They Think It's All Over
Location: Farnborough, Hampshire
Bodies present: Mark Stalker, Ian Lindsay, Mike Varty, Sue Element, David Randell, Henry Burrows

You may wonder exactly how we cope with continuity on a low (no?) budget shoot such as Foiled. Particularly here, with these kitchen scenes, where we're filming parts of the same scene with as much as weeks in between sessions, and we're using a kitchen that is in everyday use. The solution is to point the camera into every corner of the room at the end of each night's shoot, producing an instant record of the position of every object. Then at the start of the next evening we watch the tape and rearrange the room to match as closely as possible the previous layout. It takes time, and we tend to ignore the minor details in preference to the obvious things, but it allows Mike and Sue to use their house meanwhile!

Scanner transforms...

Tonight the weather was against us. To continue seamlessly from last time we needed Mike outside, hunting for a mushroom. But last time the ground outside was dry - and now it was raining. A major continuity problem - so we avoided it by fast-forwarding the scene to the point where all of the students are back indoors and we filmed from there on. We'll return to the missing scenes at a later date.

Ray suffers...

First major special effect of the evening was the transformation of Scanner into the deadly Foil Man. This is in fact the third transformation scene in the movie, although with this cast it's the first time we've filmed one. It also differs from the others in that it takes place while the victim is standing up. We wrapped Mike in foil, stage by stage, filming his struggles as the alien began to take him over.

Next up was Foil Man's vicious attack on the still dazed Ray. Dave got kitted up in the full Foil Man outfit and spent the next half hour strangling Mark while we filmed him from various angles. Meanwhile the two onlooking students, Jimmy and Laura, decide to help Ray fight off the metallic monster - only to find their efforts thwarted by its superior strength. Dave seemed to be enjoying himself as he struck out first at Ian, and then lunged at Sue, again filmed more than a couple of times to ensure we got good coverage.

Laura helps...

We finished off the evening with two bodies lying on the kitchen floor. One was Ray, the other Foil Man. One was dead, the other merely stunned. Which is which? What will happen next? Tune in next time to find out! Only you probably won't, seeing as next week Mark is away having wisdom teeth removed so we'll have to shoot something else and return to this scene at a later date. Overall, the evening went well and we got all the shots we wanted - although we did have a slow start and things went on longer than we had planned (but don't they always).