I'd Like a Nice Cup of Tea

Hi, it's Katy here - back from 4 days in Tamougalt shooting our Nativity scenes. Tamougalt is a town and the perfect setting for Bethlehem and Nazareth with really old buildings to shoot in and around. Before I start to describe the last couple of days I wanted to include a picture of the first thing that gets set up on set each day and in many people's minds arguably the most important thing here! It's our Mint Tea!! These urns come on set first thing, everything else gets set up around them and we have at least two cups before getting going for the day, then any breaks we get we fit another couple of cups of tea in and so on. Tea, shoot film, more tea, shoot more film, more tea, shoot more film - you get the picture!!

We have shot scenes here from John the Baptist being beheaded up to the birth of baby Jesus. The scenes with the baby had everyone cooing around the set and the monitors - the actors and baby created a really touching scene. Mary is absolutely beautiful and the scenes where she had to cry were very moving.
In case you are worrying about John's head we had a fix for this, like the fix for the locusts scene, we had a false head made from wax with hair and beard all carefully applied so it looked as realistic as possible, then we chopped that off in the scene so that our John could keep his own head, which I understand he is pretty happy about!

We have been shooting a lot of night shots here, we have a very stubborn donkey that is complaining endlessly and being very lovey - think we need to re think using him for next time and find one with less of an ego!!
Robin our Focus Puller got his bottom butted by our Head Ram - it was a great comedy moment and he took it well though of course probably didn't find it as funny as we did!!
Deane our DTI and Red Camera guy has been humming the Christmas tune 'Little Donkey' for 4 days now and our Van Driver plays Abba on loop!

Selva our Jesus arrives tomorrow so a long day shooting ahead. We have an extra Runner who has arrived to help out called Gemma who is going to help coordating this and we have Amy our original Runner so plenty of hands on deck hopefully.
I have drunk so much Mint Tea, eaten so many Tagines and it is so so hot. Our hotel here has no air conditioning and it is over 45 degrees so am looking forward to the hotel back in Ouzarzazate. We are lucky if we have electric here!

I will write about tomorrow's shoot in the next couple of days...