Tonight's The Night For The Make-Up

Tonight, I shoot my short film The Make-Up. As you can probably tell, the title is a direct allusion to Peyton Reed's imminent The Break-Up. Perhaps in an alternative universe it will end up on the Break-Up DVD as a special feature.

The lighting cameraman is going to be Jay Johnson. I chose to work with Jay after seeing the trailer for his feature film Will Work For Food. He wrote the film, directed it, shot it and also edited it.

Jay has also got a good demo reel with a lot of varied work on it, in various film and video formats, and more to the point, he's a nice, smart guy.

The stars of The Make-Up are Rob Piper and Julie K.C Myers. You can see Julie in my short film The Enemy Within. Rob was also in a couple of my previous shorts - Gray Goo and Dirty Rotten Double Crosser. This last week he's been in Canada shooting the Transatlantic translation of People Like Us for the BBC. Luckily, that wrapped last night, and at 6pm tonight, he'll be on set with me. Both of them are great performers and we'd have a much weaker film without them.

Jay and I broke the script down into set-ups the other day, and there were only nine in total. Three on the first page of the script, two on the second, four on the third. With a bit of luck, we'll be done by 11pm tonight.

I spent an hour or so on location earlier, getting things almost ready. There are finishing touches to be made, but by and large, we're ready to go.

Apart from a single shot, the entire film takes place in one room. We make good use of the room, aren't simply showing talking heads (this is certainly not radio with pictures) but the film is a brief and seemingly light one, and visual gymnastics are kept to a minimum. I think that it will be rather elegant and to the point once completed.

Less than three hours until the actors are on set. Time to get excited.