On the weekend of January 26th/27th we were filming more scenes for 7 Days – the story of “Blind Dave” Heeley.
Logistically, it was our biggest shoot yet – involving several different locations and lots of extras on both days. Our producer Nigel Martin Davey really pulled it out of the bag though – not only organizing everything, but also helping to ensure both days went as smoothly as possible.
Joining us for the two-day shoot was Dave Heeley and his family, wife Deb and daughters, Grace, Georgie-Lee and Dannie. Dannie also stepped in front of the cameras for a small part, playing her elder sister Grace!
Jack Lane was once more joined on the casting front by Robert Harrison and Ian Mairs as his running partners, and, for the final time, Sarah Manners as Deb.
New to the cast were Mike Simmonds, Vicky Hall, Amanda Edwards and Ola Morgan.
Mike is an experienced character actor with a great knack for comedy timing. This is the reason we knew he would be perfect in the role of Roy, the man who gives Dave the idea of running a marathon.
Vicky is perhaps best known for her role in the Channel 4 TV series Teachers and as Ricky Gervais’ girlfriend in Ricky. Vicky was great to work with and nailed her scene like the professional that she is.
Amanda has appeared in two of our other projects, Unlimited and Evolution so when we were looking for someone to play the part of a reporter we had in her already in mind – as always she brought great enthusiasm to set, exactly the reason we like working with her.
Ola journeyed all the way from Wales to play a small part for us and turned out to be perfect in the role, helping to make the scene.
It was also a pleasure to have Suzanne Virdee on set for a cameo role too. The award-winning BBC TV News Presenter was playing herself interviewing Dave after he has completed his final marathon.
Suzanne was accompanied by her husband, Andrew Fox, who is a professional photographer. Not only did Andrew take some amazing photos of us filming, he also stepped briefly in front of the camera to play a photographer on screen! You can see some of Andrew’s photos in this blog. Do check out his website if you get chance.
Working with crowds is always a bit of a worry as we’re aware of how long it can take to get everything just right before our cameras roll. So, we have to hope everyone is patient enough to wait around while we adjust lights and work out camera angles (even if we storyboard a scene, we often find ourselves coming up with new ideas for shots or having to adapt to unforeseen circumstances on the day). Add to that, on the Saturday we had a two hour window in which to film the crowd scene, as the bar we were using also had an event booked in the afternoon!
However, the extras were great and, as always, our crew proved themselves to be our “A-team” and we finished the shooting the scene earlier than expected.
We were honoured to have Albion F.C legend Brendan Batson as one of the crowd.
The following day we were at Rednal Social Club, where we had full run of the place for several hours, and it really was the perfect location for the scene we were filming – the moment Dave is inspired to run a marathon – after one drink too many!
Other scenes involved us shooting outdoors, in Cofton Park and around the Lickey Hills area, and once again, our new “film ready” iPhones were used alongside the Blackmagic and DSLR cameras. We’re still amazed at the footage the iPhone is capable of producing.
A lot of local media has started to take interest in this project. On the Saturday we had a reporter from the Express and Star visit us while we were filming the scene with over 40 extras.
On the Sunday we had a local BBC TV crew join us for a couple of hours at the Rednal Social Club. The BBC were there to do a piece on our film for Midlands Today and interviewed Nigel, Jack and Dave Heeley. It was aired that same evening on BBC 1 and we got the chance to watch it, after wrapping for the day at Hillscourt, because the staff were kind enough to put it on their large screen TV for us.
A few days later, Dave was interviewed again, this time on BBC radio.
It’s been really great to see how this project has gained momentum as we’ve progressed.
As always, we’d like to finish this blog with a few words of thanks – this time to all the extras who came down to set and to the management and staff of Rednal Social Club and Hillscourt for allowing us to film on their premises and for being so patient with us! Also Big thanks to Tom Ross for stepping in front of the camera for us. And, of course, we’d like to thank Dave and his family for all their support – we hope our film will do them proud.
Below are more photos taken on the first day of the shoot by Andrew Fox.
A very special thank you to Tony Ellis for another incredibly generous donation to our production budget! We do, however, still need to raise a little more to be able to complete the film and to also cover the costs of film festival submissions – so, please do consider heading over to our crowdfunding page at Indiegogo and giving a little (and grab yourself a cool perk, including your name in the credits!).
And remember, even if you can’t afford to donate financially, you can still help us by letting all your friends know about it and sharing our Indiegogo link with as many people as you can – the more people know about it, the more chance we will have of reaching our goal.
Check out both the BBC television and radio interviews below!
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