Endurance Filming

Yesterday was marked in my diary as one more of the filming days that my newest friends, who are all mature students at Brighton Film School are working so hard for. I have had such a great time with them. They are photographed above, I think the picture shows who worked the hardest and also who enjoyed it most! As part of their course they are making a documentary and I am the chosen subject for this.

There have already been several meetings to gather enough together so that they have plenty to snip away at to hopefully get an interesting final piece. To start there was a phone call giving me an outline of the project and what they had in mind, and asking to use me as a motivational subject. Then there followed emails including a letter from Brighton Film School confirming that they were indeed who they said they were and working on what they had told me about.

There were a lot of messages back and forth until some sort of plan started to emerge.

In late January Kathy Azapardi come to our home to talk about the documentary project. She told me what it was the group would be trying for and also conducted and interview with all the questions she had prepared and also to find out more about my life style. She had taken the train from her home on Gosport and then ridden her Brompton bike to our house.

She was completely businesslike and very serious; taking her time to make sure everything was double checked. She needed to know who would need to be contacted to gain permission for filming in various locations. She said the project was to produce a film with a minimum content of ten minutes.

From the amount of time and effort that has gone into the scheme it may even be hard to keep it anything like as short as that. Once all permissions were set up having visited the Freedom Leisure pool to talk to the manager and the council about the sea front areas involved a day was set.

The sequence of events for the filming would start at the pool on Friday 17^th of February when we arrived for our normal swim session at the pool. They had to arrive earlier than us to obtain permission from other pool users in case they were filmed in the back ground, that part seemed to go well enough.

That day filming was done in the pool during the session and then after the swim session the crew would be waiting to film Steve and I doing our post swim run along the sea front promenade. Once happy with that they went back to the flat they had stayed overnight in to have some breakfast and give us a chance to go home and change into bike clothes for them to do some filming in our home during a turbo training session.

It was a long day and quite wearing even though there was no need to feel nervous with such a nice group of people. They eventually gathered all the equipment together and left around 3pm.

Then we went back to emails and phone calls as the plan opened for the next visit that was nailed down to Tuesday February 28th when Kathy Azopardi wanted to see the route of our regular Wednesday 5km run course in Arundel before filming us doing the run the next day. The reason we have been including that run in our training is that it is part of the Raw Energy Pursuits event, Arundel Triathlon in July this year that we have entered because it is a qualifying event for the World Triathlon Championships in Rotterdam in September.

The three of us walked the 5km course quite briskly that day talking about how to go about it the next day with camera equipment. Steve and I were very impressed that Kathy managed to film us doing the run albeit in a stop and start mode so that she could get ahead of us here and there to do the filming. She was the only crew member on that day and had a back pack with two cameras and a tripod and was actually running herself with all that equipment.

Both days were most enjoyable and both sessions were followed by coffee and chatter about the progress of the film in Osteria café in High Street.

Yesterday the full three person crew arrived at our home, Kathy Azopardi, Edward Acrah and Jemima Fahy looking keen to get on to film all the interview sections and filming of all kinds of sports memorabilia. That was also a very long day starting at 9.30am and seeing them load up to leave at well past 3pm. They looked wiped out by the time they had finished getting everything they wanted to record and I must admit that I felt tired myself even though I had not actually done very much apart from speaking and even reading some of my poetry that I suppose was included to make me look a more rounded character rather than just a living totally in the world of triathlon.

I don’t know how they are feeling when they now have the major work of stitching it all together in an interesting way but I am confident from the amount of thought and careful discussion that went into each shot and each change that they will do an excellent job and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with them and wish them well for the future that they deserve for all their work.

There may still be a little bit more work to be done if there is anything they think they have omitted. I hope to be seeing some of them again if they have gained some interest in my sport and I have already promised the two women that I am more than happy to help them learn front crawl, hoping that they will come to swim with us now and again since neither of them live that far away. Edward is keeping very quiet on that front but one never knows where life can lead you. I have included the photos of the Kingfisher and the Mandarin Duck because Kathy was with us when both birds were spotted whilst filming the run in Arundel