Extra Illusions

Hi all, James here with a couple of days blogs as didn't get a chance to write in yesterday. Yesterday morning went really smoothly on set. We spent our morning doing hand-held shots of Jesus being mobbed by crowds of people.
The photo on the left is Jesus preaching to his disciples and the photo on the right is Deane with the Easyrig camera!
After lunch we did a sort of CGI shot where we kept moving our fourty extras to different parts of the desert and then we overlayed the shots we had taken to make it look like there were hundreds of people, really clever! After the CGI shots we did some more hand-held work and then wrapped in the desert with enough time to go to another location - a small rural cottage. I stayed behind and helped Robin pack up, when we arrived at the cottage a bit later on we found that there had been a few problems as the cottage was owned by two brothers one of whom wasn't that happy about us filming even though it had all been pre-arranged and set up by Hamid our Line Producer with the other brother! In the end we were able to get our bit of filming done, after which we wrapped for the day.Today was our first day at the Atlas Studios, it was a very different shooting experience to all the locations shooting we have done so far - mainly because we had to light scenes for the first time which really slowed things down. We spent the morning in a synagogue which Mike Fowlie (Art Director) had built, it is really amazing. We had a light on the room and the whole room was filled with smoke to soften the light. It was pretty crowded in the room with about 20 extras plus the main cast and our crew as well as a track and dolly. The footage looks amazing some of the best film we have shot so far I think. We did our first official stunt in the movie with myself acting as stunt man before Selva (who plays Jesus) did the actual shot, it basically involves Jesus being thrown out of the synagogue which might not sound particularly dangerous but let me tell you I have a nasty little graze on my knee!!

Lunch times are different at the studio, instead of eating on set with lunch brought down we go and eat in the restaurant by our hotel right next to the pool. There are lots of posters up on the walls of all the movies that have been shot in this location like 'The Hills Have Eyes' and 'Kundun'.

After the lunch we spent the rest of the day in a small room for a scene with Jesus praying - it was strange but this scene which seems simple actually took the longest to shoot - trying to get that perfect shot meant that we ran over properly for the first time and ended up wrapping at 7 o'clock.