Yesterdays shoot went well. The weather was great - no rain. Even a hint of sunshine. We got some great interviews the evening before the exericise started. A late night shoot finally wrapped at 11pm. The fact we were filming in an Oxford college dinning hall that could have been a double for Harry Potter made it really fun. What seemed like a 100 foot arched ceiling. 200 foot long by 100 foot wide room and a series of tables in a long line stretching to the Masters at the end. Along the tables small lamps. Sorry - no floating candles that evening! Amazing place to do some interviews just the same.

A 5.30am alarm call, quick breakfast and drive off at 6.15am so we could be all rigged and on station by 7am. This meant we were ready for all the action when it started a little later. As press and broadcast media were invited and given free reign I am hoping the client will give us permission to release photos and videos of the event.

I have now been behind the scenes directing at two major emergency services exercises in the last 3 months. All I can say is what an amazing experience it has been. Again the Casualty Union acted as patients. Boy - did they act. To all intents and purposes they looked and sounded like accident victims. Frothing at the mouth, shaking, collapsing - it was all there. Even a terribly distressed mother with a baby in her arms (baby doll) refusing to let her baby be taken away. The nurses and doctors in the Emergency Department trying to cope with waves of patients who were being brought by ambulance or made their own way there as they would in any real situation. The exercise planned to stretch the hospital systems and procedures just as if they would be in a real situation.

I spent the first hour in the Command Centre listening and watching how the emergency management team was summoned as soon as they received an alerting telephone call. I saw how they started to collate the various information flows into a full enough picture of what the incident seemed to be. They could then start planning the resources to use, how and when. At the same time the normal day-to-day needs of the hospital had to continue. Patients with appointments and real accident casualties had to be handled. Equally important the public could not be 'spooked' by thinking something serious was happening for real. Signage and marshalls helped advise people that all the emergency rescue services were just practicing.

Just before 1pm the exercise was declared over. Over 5 hours of near non-stop filming. Some of the crews were able to start packing to leave but we still had another batch of interviews to do so we were not away until after 3pm. By then we had something like 30 hours of footage. Over the next two weeks or so we have to review every second and make the terrible decision on what to keep and what to edit out. The video has to be about 20 minutes long and provide an accurate summary of the incident for non-participants to review and learn from.

Editing is a brutal business as so much that is good has to make way for those images that you judge will frame and explain the narrative even better. I know totally why Directors feel an urge to make their own 'Directors Cut' when forced to conform to what the studio tells them has to be the length. That judgement is a fine line as you are interpreting what the client will want and like. They cannot possibly sit with you looking at 30 hours worth of footage and cutting that down and then down again. Repeating the process until it gets closer and closer to what you want and then you can work on tight edits, transitions, cut-aways, captioning and special effects. I do not do the editing myself. There are far more skillful people than me that can do that but I have to work with them to show them what I am looking for and want. Strangley the second pair of eyes and opinions rarely leads to any major falling out. Technically editors have a feel for the image and the narrative and can see things for what they are rather than what you hoped was there. Sometimes a Dircetor is just too close to their project to be totally objective. A good editor is able to make their own decisions as to what works best and if necessary show the Director why. 

Anyway - now you know what I will be doing for the next few weeks.