It's a Wrap for Shoot Two

Hi all, Charlie here with my last blog from Big Book Media Shoot Two - it was our last day the shoot today!

James finally managed to pull himself from his bed today, he was adamant that he wasn't going to miss the last day of filming!

In addition to it being the last day of our shoot Hilary Clinton was due to visit Ouarzazate today to meet with the King. There were flags absolutely everywhere and lots of security - Ouarzazate was under lock-down, they even turned off all internet connections in the whole of the region for security reasons!

I feel much better today which is a big relief as there is plenty to do today and lots of filming to get through so we can wrap and finish with everything completed.

We started off filming back at the barrage, we were working with fish today - not the best of animals to direct but we did well and got the shots! Unfortunately due to the very thick weed in the water one of our boats got tangled up and the dingy boat we had could not get the main boat out of trouble, it just wasn't big enough. Both myself and Hamid spent some time sourcing another boat - which is pretty hard in the middle of the desert! Luckily we found a bigger and more powerful boat from the golf club a few miles up the barrage but alas whilst it was traveling to our location it too got stuck in weeds! In the end our boat managed to come unstuck and filming was resumed!

After we wrapped at this location we then went to a small oasis where we did a few pick-up shots in the olive grove with Jesus and his disciples. It only took an hour to get the shots and then we finally wrapped Shoot Two which I found very euphoric and satisfying as all had gone very well - I even shed a tear of happiness!

After we had finished up we all met up in the evening and Hannah took us all out for dinner at a lovely French restaurant and we ate delicious food and had toasted the success of Shoot Two - my toast was with water (still in recovery!). Tomorrow its the long haul trip across the Atlas Mountains which takes four hours to get back to Marrakesh and then back to the UK until the next time!! Charlie

Water Water Everywhere

Hi all, Charlie back on set still feeling pretty rough but over the worst of the illness. James is still ill and unfortunately it looks like Deane might be getting ill so we're really hoping the whole team doesn't go down with this bug.
Shooting has still been going really well, so apart from a few of us getting sick things are going really well this shoot. Bess and Toby are out here for a couple of days from The Sunday Times and The Church Times respectively. It's exiting to have press on the shoot this time.

Today we were filming on the barrage which is a reservoir just outside Ouarzazate, the photo on the right shows this and the one above shows one of our boats - we had two boats on the water courtesy of Mike in the art department that look fantastic. We also had a floating pontoon built for filming on the water which meant we could be flexible with our angles for shooting and get all round the water scenes.

In addition to this we filmed using a smoke tent for close ups of Jesus, Moses and Ellijah. This was done by our Second Unit which was Deane (DTI), myself and one of the Moroccan Gaffers. James was too ill to make it back onto set and it looks like Deane is coming down with whatever we have caught.
As for the mosquitos which have been really bad on this shoot they must have been feeling sorry for me as I didn't even get one bite today - but everyone else got really really bitten - even those who had used whole cans of insect replellent to try and keep them at bay!!!
The photo on the left is one of the actors in the smoke tent!

There was a beautiful sunset today which Ben caught on camera as we were packing up - the whole sky went red! Photo below. That's it from me today, going straight to bed as still feeling very run down having been ill so a good nights sleep will fix that. Charlie