Monthly Archives: July 2009

I guess there’s ambition and there’s stupidity and I’m guilty of the latter.

I was so passionate about getting this flick made that I hadn’t stopped to look at the practicalities properly, thought it all through or taken the time to develop a team who could help out with the production side.

Naiveté can be a wonderful thing in some walks of life, but not in filmmaking. I underestimated the task in hand and the likely support for it and I overestimated my own ability to deliver.

Do I feel foolish? Yes. Will I plough on and keep chasing my dreams? Of course.

This blog – back to it’s original incarnation – may well cease to exist now, or become much less frequented. When I started writing here, the idea was to talk about my journey to transplant. I’ve been there now, I’ve passed that life-saving, world-changing milestone and I don’t now want this blog to turn into yet another “today I had a ham sandwich” diatribe about the world’s dullest daily life.

So feel free to check back every now and again and see what’s happening – or even better add me to an aggregator like Google Reader and then you’ll see whenever I throw something up.

Take care of yourselves and never give up on what you know is right for you.

Just North of London today I met with our military adviser about the impending shoot. They’re 100% behind us and are providing all manner of costume, equipment and research material, not to mention (fingers crossed) our main location, which is both awesomely unbelievable and totally unprecedented for a short film.

We’re waiting on one final go/no go from their ranges to see if we can shoot on the dates we want to, which should come through to us on Monday. All being well it’ll then be all systems GO! for an amazing, life-changing movie for everyone involved.

And don’t forget, YOU can be involved, too! All you have to do is click the link and you can become a Producer on Remembrance by helping us hit our budget target in time for the shoot. Every penny counts, so even if you can’t meet the pre-set amounts, hit the “donate” button and chip in what you can. And if you happen to be flush right now, there’s nothing to stop larger donations, either. And you get to see your name in the credits, too – and you get a free copy of the film when it’s all done.

This is all ramping up to be quite exciting just now and the pedal is about to hit the metal – come along for the ride!

There was I hotly anticipating my return to work this week and getting really rolling on Remembrance when I was flattened again. This time not by small children, but by some kind of a stomach bug. It’s left me totally wiped out and exhausted for the last 3 days and I’m only just getting back up to speed. Sucks quite a bit.

I have to confess I’ve been a little worried about things. If you’ll remember, last year’s CMV infection started out with weird pains in my chest and stomach, so a recurrence of similar and apparently inexplicable symptoms has rattled my nerve a little bit. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I think after so long of being well my mind is maybe a little pre-programmed into expecting something bad to be due me. A stupid thought process, to be sure, but one that’s hard to avoid after spending 25 of my 27 years as a seriously ill person.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I’ve achieved nothing at all this week, which is obviously sub-optimal. Added to which, since I’ve been doing nothing but lay in bed all day, I’ve got into a horrible sleeping pattern and am up until past 3 in the mornings at the moment – never a great thing for aiding recovery.

I’m due in to my GP surgery tomorrow morning for some blood tests and I have a scheduled appointment at Harefield on Monday so hopefully this will all either have cleared up by then or we’ll be able to tell exactly what it is.

In the meantime, the one thing I have managed to do is to draw up a shortlist of DP candidates, who I’ll be meeting next week to have a chat with and go from there. It’s exciting stuff, I just wish I had more energy for it right now.