all a bit surreal. In this moment it all feels more like a trauma than an achievement.

James: It feels strange to be packing up equipment and getting the house back in order. People go home for sleep; Jen moves out of the halls and comes to stay at mine for a few days. Gab stays over. We’ve spent all this time together but don’t want to let go. We manage to go out for a couple of drinks but everyone is too tired to really party.

Later that night, my bankcard fails at the cash-point. We made it through the movie.

FILMING - DAY EIGHT - WORCESTER

Gabby: We squeezed in the re-shoot first thing, then went on to shoot the throwing up scene in the toilet using a concoction of cold soups…poor Jen.

James: The major scene for the Sunday was in the classroom. The University drama head David Broster agreed to play Mr Bennett and I felt he did a great job. I absolutely hated school with a passion so it was fun to send it up with this archetypal teacher. The pupils really enjoyed the experience and so did the crew. Logistically, this was the most difficult day to plan, but it came off quite well.

Gabby: Yeah this scene was really fun to do. Tom was fantastic as he pretty much dealt with the kids, we put the boom on the camera so I was free to roam. This was when the crew and cast was at its biggest with a total of about 25.

James: Olivia and Zak get to go home. By this stage we have really smashed the arse of the script and remained on schedule so the morale is sky high. There is only one more day to go, and it is all exteriors with Jen, so we should be okay.

FILMING - DAY SEVEN - WORCESTER

James: After seven consecutive days of shooting the last thing you want to contend with are school children. But for the whole, the students were great. Olivia Corrie and Zak Lee enjoyed their short but concise parts. We had by this stage pretty much turned the ship around, and morale was high. I was really pissed that an element of complacency creeped in and the sound crew mixed down two stereo tracks live. It meant we had to re-shoot the scenes again, which, when you have 18 school children to entertain also, isn’t easy. But we managed.

Gabby: The weather was against us again that day. We were trying to shoot Mel and Sean’s scene down the alleyway but have to dive into a smokey little hole of a pub as the rain sets in. Eventually we get back to the alley and get the shot, but the wind is really strong and the audio is shocking. James did a really good job of fixing that in post.

James: It was hard to convince their drama teacher Melissa Dufty to take on the role of Mary.


Gabby: In fact it is not us who eventually persuades her it’s the kids themselves!

James: She reluctantly agrees and meets up with us at Gabby’s house to shoot the scene where Beth walks from Sean’s to Mel’s. Gab and I originally wanted to keep the entire walk in the film, but it took four minutes, and felt like padding. But we wanted to get a sense of the character portrait coming through… spending time where we have to guess what’s going on in her head. It fits quite neatly with the time in the public toilet earlier and the café.

Gabby: It was very hard to film doing it all in one shot. I semi-dislocated my knee again doing a rehearsal. When it came to do the final thing we do the walk and get up the stars to Mel’s room and to my surprise we open the door and I get a flash of Zak’s arse, I am not quite sure what I was expecting but it was a surprise.

James is really feeling the pressure after this shoot, I think maybe I was letting the weight of the decisions fall more on his shoulders than mine. We had quite a big argument about this and then we meet everyone down the pub where I struggled to pretend that everything is okay. This was probably the lowest point of the shoot for me.
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FILMING - DAY SIX - WORCESTER

James: The crew is just myself, Gabs and Larry for the old people’s home section. Carl Edmed and I had sought the location earlier in the week one day after filming. It was too small for much more crew to fit. Speaking for myself, I felt these scenes went down the easiest of everything we shot. Phyliss and Selina really caught the tone between Ann and Nan very well, and I thought they added a dark humour to an obviously tragic relationship.

Gabby: These scenes are all really consistent, so much so in fact that at one point in the edit I laid over Phyllis’ clean sound onto profile shot and the lip sync matches identically. Amazing! I make a school boy error and shoot over the wrong shoulder of Selina for the first scene, which means the two hander wouldn’t have cut together. Thankfully I realise and we do a quick re-shoot. James spends most of this shoot lay under the bed as there is no room for him to stand.

James: It ends up being a half-day, so we take Phyllis and Selina for lunch in Keystones. It felt great to be over the bulk of the filming, and we say goodbye to our Ann and Nan for the last time. The crew get a Friday night to relax, Gab and I try to work out whether we’ll have any school children tomorrow and wonder where we are going to get a character to play Sean’s mum Mary. How prepared we are?!

FILMING - DAY FIVE - WORCESTER

James: With the weather holding up we manage to get the scenes in town. I take to doing the sound again as it is quite tricky. I enjoy mixing and recording immediately, and wish I wasn’t the director. Tough shit James.

Gabby: This is a setup we are used to; me on camera, James on sound, (and Larry holding the umbrella and generally around for a thousand and one other uses) it’s comfortable. Unfortunately shooting around the general public is not so, and in the edit I could have personally throttled both the woman with the clip-cloppy stilettos who killed the sound continuity and the man with the really bad Christmas jumper who is lingering in back of most of our shots, magically behind both characters!


James: These scenes were later absolute hell to edit. We shifted the position from the original script. Originally Ann bumped into Beth whilst shopping for the sandwiches that she mentions to Nan. It works so much better where it ended up, I haven’t a clue what I was writing when I put it in the original place.

Ann’s scene at the family clinic was in the afternoon, which was played with Jane Lindsey Smith playing Doctor Marshall. I’ve lost the will to continue by the time she arrives on the set and I still believe I didn’t give her a fair time. She was offering me lots of variables, getting into the role with realistic fervour. I just wanted her to say the lines.

As it happened, she said some good things, but we couldn’t cut the scene easily between takes as responses would change. I felt I should have directed her more perhaps. It was my fault.

Gabby: Yes, James is in a particularly bad mood. I feel quite apologetic about this. I also felt like this scene is going to be boring in relation to the way in which I shot the other scenes so far, however in the edit this becomes one of my favourite scenes.

We try to take the big clock off the wall because it is ticking really loud, not realising that it is wired to a campus circuit so that all the clock read the same. Not only did we break the wire and shatter the back, we are rumbled by the member of staff who works in this office. No one says anything as she collects her stuff, but we all know she sees the shards of broken plastic on the floor. Thankfully we have a very talented Larry on the crew and he wires it back to the circuit and saves our arses.

James: Phyliss McMahon arrives in Worcester and the mood lightens. Staying in halls are three generations of the Whelan family – Beth, Ann & Nan. I end up thinking that Phyliss is a Godsend. A true pro.

FILMING - DAY FOUR - WORCESTER

James: We started day four inside my beloved little flat for the bathroom shots. It is just Gab and I at this stage as we are giving the crew/removal men a break, and the simplicity feels like bliss. The crew were amazing, but there is a certain amount of time wasted with delegation.

Gabby: Also it become so draining to have a room full of people looking for you for direction. When there was just James and myself, it felt like that pressure was temporarily lifted.

James: Seeds of thought pop into my mind – could we do a feature with two crew?!

The weather obstacle is a film-maker’s nightmare. Our schedule starts to slip and we lose all the street sequences. We desperately tried to salvage something from the day, so we reshuffled Mike’s office scenes with Si for that night. Fortunately Tim Dobson could make it in, and we get through these scenes easily.


Gabby: When James says easily, it was actually incredibly hard for me to hold the camera still from laughing. Chris and Tim had great chemistry together and this made it really fun to film.

James: The effect is two-fold. Firstly, the crew morale improves once a new face emerges. Secondly, the ease of shooting the scenes frees up Chris Tajah to go home early. It sparks enthusiasm; we are getting through the project, and indeed pass the halfway mark in the script.

Gabby: My only criticism would be retrospectively, I wish we had a little more coverage of these scenes. We where quite cocky with a lot of our filming and with these scenes we were confident that we could put them in the scenes as one long shot. However there were element of certain scene that just weren’t quite right and not having those shot made life difficult to cut the scenes down. Saying this I do not regret the arrogant decisions we made, it was this confidence that meant that we took on such a large project with such little resources, maybe just a little more planning with our cockiness and we would have had the right mix.
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