HARD AT WORK 11

Hayley doing makeup, TANGO scene


Bjorn Hellem


The brothers Scott


On set in Chiswick


On set for the VANESSA scene


The artificial foot being prepared for the visual climax of the PETER DENBY torture scene. This foot alone cost over 2k, but was absolutely worth it. An amazing job.


Waiting for the crew to reset, Chelsea. _______________________________________________
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OSCAR MORET

Oscar Moret

Another of the great pleasures of this film was working with Oscar Moret, a tango singer and dancer who plays RALPH's bar manager.
Oscar has had three roles in the film: the first is a scene will will put on the DVD where he and a fellow tango devotee discuss how difficult it is adapting to London, before dancing beautifully together. The scene is completely in Spanish.
The second, he was the bartender in the ill fated MR JOHNSON scenes which may never see the light of day, and finally he can be seen cleaning up the dance club at the front of the big STEVE LYNCH/RALPH scene here.
He was a delight to work with, and has a terrific face for film. I know he enjoyed it!
And keep an eye out for him performing in London. He's absolutely worth seeing.

UPDATE: Oscar is in the West End as part of this: Zorro The Musical

- MT


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The casting of Meredith Ostrom (CALLAS)

Meredith Ostrom, South Bank, CALLAS 2005-07

Meredith is the second actress to play CALLAS in the film.
We shot with the fantastic Rosalind Blessed in 2004, but when we did the major rewrite in 2005 we thought it would be better for the part to be played by someone substantially older and with a more vampish/camp quality, so did another two casting sessions for the part.


Rosalind Blessed, CALLAS 2004

2004 CALLAS (Rosalind Blessed) in action

Again Thea MacLeod did a great job of finding us great actresses, and we were pretty certain we were going to cast an older UK soap actress, known for villainous (and sexy) roles. Then as a 'throw in' we included a blonde American who was also auditioning for something else in the casting studios the same day.
Her interpretation of the role was completely different to anything we had seen that day.

I mean, COMPLETELY different.

Everyone else had read the part as it was written - icy, straightforward and a bit vampy. Meredith's version was psychotic and over the top sexual. She completely destroyed the line readings of the script, and spent most of the audition on the floor. We were baffled but very intrigued.
I was very excited by Meredith, but still wasn't sure, so had our top three choices come back to do it again. We had really already decided to give the part to the other older actress, but I was still keen to canvas wider opinions on Meredith.
So a week later we were back in the same studio. The first two were fantastic, (the other girl is appearing in the next Bond movie), and again everyone was thumbs up about the older UK actress.
I'd organised Meredith to audition last, and this time she was even more different. But the mood in the room changed completely. She had won everyone else over. And boom, she was in.
Since that day she has been one of the most powerful forces involved in the film, happy to reshoot if needed and just a great energy to have involved.
She took CALLAS places we absolutely weren't expecting, and for me that's a good thing.

- MT


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HARD AT WORK 10

Nick Townsend pre-torture

Matthew John manhandles Jonas Mortensen

Jonas on camera, Hugh Edwards is a monitor hog.

Shooting in Shad Thames

Andrew Cockerill, Mark Tierney, Hugh Edwards, Philip Carson
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'BOBBY ADAMS'

This is a great scene giving some background to the STEVE LYNCH character as he bumps into BOBBY ADAMS, whom he used to work with in the City.
BOBBY is played by the great David Cleveland-Dunn, who we shot three times in order to get this character exactly right. He was homeless in 2004, a Big Issue salesman in 2005 and now a man running a chain of newsagents in 2007.
This is another ungraded roughcut.
You may have noticed that the music seems the same under a lot of the video here. We use a piece from the soundtrack to the 2003 remake of 'Solaris' as our main guide track, as it has a good 'pulse' and a slightly eerie tone. Other soundtracks we have cut scenes to include 'Notes On A Scandal' and 'The Thin Red Line'.

HARD AT WORK 9

Jonas Mortensen shoots the infamous 'cocaine' scene

Amateur meteorologists Jerome Scott, Mark Tierney and Michael Greco

1st AD Peter Errington, MT ready for his nude cameo, Reece Young

1st AD Peter Errington. A true character.

Philip Carson and Francesca Stone
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Mr Tierney is unwell.....

I apologise for there being very few posts this last week.
Between being laid up with a pinched nerve in my neck (blinding pain for 3 days) and staying on top of Cannes, I haven't had time.
More on Cannes later.
We are ingesting the 2004 shoot at present, looking for any hidden gems. Very fun. Will post excerpts shortly.

Talk soon,

- MT

THE CENTRAL PARK STORY - ROUGHCUT

HELEN & OLIVIA - ROUGH CUT OF 1st SCENE

ROY & RALPH REPOST

Ungraded rough cut of a scene featuring RALPH (Colin Salmon) and ROY (Mark Rathbone).

RALPH & STEVE MEET

This is a roughcut of the initial part of the scene where STEVE LYNCH catches up with his old gangster mate RALPH in his seedy dance club in North London. Here Steve begs for Ralph's help and Ralph ends up up doing him a 'favour' that changes Steve's life forever.

BERKOFF VIDEO REPOST

TIM DALKEY SCENE SNIPPET

This is from the 2006 cut.
I've put it up because its such a great performance from Michael Greco. This is the scene we have been desperately trying to 'save'. Here Michael gives what we call the 'stupid' speech, and it captures perfectly the torment inside the STEVE LYNCH character at this moment in the day.

- MT

AYO TECHNOLOGY

So now we have a new rough cut, and I'm taking all 85 minutes of it on the road to Vegas tomorrow loaded on my iPhone.

Yep, that'll be me by the $25 blackjack table staring at my phone wondering if the pacing in the 2nd Act is too slow. 

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DELETED SCENES 3 - MR JOHNSON

No need to further discuss this after this post, but still, a very sad day cutting these scenes from the film.

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