The backwards shot

This tube journey is hell on earth. We're crammed into the carriage like tinned tomatoes. I'm surrounded by drama students practicing vocal exercises and every time we pull into a station, people seem to mistake me for a turnstile. I'm spinning around like a little cog in a giant wheel of sweaty nastiness. 

The drama students remind me of me at a similar age. I'm ashamed to say that I was one of those ghastly people who thought it was amusing to do performance art on the Underground network. Me and my friend Jo regularly pretended to have screaming rows, which always ended with the threat of divorce, and on one occasion, a group of us attempted to get an entire carriage to join us in a rendition of Kum Bye Ah. I'm surprised we weren't immediately defenestrated by a group of angry commuters. These days we'd be more likely to be mistaken for Muslim extremists!

The Metro film was sent up to Newcastle today for approval. We were forced to send a horrid little version that was low enough resolution to be emailed without blocking anyone's inbox. You could barely see mouths moving for the pixilations! It was a necessary evil, of course. All the decision makers are 250 miles away and need to have their say. They've paid for the film, afterall, but I'd so much rather it was seen for the first time in full-resolution, beautifully graded and shining like a little beacon! Joey Beacon.

Still, the powers that be seemed to enjoy the film very much, but failed to spot the shot we'd deliberately put in backwards! Sometimes, if you leave a clanging error in a roughly assembled film, the execs will spend so long fixating on it, they run out of time to focus on the piddley little notes, which are usually much more irritating to change. We were obviously too subtle with our deliberate mistake, but in absolute fairness were only given two notes, which in my view demonstrates a wonderful line in exec-producing! I once made a film where the exec was thrown out of the sound edit; more for her own safety. She got so wound up she started throwing things! 

The cold continues, you'll no doubt be thrilled to read. Today I've been attacked by a ridiculously tickly cough, which even Covonia fails to deal with. My ears itch for some inexplicable reason. 

350 years ago, Pepys went to The King's Theatre, and was greatly perturbed to find an uncharacteristically tiny audience milling around in the foyer. It didn't occur to him that the play might simply stink, and assumed something much more sinister was going on! He immediately left, and went to another theatre, where he found the house 'as full as could be'. I'd love to go back to an era where an empty theatre was considered somehow apocalyptic!