The 12 Days of Ashes

A tender moment from Scene Two of Ashes, 2012

 Hey Guys,

The Ashes Bed

   The evening I wrote this post, I was in the garage, painting a paper maché dragon (seriously, I love the stuff I get paid to do sometimes. He's called Malcolm, named after the Light Films boom). I looked over and saw the main piece of set for Ashes in one corner - the bed, where almost all the action takes place.

   This bed is made of wrought iron, sprinkled with rust and is ridiculously heavy. I remember the first time I brought it home, and the efforts taken to put it into the car. Back then it was ready to be assembled. Since, it got put in the garage, and stuff piled up over time, so now it is almost impossible to get to, due to the amount of crap in front of it.

   The last time I was in the garage for any length of time was the late nights I spent building the Stop/Eject alcove. As I was doing that, I kept looking over at the Ashes bed and thinking "soon...". Of course, back then, soon meant a week. I didn't expect the complications which would cause us to cancel the shoot yet again. (And when that happened, I didn't even want to look at that beautiful old bed).

   But now I can say "soon" and mean soon, because it's time for me to move all that stuff out of the way and release the bed. Finally! Go back two blog posts and you will see the official countdown timer to the Ashes shoot. As I release this post, it is twelve days away, and so I wanted to do something official to celebrate this fact. And no, it won't be involving partridges in pear trees...

Bit of a teaser shot from Scene Three

    Every day between now and the Ashes shoot, I will be releasing one blog post, each of which will introduce you to a different area of production. This may be a bit of a mean feat for me, particularly with all the prep still left to do, but I want to create a bit more excitement on the run up to the shoot (well, I'm already excited, I just want to spread those feelings around) and I particularly want to give shout-outs to every member of my crew in honour of all the hard work they've done so far - and will continue to do.

   A lot of pre-production has already been covered in my blog posts throughout the last year, but there are lots of bits that people don't know about. Not only will these new blog posts profile my crew (with background information on their training), but I along the way I will be announcing technical details like which camera (or cameras) we will be shooting Ashes on, as well as giving the final line-up of the cast and crew. There's been some changes recently, and I can hardly wait to tell you what those changes are

   ...But you'll have to wait until the 2nd of August for those particular changes to be announced...

    So, today's profile, as you may have noticed, releases glimpses from my official storyboards for the first time. I don't want to give too much away, but the three on here show you a little of what you can expect from a change in tone, plus it's always nice to showcase storyboards, even if they are my own work.

Storyboard from scene 1b - Sarah has something difficult to face.

    The run-down of special Ashes profiles continues tomorrow with a (proper) introduction to our Make-Up Artist, Rena Kalandrani, with exclusive glimpses at her designs for the shoot. She - as with the rest of the principle crew - has also answered some questions about the film, which I will be revealing within tomorrow's profile. Rena's been on board since this project started (she's one of the only remaining crew members from back then, now) so it made sense to let her go first!

   My plan for now until the shoot is to plod on, keep calm, get every job done one at a time, and breathe. I'm going to finally get that bed out of the garage and absorb every moment of being a director again.

   ... Okay, in truth I'm probably going to freak out and drink far too much coffee - and there's always something which ends up being left until the last minute to do, no matter what I do to pace myself.

  But thank God I have a wonderful cast and crew around to support me. I look forward to introducing them to you over the next 12 days!

Sophie x