DEBLOG FROM SOUTHAMPTON

We arrive at the Macdonald Botley Park Hotel in glorious sunshine to find ourselves plunged headlong into golf world, with more leisure facilities than surely can be healthy for you. This seemed to have an adverse effect on Alex as, just for this weekend, he asked us all to call him Andre Falkowski and proceeded to hang around the tennis courts looking for a playing partner whilst hopping from foot to foot and shouting "you cannot be serious" in a strange accent! I do think that the hotel took the health kick a little too far when, on the Saturday night after our meal, we went to the hotel bar for our traditional "end of shoot" nightcap. With cash in our pockets and our room keys in our hot little hands, we found out it was extraordinarily difficult to buy a drink from the open hotel bar - so we decided to break with tradition and went to bed instead.



Two very small scenes in the gym for me this weekend which finally began shooting after long delays. This team had a real vibe for them by the introduction of Ollie to distract Avril from the TV screen showing Jamie. And a very welcome addition he was too as he stretched and posed in the gym, flirting with Avril (who naturally was not in the least bit impressed) resulting in a really fun scene. Bryn also did well having been roped in at the last moment to play Becky - especially, as she told me, English was not her first language (and my Norwegian sucks - although I am working on the cheeky little phrase she taught me!) However, with a little gentle coaching over a coffee in my hotel room Bryn was ready to rock. This second shot was changed to a different location due to the lesuire manager having gone home to bed with the keys to the ladies changing room. Sometimes working around these problems can produce better results, a challenge raises your game and I think Chris demonstrated this by using mirrors when setting up this shot in the newly acquired toilet location. I think it was better than the original idea.

Shoot photos by Manny Elias

Deblog From.... by Deborah Bouchard.