In The Can Like Popeye's Spinach

 Filming is over and it was like Christmas. 

I didn't think it was possible for a fifty year old man to leap out of bed excited for a new day, with no idea of what to expect. My alarm was set for six in the morning on the first day of filming, but I was awake at four wondering what the day would bring. 

Wonderful things. 

I've made two films. One a year for the past two years. I would like to continue this trend, though in order to do so the films I make will have to start to earn either money or awards. I'm hoping this one has the chops to do both. It packs a lot in: romance, mythology, the novels of John Fowles, fairy tales, Christianity and a bit with a trout (the most expensive thing in the budget). 

It's beautiful looking - the locations were chosen with care, places that were not the usual places filmed in Northern Ireland - pretty little inlets, lunar landscapes, sand beaches, seaweed slathered jetties - all within ten minutes of each other. The landscape, the sea, are major characters in this film. The humans are avatars of the city and the sea, and the film lives in the place of their connection, but there is always something incredible in that intersection between states. Its a kind of mythological fault-line. I grew up by the sea, like Roth in the story, and I'm always impressed and troubled by it. Its so big, so uneasy, so unknowable. The sea represents lots of things in this story and death is certainly one of them. But the sea is comforting too. I could hear the murmur of the sea from my bedroom when I was a small boy in Portslade (or I remember I could. I may be romanticising). When we moved to Basingstoke I had to make do with the sounds of the train station. Oddly similar - grand, indifferent, running to their own ancient schedules, hissing and grumbling...I know both places well. I'm a mud-skipper skimming a puddle. One foot in the water in brown suede shoes. 

The film needs editing, compiling, structuring, but there's a lot of magic in that raw footage, a lot of colour and cruel beauty. There's magic. 

I didn't see hair or costume before I got to the location but they were both perfect. I met with our swim team (I had a fucking swim team) and they were just great. This was an enormous crew of seasoned professionals (a lot of hard winters for some of them) and I was technically in charge of them with my one-film-under-my-belt. They could not have been cooler. We got masses done. I got all of my shots. I got everything I needed - and I needed a lot - and I got even more. And no moodiness, no weirdness, no bust-ups - a solid professional crew working towards realising the film together. I couldn't have asked for more. 

The actors were great. Very different people and so right for their parts. Dumb luck on my part that I got it right. Same with the DOP, he turned out to be exactly the right one. Even the weather was perfect. I'm prone to disaster in real life. But this was suddenly an arena where my every choice was the right one. I don't expect this the spill over into my daily experience, but this was an incredible bubble universe where for two days everything worked. I hope karma hasn't noticed. I'm knocking the shit out of a piece of wood as I write this. 

My producer asked me if I was happy on our way home in the car - our cheeks stinging with "shoot face". And I was happy. I was improbably happy for a fifty year old man realising a late-blooming ambition. I was more than happy. It was fucking Christmas.