The 'names'

London
For the last month there have been excruciating negotiations with an agent over the contracts for our famous (read expensive) actors. The Big Controller specifically wanted us to use an actor she'd liked in the Eighties, so we got him and a Lovely Shiny Girl and shipped them over to a Soho studio to voice the new script for us. Mr Eighties arrived looking crumpled, sweaty and anxious. A few cans of Pepsi Max helped initially but things got steadily worse as lines were fluffed, and tempers frayed. It was a quiet journey home.

Everything on hold

18th May
I get back to the UK high as a kite with success. I go into the production office (which is also home to The Director and me) and am met with a sea of gloom. The Big Controller had a lot of problems with the pilot we’d just sent, this was version II. An earlier pilot which had prompted the commission for this series was deemed too short and had to be made longer by a third. Now the new version is too long and we have to halve it. The professional actors we used for the narration are no good, we have to redo it with ‘names, people with profile darling’. This will affect the budget massively and suddenly the whole project is thrown into doubt.

Last month I cleared out two rooms in our house to accommodate the expanding production offices. I’ve just used our savings to secure the deposit and first month’s rent on the Lovely House. I start working out how quickly I could get a B&B going there.