Quiet please, action

Our first full day filming and we head to Barmoi, a small rural village about 40 minutes away. We are a little apprehensive as the short piece we did with Israel yesterday hit home the enormity of the task. We are making a film in another language (Krio) and don’t completely understand if what Israel is saying is what is written in the script. Plus, whilst he is obviously a natural comic and performer, he doesn’t seem to take direction too well. After some light pushing to get us out of the base, we pick up Salay and Daniel, our other two main actors (both teenagers) and head into the bush. And breakdown. Twice. We eventually walk the last 20 minutes with the kit into Barmoi and arrive at the house that will be our first location.

We soon get into our stride filming the first story, where Salay and Daniel play husband and wife expecting their first baby. James and I take on the role of script supervision and share directing with Israel, whilst Greg and Toby make sure we get the right shots. The most difficult aspect seems to be keeping the set quiet as we have an enormous crowd watching at all times. And unexpected things happen, like the devil procession with drums and dancing that appears in the middle of the morning. We stop work, enjoy it for a while and then pay them to leave.

Near the end of the day, the crowd are getting restless and the noise levels begin to increase. We ask the crowd to be quiet and attempt to finish, until I am forced to cut the action. Turning to my right I shout at an old man “Please don’t whip the children on our behalf!”. He was helpfully thrashing the children with some grass to keep them quiet. I guess we can’t say that no children were harmed during the making of this film.