The Road

Follow the Crows has by far been the most complicated thing I have ever worked on. The sheer scale of it alone is enough to make you weak at the knees, and that's not counting the emotional investment needed, the size of the story, the length, the amount of locations, the amount of different aspect that there are to keep track of.

Luckily I have had the fortune of working with some exceptionally talented people on this project, and everyone is doing a superbly stellar job with their parts. However, this isn't a blog about licking people's feet, this is a blog about a specific day of shooting, and how bloody complicated and infuriating it was to try and get it right.

I might be getting ahead of myself here, I haven't actually see any of the footage yet, but what I saw on the day was brilliant. Everyone really came together to pull their weight and we managed to get the scene done on time and get all the shots we had set out to get. Hopefully it'll look as good as it felt like it did, only time will tell on that one.

The scene in question is quite a pivotal one to the overall plot, and so I can't divulge much of the goings on, but suffice it to say that it takes place on "the road" and that it features some of the more graphic moments of the movie. It's an important character scene as well as an important scene in terms of plot structure and how our movie unfolds, we had to get it right.

And, as if that wasn't pressure enough, there were certain elements of the scene that had to be done first time (once someone does something it can't be done again, basically) and that added even more so to the stress levels.

I don't mind admitting that I lost my temper on a couple of occasions, we had the sun going down, we had someone stepping into a one time shot, it was a bloody nightmare. But the day wound up finishing and we found ourselves with everything we'd set out to get.

I like to think I'm an optimist, and so I hold out hope that it all worked out for the best. If it didn't people might die, but we'll wait and see what happens there. All in all I just want to throw out a massive thank you for everyone involved in that shoot, Tony Manders for putting up with everything he had to put up with, Daniella Faircloth for being phenomenal, as always, Max Curtis for laying on the ground for a good long time, and the crew for giving it their all and proving that with a little persistence you can get everything you need.