Making a feature length film on pretty much zero budget with nine days shooting in a foreign location was never going to be the easiest thing to try and do. Our first snag cropped a few days before leaving when, due to one of the cast members having a non-EU passport, we needed to get a visa to allow them access to Bulgaria. I’ll just highlight the phrase “a few days before” there. This was squeaky bum time. Our only option here was to queue up at the embassy with them and hope that we could get the visa pushed through there and then. After many hours of queueing and some fraught moments, the first hurdle was overcome - we had a Bulgarian visa and could take all of our cast. Huzzah! It was somewhere around here that I, a non-tea or coffee drinker, started to develop a small ProPlus habit. Fulla caffeine-y goodness...
Bulgarian Adventure
Filming in another country was quite the experience. The hostel we were staying in was quite small meaning that we effectively took over the whole thing. The staff were lovely - giving us lifts into town with our equipment and allowing us (after the best of a day searching for the perfect cafe location) to turn the balcony area into a location by the end of the shoot! It was pretty grueling for Rich and me. We were putting in 20 hour days - getting up, doing the filming, reviewing the footage, writing promotional blogs and prepping scripts and shot lists for the next day. The ProPlus popping habit definitely hit an upswing around about here…
Fun (and hard work) though it was, there were the occasional terrifying moments too. Like the point where one of the team had an asthma attack so bad that she needed to be hospitalised. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Bulgarian hospital appeared to be of the semi-abandoned type routinely found in horror films in which hapless tourists are ruthlessly stalked and murdered. (Fortunately, after an adrenaline shot or two and a day's recuperation back at the hostel, she was back to her usual self.)
Or the moment where, whilst standing with a somewhat hungover actor covered in fake blood outside a castle at 5 a.m., we were approached by the police. A moment of apprehension was swiftly defused by the officer asking if we were with the film and then preceding to give us both a history of said castle and the Ottoman Empire in general. One of the stranger moments in my life.
Or the coach-based departure from Veliko Tarnovo which resulted in us not only being broken down on a road on the edge of a sheer cliff-face at about 3 a.m. but also then leading to us dashing to get taxis across town to the airport in Sofia, only to be held to ransom by the taxi drivers for more money than we even had left on us (we did get our luggage back and make the flight...just).
All of which makes it sound like quite the stressful experience (and it was at times) but it’s hard to convey the sense of community and camaraderie between a small group locked together doing long days ending in hysteria over the smallest things (and, come on, let's be honest, the happy fun times make for a much less interesting post...)
Home Again
After a few more days filming once we'd arrived back in the UK, we were wrapped, done, in the can, finito. Filming was complete and now the editing process could begin…
To Be Continued
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