DAY NINE – SCLUB SEE THEMSELVES ON TV – THE FAMOUS FINAL SCENE. My Mum always wanted to visit Sitges and she never got her wish. But here I am on the first day of the off season stopping traffic on its famous beach. The morning started slow – everyone seemed to be recovering from the weekend and I pushed as hard as I could to the point where I felt I was driving the band before me like some driver on a Wells Fargo stage coach – whipping my acting horses into a lather with no concern for their welfare unless the scenes were completed with speed. As any director will tell you this is a fruitless way to go about your business, your job is to nourish your actors like tender flowers so that they will flourish and give you of their best. However the afternoon hung heavy on my shoulders – we were shooting two different endings for the film and I was concerned about completing coverage for both scenes before darkness fell. As the bemused residents watched over us from the small promenade my worst fears were realised and at dusk the scenes were imcomplete. For the first time on the movie we had failed to complete the day. We will now have to find time in our already packed schedule to get the extra footage we need.

It might seem like the weekend but it isn’t. Over the next 48 hours I will bug Guillermo the AD on his cell phone about 30 times; half the crew will be dragged early from their beds to do a location scout; Priscilla the choreographer will create an entire dance routine and the band will have to learn it; Roger, the storyboard artist, and myself will draw more than 170 sketches and Alan, our producer, will fly 12,000 miles roundtrip just to wish his son Happy Birthday – now that’s what I call dedication to duty.

DAY EIGHT – ARRIVING AT THE AIRPORT, DRIVING INTO BARCELONA, ESCAPING FROM THE RECORD STORE: Heroes of the Set Part 102 – the sound guys. Ours are called Tim, Will and Javier. As well as recording the sound we want to hear they sometimes record sound we don’t want to hear – trucks rolling by, planes flying overhead. They fight an endless battle against the picture mob (which is virtually the rest of us). “Great take!” says I, “Print it and move on.” They have to interupt me with the bad news that there was a car in the background, Brad’s neck-chain clanked, Tina banged her mic, Rachel’s mic-pack was visible etc. Today we shot in the airport and of course Tim came up to me at one point and said: “You might want to know that the last take had a plane all over it.” My droll reply was, “Sorry Tim we went all over Spain trying to find a quiet airport for you sound guys – but everyone we visited had planes.” My awful humour aside today is a very productive one – 55 set-ups. This means we moved the camera position or changed lenses 55 times – some films with more leisurely timetables might take a week to do this.

DAY SEVEN – SNAPPER’S TRAILER AGAIN: Heroes of the Set Part 101 – (those of you familiar with my 2gether diary will already know about this section so forgive me Nouria et al if you don’t get a mention in the days to come as your job descriptions have already been explained in another part of the web-page.) Today’s heroes are the stand ins, Celia, Danae, Deborah, Estefania, Patricio and Rassi. Each one of them has been picked to be a double for a particluar SClub member. This means that Deborah had to have her hair cut, Danae had to have Hannah’s little end tints added and Patricio had to have his hair dyed and styled. Not only will they stand in for the band during blocking rehearsals and lighting but they will also be used for those all important over the shoulder moments the script asks for. Over the last two days I have noticed they have truly grasped what their job is about. They sprint into position when called for and they have also become firm friends with each other. The long hours hanging out on the set have resulted in some new friendships and that is a pleasure to observe.

We finish up in the shower and once again, like our day at the Olympic park, it proves to be a tough scene to shoot. Bradley sings the shower song I have written for him with bravado and Tina acts up a storm stealing the scene at the end when she peers over the edge of the shower stall to peek at the clones privates – ha-ha!

DAY SIX – SNAPPER’S TRAILER: Snapper is a character who appeared in an earlier draft of the script, and much to Alan and my disappointment was quickly killed off. However his domicile has remained and we found ourselves on a beautiful bluff North of Sitges pretending we were in Malibu. How strange film-making is: you fly 6,000 miles to shoot a place and then make it look like your home town.

DAY FIVE – AT THE SCLUB HOTEL: We’d hoped to shoot the S-Club hotel sequence in Guadi’s famous Casa Battlo but it was not to be – so we decided to shoot in the Ritz hotel instead.As a true romantic I’d always aspired to renting the biggest suite in the Ritz in some foreign city so I could enjoy breakfast there with a beautiful girl. And so my wish came true but not with just one girl but a whole host of them: there I was sitting in splendour with Hannah, Jo, Rachel, Tina with a bacon sandwich on my plate and an entire film crew watching! Not quite what I had in mind perhaps but it was a fun day. We shot the waking up scene as one continuous shot and Hannah’s endless scream was the most hysterically funny thing I’ve seen for months.

DAY FOUR – SCLUB SEE THE CLONES FOR THE FIRST TIME: Not every day goes according to plan and today was always going to be tough. Our big scene was the one where SClub see the clones of themselves for the first time. To acheive this we were using a motion control rig – a device which memorizes a move and then executes it over and over again exactly. The scene involved all 12 members of SClub (!), 40 extras, 3 special extras and Joseph who’s playing Alistair, the band’s manager. Apart from the fact that Joseph was doubled over in agony with some stomach bug the weather was not cooperating. In some takes it was sunny, in others dull, in others drizzling. In the end I hope you’ll never notice though maybe you’ll wonder “How did they do that?” The answer will be: “With great difficulty.”

Lie in till 730 having dreamt about Stinker my cat. I start working on my shotlist for next week on the long journey out to the castle where Victor, the mad scientist who will change SClub’s lives, will be found. There’s precious little violence in our film but what little of it there is takes place in the castle’s wonderful cathedral and the owners and caretakers of this magnificent pile won’t allow guns or violence, even if fictitious, in their hallowed space. I am full of admiration for their determination to stick by their…er…guns but it means we’ll have to come up with some other tomfoolery. While everyone sits in a tiny cafe in Cardonna discussing Spanish political history I sit on my own so I can work on the scenes for next week. I watch dailies before bed and Jo makes me laugh out loud everytime she tells Jon she wants to change her call sign. There’s a film-making maxim which goes: “Never as good as the dailies, but always better than the first cut!” I wonder if this one will be making them laugh next Easter?

DAY THREE – BACKSTAGE AFTER THE BARCELONA GIG: Daniel is back on set at 630am, arm held to his side, but smiling and ready for action. Wow! The first dialogue scene of the movie and I have a tough time blocking it to my satisfaction but it gels nicely – the band are starting to play the scenes and their characters with truth rather than for results and I am full of optimism for the weeks ahead. Rachel is moved to ask me about the numerous re-writes this scene has undergone – all for valid reasons I should add – however I wasn’t going to give her my perspective so what makes you think you’re any different? After lunch we use one part of the Olympic Plaza for Los Angeles and another for Barcelona – hope no-one notices the red-tile flooring is the same! We finish with Hannah up a tree in her coloured socks and a tiny skirt but the blue skies have evaded us today – and that was my brief: shoot loads of palm trees and blue skies.

DAY TWO – THE CLONE HOUSE: I think the rehearsals are paying off. Clone Bradley, Clone Tina and Clone Jo embrace the chant we have invented and repeat endlessly: “We are SClub, we formed a band, we make records, we release records, we tour!” It works wonders and I sense they might be enjoying themselves. In the afternoon I’m listening on the headphones when they start talking between themselves about the scene – they’ve forgotten their radio mics are on and I can hear them. Ha-ha! My joy turns to dread as Daniel our first a/c falls to the floor screaming in pain having somehow dislocated his shoulder, the band are noticeably shocked. Within minutes he’s in an ambulance and speeding away to hospital. Someone says we won’t see him again for two weeks.