Tom Harper's Directors Diary: Part 2

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 (Holliday Grainger) 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. The producers are Christian Colson and Ivana Mackinnon of production company Celador, with cinematography from Robbie Ryan (Red Road).

Wednesday 27 August
Sent a video to Robbie Williams to try and get him to play a cameo role in the film (sadly, it didn't work).

Friday 5 September
The camera company have unintentionally stiffed us a week and a half before principal photography as the new digital camera, which from the tests I've seen looks fantastic and on which we were intending on shooting, is now apparently unavailable! This has caused a whole wasps' nest of problems: we don't have the money to shoot on film and neither Robbie nor myself want to shoot on any of the other digital formats.

In general I am an advocate of digital cinema, and was really pleased with the look of both my short films Cubs and Cherries which were shot digitally. But in the case of those films, the format suited the subject matter, but Scouting Book needs a slightly magical and nostalgic feel to it, a quality which I think film inherently brings.

Saturday 6 September
All sorts of tough wrangling. Everyone wants to shoot on film but no one wants to cough up any extra dough. The additional cost is only £15-20k which Jack and I say we'll pay. This currently seems a good line of argument, but I'm seriously hoping they don't take us up on it.

Monday 8 September
We are shooting on 2perf 35mm. Bring it on! Film4 and Celador have stumped up a bit, some has come out of contingency and Jack, Ivana, Christian and myself have all had to put a bit of our own money into the mix in order to do so - but it will be worth it.

Tuesday 9 September
Rehearsals with Tomo and Holli. We have been through the script a couple of times and talked through the most important scenes, character development and plot points, but I am increasingly aware that they are both very instinctive actors and I really want to keep the material fresh. I will need to block out some of the more complicated scenes but for the most part I want to leave the script alone and just get them to hang out together and piss around. They are forming a really nice relationship and it's this chemistry that will bind the film together.

Next page • "Tomo has something very special - and not just his incessant farting."