The end comes quietly.
The shoot ended on the Saturday after Good Friday. And within hours almost everyone had gone.
It was a great last week – including three days in the Peepul Centre in Leicester, shooting the Kings of Curry competition with our fabulous cast and crew joined by the incomparable Madhur Jaffrey and the life-saving Hardeep Singh Koli.
It would have been nice to imagine that we finished the very last shot of the very last day with our 1st Assistant Director, Gareth Tandy, bellowing “Thank you, Boys & Girls. That’s a wrap …!” but it wasn’t like that…
In fact the very last day – as it is on most films, I imagine – was an intense session of two camera crews picking up wide shots of Leicester and micro-shots of food, and the Recipe Book and photo inserts. Lots and lots of precise, fiddly and vital moments.
Lastly Amit Gupta, writer/director, worked with Jules Heath, our over-achieving Unit Stills photographer, directing the cast in a set of amazing stills for the end credits of the film.
And that meant the cast and crew sort of peeled away… cast as they finished their stills and crew as the unit shrank away naturally.
Lastly, it was just Jules and Gaffer, Tommy Finch, shooting a plate shot of a beautiful wedding tuk-tuk.
Then the lights went out.
We’d had a mini-wrap party the night before so almost everyone headed back to the hotel, packed up, hugged colleagues and went to their homes to have an Easter Sunday with friends and family…
But Tuesday after the Bank Holiday it all cranked up again, seamlessly. The Art Department started their wrap process – breaking up sets, returning props and packing tools. The Production and Accounts Team started to put the show to bed and box up the vital documents.
On Wednesday the final rushes arrived and were ingested into the hard-drives and then the mountain of equipment was boxed-up.
CUT TO: Thursday, an office near Leicester Square tube. (We just can’t get away from Leicester.)
Eddie Hamilton, Editor; Riccardo Bacigalupo, Assistant Editor; and Farhana Bhula, Assistant Producer hauled up about eighty boxes up three, narrow flights of stairs to the neat and tidy edit room.
Eddie and Riccardo worked long into the night to set up the gear and on Friday we watched the last rushes with Roger Pratt BSC, Cinematographer and Tim Phillips, Associate Producer.
Elegantly done.
And now we’re approaching the end of assembly. Amit and Eddie start cutting in earnest next week… and then we start setting up the test screenings.
Getting there.
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