Guerilla Film Making and football.

Here's a little tale: about two years ago I went across to London to film a series for the Internet; London, England that is, as they used to say in America.

I think we were going to do about thirty episodes and I was playing a very gentle and very persuasive debt collector with connections to the mob; it was shot guerilla style – in other words very little location preparation and no permission to film; just set the camera up and get on with it.

One day we shot a scene in a pub; we ordered some drinks and some food and by the time the food arrived we were filming with a mini tripod on the table. I remember that the barman came over with the food and stood there as we went through a take. He didn't ask any questions just put the food down onto the next table; we told him on the way out that we were trying out the camera and he smiled and waived.

Such is the guerilla style of film making; a friend of mine, Chris Jones, wrote a book called The Guerilla Film Makers Hand Book; I did two movies with Chris and neither was shot in guerilla style, by the way, but if you're interested it's on Amazon.

Anyway, back to the filming; I was only due to be in London for about three weeks and all we were to do for those three weeks was to shoot the scenes I was involved in throughout the thirty or so episodes. Everything else would be shot when I had returned to Los Angeles.

I can't remember how many episodes we shot but one day somebody broke into the crew truck and stole the Steadicam; now the Steadicam is exactly what it sounds like it is; a piece of equipment to make the camera steady and is made up of telescopic parts, bells, whistles, weights and other bits of paraphernalia much too complicated for me to explain here even if I knew how to explain it - but I think you get the idea.

The idea is that the cameraman has to wear it and it makes them sweat – I have to say a camerawoman has to wear it too and they sweat as many buckets as the man; it is a kind of jacket with holes and pockets in where you put the harness which steadies the camera and when you use it you can substitute it for tracking shots, gib shots and any other kind of shot that looks difficult.

Laying a track for a tracking shot, for example, would not be any good for the guerilla type of filming making because you would be moved from your location after you had put the first piece of track down.

So if you will excuse the pun the loss of the most important part of the Steadicam stopped us in our tracks; number one it wasn't insured and number two they are very expensive. I don't know how much they are but I should imagine between three to five thousand dollars for a second hand copy.

We looked all around London to find another Steadicam but had no luck. There was a place which rented them in the Brixton area of London which we tried. Now Brixton is London's equivalent to Harlem or South Central Los Angeles; in other words a very bad reputation for crime probably not deserved.

When we got to the place in Brixton we had to go a particular street and then phone them again; only when we did this would they let us know the actual street address; outside it looked like an ordinary suburban house but when we got inside it was the usual busy looking film equipment house specialising in Steadicams.

They were all over the place; 'big ones small ones some as big as your head!!!' to use the lyrics of a well known song from the fifties; when we enquired as to how much money they were talking about they wanted around fifteen hundred per day to rent or they would have sold us one for around seven thousand dollars; it's approximate, of course, depending on the exchange rate.

They explained that they were very busy as it was the football season (soccer); there is football every night on some channel or other in the UK and they usually use a couple of Steadicam operators to run up and down the side lines – you've probably seen them if you watch football on TV – all kinds of football.

As we were on a very low budget this was the end of the production; there was a chance of picking one up on e-bay but it had to come from India and there were other pieces of camera steadying equipment available but again from India and the delivery was at least two or three weeks – when I would be back in the sunshine of Los Angeles.

So here we are about two and a half years later and we are going to try and do the series over here in Los Angeles and we're going to shoot as many episodes over the next few weeks as we can; it's nearly cast and I'm playing the same character again.

One thing we are looking for is an English woman rather like Ray Winstone's wife in Sexy Beast – Amanda Redman – so if you know an English bird like her drop me a line.

By the way as we are on the subject; soccer or football???? They are all called football and I don't know how many types there are; Rugby Football, American Football, Gaelic Football, Australian Rules Football and Association Football. Association Football was nick named Assoc for short then Soc and now soccer; but you knew that didn't you?