Well, Ben finished the script in the first week of May and after another month of re-adjusting the script, adding scene numbers and printing, we were ready to cast.

Finding the cast was the fun part, the script called for one male lead, one female lead, a baby and seven supporting actors. Should be easy to cast? Well, unfortunately, everyone we knew (including myself) were to be involved in Youth Action Theatre's Summer production of Juno and the Paycock. After a lot of pondering on who would fit together best, I asked a good friend of mine Mark Crossland (who is also a professional actor) and Maria Gale (a new and relatively under used talent at the time) to play the two lead characters. For the rest of the characters we called on various friends who agreed to take part.

Then came the first of several hurdles. We needed a baby. Could we find one? The only babies available to us were either far too old (over 3 years old) or too young and their mothers, quite rightly of course, were not particularly keen on the idea. The thing was that we only needed the baby for about 6 shots, which was less than an hours filming. The baby was an important part of the script, it created the link between the two lead characters. It was at this stage that I considered cutting the baby scenes and replacing them with low shots and cut-aways using recorded sound of a baby crying. I decided to put off this decision as I was more concerned that we still needed to confirm our interior and exterior locations.

The script called for a Georgian house/flat with steps leading up to the front door. I threw that idea out straight away. There was no way on this earth we would get the use of one for nothing (especially as we didn't know anyone who lived in one) so we had to settle for anything with steps outside. Then, as luck would have it, a friend of mine, Matt Hilliard, wanted to film a short piece he had written, but like me he didn't want to waste money on such a small project with the expensive hiring of camera and film. We set up a deal that I would film his script on a Saturday and I could use the interior of his flat for my film on the Sunday. This also meant that Simon Roose (the lighting guy we had both asked) was able to do both productions because this was his only free weekend. A date was set and we were away!

Now came a decision I lived to regret. I decided not to hold any rehearsals. Okay, I know, I should have known it was a bad idea, but at the time I though it would be sort of arty and clever, especially if the relationship between the two leads was reflected through this. In the script, the two leads had never met before, and this was the main reason for my decision to keep them apart. In real life, they had never met either and the first time they did was on location. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disappointed with the final result, it's just that I know they can do better and to not rehearse them was to not direct them. It was my fault. I did however attempt to direct them during the actual filming and these points in the finished film are quite noticeable.

So, we get to a week before filming. I still hadn't found the exterior location. All my searching had come up fruitless. But I had managed to get the local pub to okay some filming and a friend's Dad (Linton Viney) owned an off-licence so I could film there. Then I got some good news. By pure chance, Ben had been talking to another group of actors about the project and just happened to say that we were short of a baby. One of the actors, Richard White, who is now a member of YAT mentioned he had a niece aged about 15 months and he was sure his sister would "lend" her to us for an hour. He called her and she said yes!

So we got down to filming. I had already spent the previous day filming my friend's short (which took about 12 hours) so I was very tired. So much so that I was actually woken up by Ben ringing from the location an hour after they all got there to see where I was! How embarrassing! Late for my own film! Anyway, we got down to filming and managed to shoot all the interior shots in 10 hours - something I was sure we couldn't do, and I can only thank my cast and crew for the hard work and patience they had during a very long Sunday.

Early on in the day I shot the first baby scene, unfortunately, that's where it went wrong. I hadn't noticed, but the baby's older brother was in both shots. God knows how he got in there but he was "bobbing about like Mike Tyson" trying to get out of shot and he shouldn't have even been in the room. I didn't notice this until it was too late and the baby had gone. I never got to reshoot this scene with the baby because of my lack of attention to what was going on outside the room, the person minding the baby thought that was it and left. I didn't get to film the rest of the baby scenes with the baby and I didn't get a chance to re-film with the baby at a later date. After completing the interior shots we went on to the local pub to film some of the flashback shots (also to get completely drunk after the long weekend). These were done without problem and we all went home.

Over the following few weeks I filmed the off-licence flashback and some fill-in shots to solve the messed up baby scenes. It wasn't until 3 weeks after the initial filming that my final prayer was answered in the form of Scott Mattheson. He lived in the basement of a large Georgian style house that had been split into student accommodation style flats. I could finally film my exterior shots and we spent 3 hours on a Sunday morning completing the final shots.

The film was "in the can" and all that was required was the editing. I finished up spending about 60 real hours on it over 2 weeks to come up with a 17 minute film. I worked out that I filmed about 100 minutes of raw footage which gave me a filming ratio of about 6 to 1. Not bad. The entire project itself (excluding the cost of the camera as this was our first project) cost about 120 UKP (US$180).