Hay Festival

Film & Book have been accepted into the Hay Festival! As the programme stands we are on last thing on the Sunday. Gordon Brown is also going to be there as well which could be quite interesting… We’re up against Ronnie Corbett just to give you an idea of the literary calibre that is attending.

Trailer is now onlined and finished and on the website. Pretty shit hot if we do say so ourselves… Thanks to Rachel Tunnard for coming in at the 11th hour and sorting it out.

Film locked but not finished. All the grading, sound design score and graphics still to do… 1st screening is on the 10th May and there’s about 2 months worth of work to do in 3 weeks. Hey ho. Daniel the assistant editor now scaring everyone, but we still can’t let him sleep as he’s the only person who knows where all the multitude of archive material has come from. The BBC have screwed up tape dubbing so many times we’ve now despatched Daniel down to White City to scare them into actually giving us the clips we need (eg Blair saying that “The Rules of The Game have Changed”) rather than those we don’t need (eg The Price is Right in 1974)

Recorded Ashley Jensen’s narration for the animation which is stunning. Sadly we didn’t get tot fly out to LA to record it, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology we were able to do the whole recording session over the interweb and the results are as good as if we’d been in the room. Probably better as she didn’t get to see what 5 months without sunlight does to a man.

We’ve locked picture!

Over a year spent working on this film, hundreds of hours of footage, over 100 contributors and countless stories, reduced to an hour and a half. Dare we say so ourselves it is bloody marvellous.

Now we just have to convince people to come and see it…

Liberty News

On 5th April Amnesty released its latest report on conditions in Guantanamo in which they estimate that 80% of the population are being held in solitary confinement with little or no access to sunlight and exercise. Anyone who is any doubt about the illegality of Guantanamo and the War on Terror needs to read this report.

In other news NPower recently obtained an injunction against the peaceful protesters to stop their protest at the sight of a proposed ash dump in what had been a local beauty spot near the village of Radley. The corporation used the Protection from Harassment law, which was originally conceived as a way of protection people from harassment and anti-social behaviour, but is now being used by large corporations to protect themselves from inconvenient peaceful protesters. The lawyer who specialises in protecting these multinationals is Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden. His law firm is representing NPower in this particular case and also represented EDO against a similarly dangerous group of individuals in our documentary, including an 80-year old painter and his daughter.

What dastardly deeds had the protesters done to deserve this injunction I hear you cry? The most serious allegation was that a guard’s leg had been hit by a van driven by one of the protesters. The protester denies that this ever happened and even the guard admits that the incident did not cause any bruising. Another security guard testified to having overheard one of the protesters referring to the security firm as “the enemy” this made him, “only slightly afraid”. Since most of the security guards are ex-armed forces you would hope that they could withstand a campaign run by, amongst others, a vicar (Malcolm Carroll who is in our film) and a 67 year old physician. NPower claim that this injunction prevents anyone from filming their employees and one of the principal six named individuals was a press photographer, so it is not only being used to stop the protest but also to prevent reporting on the situation. If you want to know more about the protest, here is a link to the website:http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk/

One Week To Picture Lock

Whose idea was this film? I want my life back. Nick the editor wants his life back. Daniel the assistant editor has given up all semblance of ever having a life and has moved his gear into the edit suite. In fact we’re all getting a bit worried about Daniel. He has started saying the strangest of things and looking like something out of a Terry Pratchet book. Still, he can still memorise the 600 odd hours of footage and can recall a shot of Blair looking like a dickhead in various different environments, so all is not lost. Let’s just hope he retains his faculties when the film finally locks. Whenever the hell that is.

Structure of the edit went through a massive overhaul this week and is an infinitely better film for it. We had to decide whether we were going to make an arty collection of stories of injustice, or a rollercoaster of polemic and humour… and went for the latter. Currently standing at 100 minutes but could come down further – always leave them wanting more.

RADIOHEAD SAID YES! Still can’t quite believe it…

And there is a sodding CCTV camera in our edit suite. Really. I mean irony of ironies. Which brings us neatly on to...

Liberty News
The plaque outside George Orwell’s old house in London can apparently be seen by 32 CCTV cameras. Not often that I want to laugh and throw up at the same time.

Bisher Al Rawi has finally been released from Guantanamo Bay back to the UK. Bisher is a UK resident (but not a national) who was abandoned by the UK government in Guantanamo for 5 years. As the government does not legally have to intercede on behalf of it’s residents Blair’s government has continually taken the course of leaving them to rot. While it is of course wonderful to see Bisher returned to his family, there are seven other British Residents (including Omar Deghayes – one of the stories in Taking Liberties). Bisher’s story is particularly horrific as he was only arrested by the CIA after a telegram sent to them by MI5…

And finally – the Observer article yesterday about Blair having accepted a role in The Crucible (directed by Kevin Spacey at the Young Vic in September) is sadly an April Fool. But a bloody good one…

2 Weeks to picture lock.

Yeah right. Film now standing at a whisker under 2 hours which is still too long. Really, really not keen to loose any further stories. In fact have actually added in a cheeky story that we have been chasing for ages… Riz Ahmed, actor and musician. He played one of the Tipton Three in Michael Winterbottom’s excellent film Road to Guantanamo. He went out to the Berlin Film Festival last year where the film deservedly won the Silver Bear. Anyway, Riz flew back to England and was detainted under the Terrorism Act at Luton Airport. The Police knew he was an actor but decided to cause him some grief as he had acted in a film that critisised the government. This McCarthyite incident happened last year and is just one of the tens of thousands of incidents of unwarranted Police behaviour towards young Muslim men. Riz maintains a healthy sense of humour about the whole thing, and still laughs at the irony. The incident inspired him to write the brilliant song The Post 9/11 Blues which was banned on Radio (yes another McCarthy parallel) but has got a massive following on MySpace. The video is also superb and we may be using a little bit of it in the film. Or not.

Note to self for future films, do not keep shooting 2 weeks before picture lock!

Oasis are on board! Not sure if we’re allowed to make this public yet but no doubt I’ll get shouted at if not. The Iraq War montage has always been crying out for a massive epic number. We cut it to Whatever (my favourite Oasis track by miles) and it works perfectly. Ian (our sensational music supervisor) pulled some favours and managed to get a DVD of the cut to Noel Gallagher. Noel gave it the thumbs up and the track is in the film… still can’t quite believe it. The soundtrack is shaping up really well, with confirmations from Annie Lennox, The Stranglers, Franz Ferdinhand. All the artists have agreed to let their music be in the film for basically pennies, and for every copy of the soundtrack that is sold £1 goes to Amnesty International. We are still awaiting some more confirmations, so hopefully in a couple of weeks time we can announce some more big names…