Winter blues

It's totally winter now. For the last 10 days it has rained heavily almost every day and rarely managed to get into double figures temperature-wise.

Last week was chaos, but this week is busy in a more manageable way. Shoot last Wed went well, although I felt so bad for the main guy who is our key interviewee in the video. He's a current service user, an ex-offender who is receiving support from the charity and he is clearly severely damaged from long-term, hard-core drug use. His interview was a bit like pulling teeth, he struggles to form coherent sentences and in between questions he (I'm not exaggerating here) looked like he was passing out! And then last week we needed him for re-enactments, I had wanted to hire an actor but the charity insisted it should be "authentic"...

Well, it was that. This poor guy was shivering and pale, he frankly looked like shit and I felt bad asking him to stand in the cold and do the take over and over to get the shot right. We have ended up with something that looks fine, but if I'd been able to use an actor I could have shot so much more! I just felt so bad for this vulnerable shell of a human being.

First cut of the edit is all done now. Showing it to the client tomorrow. I have no idea what they'll say, but I'm happy with it.

The other news is that the love of my life, who is on the other side of the world, has been very unwell and was in hospital over the weekend. He had an inflamed (not sure if it was also infected?) gallbladder. Obviously intense pain (he was put on quite a lot of morphine) and vomiting, really awful. Anyway, he is feeling somewhat better, despite ignoring my advice to take a day off shooting the kid's TV show he's filming in Sydney. He will probably have to have surgery in January.

I've never felt so far away as I did when he called me on Sat night, he'd already been in hospital for 10 hours. I wish the friend who admitted him had called me earlier, not that I could do anything but I hated being so far behind, it just made the distance seem even greater.

So, ups and downs as usual. Looking forward to seeing you all in just over 2 weeks.

Think I promised to give you the link to our new script submission scheme, you can find all the details here!