[The 48] The Post post

I had one of those sleeps where you close your eyes at 1 in the morning and then open them a second later and it’s 7am. A 5 minute shower and then a nice half hour stroll to Jenni’s. Can you tell that time was starting to become a factor today?

We had an extremely efficient production meeting where we decided to film at the Botanic Gardens and I apologised in advance for my strategy of being really blunt with everybody to keep us filming at a steady pace. My aim for the day was: Protect Norman. He was cutting the film while on set, so I instructed everyone to make his life easy by shifting all of his and Mark’s gear out of the van first and then to leave him alone while he sewed our footage together.

We shot the Duel between Gino and an incredibly smug Lee, then moved to some nearby stairs to film Regan and Matt consoling Gino. In terms of directing, this was my favourite moment on the shoot.

It was a one-er – the whole scene in one take, featuring the three actors and a cute brown bear puppeteered by Lee. We did multiple run throughs to rehearse the scene and each time it wasn’t quite right – but each time, Jenni and I and Mark suggested tiny adjustments to each actor and gradually we honed in on a version of the scene that played. And then two perfect takes and we could safely say, “Principal photography has been completed!” (A shout-out to all you Cecil B. Demented fans out there (I know I’m not alone).)

A quick packout, a substantial reduction in crew numbers and Luke and Sam drove me back to Norman’s where we stayed upstairs and ate, planned and listened to music for the soundtrack while he edited with Stephanie and Mark. Then Jenni and I were called downstairs to help him out.

The three of us made an awesome team – Norman’s smooth cutting, my grasp of the big to do list of edits and Jenni’s unerring grip on the heart of the film. As we worked, music and ADR were being recorded above us – couple that with memory sticks and the home network and it was all an unbelievable advance from the last time I was involved in no-budget post-production.

Unfortunately time slipped out from under us, the stupid Loop logo wouldn’t load into our end credits, and the tape was chucked to Lee, Luke and Sam at 6.56 for a high-speed ride to the Paramount.

We knew they wouldn’t make it in time, but we had a fantastic group hug anyway and got ready for the wrap party that night.

The best … and worst, was yet to come.