Moviemaking

One of my mates is a filmmaker, and currently has one of his short films ("The Cost of Living") featured on the BBC Film Network site.
[Sept 09 update: it's now also on MiShorts]

When they made it, I came down for a few days (along with a bunch of other people) to watch the filming and help out. They basically took a two-storey flat and remodelled some of the insides for the shoot. The flat had full-height sliding windows along one wall, which were blocked off with some arty alcoved false walls, and upstairs provided a perfect vantage point for setting up the lighting and sound.

It's quite impressive to watch something like this happening. It's like a military operation, they go in, remodel, redecorate, install all the gear (including those great big trolley things on rails for doing tracking shots), shoot everything, then disassemble and make good, and go home.

The tv screens in the film were my LCD computer monitors that I loaned them, disassembled and fitted with new temporary surrounds by the production designer, Fabrice Spelta ... although they obviously aren't recognisable on-film. Fabrice also designed and installed the arty interior remodelling, which I thought (in conjunction with the lighting) gave the final film a really wierd surreal feel, a bit like Andrei Tarkovski's "Solaris". When those curved interior features line up right, they conspire to produce an "eye" shape, which fits in well with the film's creepy theme of subliminal messaging and constant monitoring. Natasha Collymore did the animated "shopping site" screen graphics.