Tom Harper's Director's Diary

The Scouting Book for Boys follows young David, played by rising star Thomas Turgoose (This Is England, Somers Town), who lives with his friend Emily on a caravan park on the Norfolk coast. Rocked by the news that she has to move away with her father, David helps Emily to hide out in a remote cave. But as their secret becomes more complicated, David's world begins to transform in ways he never imagined.

A Celador, Screen East and Film4 collaboration, the script is from 'Skins' writer and acclaimed playwright Jack Thorne. Producers are Christian Colson and Ivana MacKinnon of Celador, with cinematography from Robbie Ryan (Red Road, Brick Lane).

Saturday 07 June

Recce to the Suffolk and Norfolk coastlines. As some of our finance is from Screen East we need to film in what they call Objective Two areas in the East of England. This drastically limits where we can film, but I think there are enough interesting locations within these areas to make the film work. Not as good as the perfect caravan park I wanted to film in Wales though. Ugh, it breaks my heart. It absolutely pisses it down the entire time and the sun only comes out when we head for home. Still, according to recce rules, this means we'll have a sunny shoot.

Tuesday 09 June

Andrea Arnold's film has been pushed another 3 weeks which means the dates will clash and Robbie Ryan the DP is unlikely to be able to do our film. This is a real blow as his style would be perfect for this film.

Sunday 15 June

Keep hearing about small British films that die a death and never do any business and keep thinking about how to overcome this. Often come up with rash ideas such as freezeframes, playing sections backwards. Read a blog from Jurgan Wolf that says, 'When you brainstorm, take your ten most radical ideas and tell yourself that they are 'normal' responses that you now want to get beyond by thinking even more radically. By expanding the boundaries of what you will allow yourself to think, you may hit on a better solution.'

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