27/06/06 - BACK TO SCHOOL

OK, an update since the first day of shooting. We have needed the use of a school room in order to shoot a scene where our "hero" is discussing biblical matters with a class of children.....or so I thought. Awhile back in production we realised that the subject matter of this piece was religiously controversial, and also vulgar in places (not for the sake of it, it's part of the story and character). I had great ways of shooting things out of sync, or in long shot to dub later that would mean that the vulgarities and controversial elements would never be done while the children were actually present. Could have done that easily....however, someone pointed out quite rightly that if we are getting cast and crews kids to be in the film, SURELY they will want to see it later! And it is not family material by any means.
So....back to school in more ways than one. For starters, we rethought it, again looking for same effect / impact but in a different light. So what was decided is rather than have a classroom of children being "taught" religion...why not make it a classroom still, but for a Youth Offenders group. This means we can still use non-adults, but not so young as to offend. And justify it in the story by citing that they are being taught religion as a way to correct their behaviour. Still works just as well and causes less problems later!
We also went back to school by ...well...going to school! We needed a classroom and to build a set was going to be costly and time consuming. So how about an ACTUAL classroom? No school would ever allow us to use one though, again due to the nature of the film. I remembered that near where I used to live was an old school building that had been converted for use as a community centre. The reason I remembered it was due to the fact I knew "The Full Monty" had been shot their, and the scene they shot (in a job centre mock up) was kind of what I was looking for. So I found the place out, and not only did they have actual school rooms to lease...but they used them for Youth Offenders meetings! And at a cost of £15 for 4 hours I would not argue!
Is this fate playing a hand again? Maybe Gaylon Peglegg himself has summoned the hand of God to assist in the making of this film?! Before booking this however, I felt it was again important to see it for real before filming. So we asked if we could come and look and the veyr nice caretaker was kind enough to not only let us in, but also to tell us that whatever we needed to use in the building (chairs, boards, lights etc) were all at our disposal.
Now you may think it was lucky that such a place existed on our doorstep, but I bet if you need a place, don't want to build a set, and want it cheap...a bit of creative thinking will find a way!
And as a bonus, not only is this place IDEAL for the scene, but the whole building and complex has so much more in there for our future use too. A room that has a bar kind of set in it, or cafe set, yards, corridors, halls, studios. So check out your loacl facilities and see what gives!