Rebecca’s life takes an unexpected twist as she is drawn into a cemetery by a voice with an unusual deal to propose – a one-day trip to paradise in exchange for a day in Rebecca’s body. Worried by her behaviour, boyfriend Peter follows Rebecca, but as the exchange occurs, a bright light and thunderclap are misunderstood by nearby police and they are arrested. With their story and behaviour far from normal, the pair are transferred to a psychiatric unit, but with her body incarcerated, what will become of Rebecca's soul?

Camera Operator’s notes

After a lengthy pre-production including numerous script edits, make-up tests for black and white film, and constant location changes, the first day of shooting finally got underway on Saturday May 20th 2006. The morning was spent creating a Gypsy’s tent inside a small room in Stoke Newington’s Turkish community centre. Using a gazebo as the basis, we draped black fabric around the frame and then covered these new “walls” with cardboard stars and moons. DoP, Lutfi Hady, set to work lighting the scene for 2 cameras, whilst other crew members kept a close eye on the ropes which were straining to keep the structure upright!

Leilani Holmes and Genevieve L'Olivier (as the Gypsy woman and Rebecca respectively) did a fantastic job of acting under such harassed circumstances! Their performances were on the mark right from the off, and that helped us get the first scene wrapped on schedule.
In the afternoon the shoot moved to a different room in the community centre, which we set up as a mental hospital for the day. It was cramped and hot, and Genevieve ended up strapped to a bed for 4 straight hours while we got the necessary shots! It was hard work but great fun – with cameramen Pete Wallington and Chris Towndrow shooting 2 cameras simultaneously we managed to get all the coverage we wanted extra quickly, and we soon wrapped for the day all feeling exhausted!

Day 2 of the shoot was another tough day particularly for Genevieve – she spent most of the day rubbing onions under her eyes and crying! We shot interiors in Kevin’s (sound recordist) flat. It was a lot easier shooting against 4 genuine brick walls instead of a makeshift tent! The day’s shoot went well and we got some great night footage in the bedroom (after black-wrapping the windows) as well as other important scenes, which were filmed in the tiny cramped kitchen.

A week later the crew met up again for the final shoot. We set up in the pouring rain to capture the first scene of the movie, outside Stoke Newington cemetery. What should have been a relatively quick scene to shoot was hampered by the weather conditions, too many members of the public, and attempting to shoot a driving stunt as well as steadicam shots!

The fun really started as the rain eased off and the night drew in, because we headed inside the cemetery for the long-awaited night shoot. It was really hard work moving generators and lights around in the mud, but we got some great footage and managed to keep the entire cast and crew together without any spooky mishaps! Randy Nundlall and John Bateman were unerringly convincing as the two police officers, and Ed Courtenay and Genevieve L'Olivier continued to work extremely hard in the cold, wet and muddy conditions, so that we could get the scenes nailed as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately the generator we hired for the lights came with the wrong sort of adapter, so it was only thanks to the “A-Team”-like DIY skills of stills photographer Hugh Macdonald that we managed to cobble together sockets capable of running some of those lights. It was then down to DOP Lutfi Hady to light a whole cemetery with just 3 lights, which he somehow managed to pull off! Unfortunately the generator was so loud that all dialogue had to be re-recorded at a later date by soundman Kevin Blareau.

By the end of a very long night and with only one scene left to shoot, we discovered cameraman (and equipment carrier!) Pete Wallington’s car had been broken into and Genevieve’s bag stolen. As a result the final car scene was postponed until a few weeks later, when it was finally shot under a bridge in Hackney Wick, using only battery powered lighting and radio mics. Thanks to the actors’ hard work, another brilliantly constructed make-up job under harsh conditions, and the technical expertise of our excellent DOP, the film was finally in the can and post-production could get underway!