24 Mar Absolutely Anything First Day’s Shoot

Absolutely Anything: First Day of Principal Photography

Gavin Scott’s Production Diary

The shoot gets off to a flying start when Simon Pegg, as Neil, goes into our bathroom set and sees his wish come true that the mess made by his dog Dennis cleans itself up. This scene did not take Terry and me long to write, but like famously expensive script line  “the two armies met”, actually getting two items of dog poo to leap into the toilet requires a LOT of great British film making expertise. First … the dog poo:

Then there’s the toilet. This is a bachelor pad, but just how dirty should it be? Production designer Jim Acheson and Terry confer. As the camera crew lines up the shot:

Then there’s the splash. Just how big should it be?

About this big, it turns out.

Organising all this requires about as many people as squeezed into Groucho’s cabin in that Marx Brothers movie … and produces a wonderful overheard line: “How fast would a piece of dog poo jump into a toilet?” To which the answer, after some head scratching, was “About as fast as a cricket, but a little bit slower.”

Then we put Dennis’ misdeeds in the scene and bring in the silver ball device which will allow us to use CGI to make them do a knees bend and jump into the loo.

And of course once Neil has seen what his wishes can do, he goes into the bathroom himself to make wishes about the size of certain parts of his anatomy.

Not all of which end up as he planned…

Not a bad first morning!