Café Mirage – Pre-Production

Café Mirage is currently in pre-production. Updates announced soon.

Auditions were held on Saturday 18th May 2019.

The principle cast has been cast. Meet them:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

First rehearsals are underway.

• 

• 

Second rehearsal fun.

• 

• 

• 

Final rehearsal and costume fitting before shooting block one in July 2019.

• 

• 

Being my second feature film, I knew the requirements of a feature film and everything that came with a project of that size. Because of this Café Mirage’s pre production came easier to me. A completely new team crew wise was refreshing and exciting. I felt the level of talent in one of my films has never been better with Café Mirage, a lot of things I’ve been picking up and learning from them, but at the same time, this can be factored in to my growth as a filmmaker also.

But any production is never plain sailing, and this film was no exception. Even before pre production got properly going I had a couple of major incidents that could have ended project entirely. The first and the only one I will elaborate on, being the initial budget raise, and because I didn’t reach the target at the deadline, I returned all the investor’s capital. At this point I could have admitted defeat, having been turned down from virtually every investment avenue, and walked away from it. But as always as a last resort, I take the DIY approach and is what got me through 7 previous films.

I decided to independently raise the finance and not ask for “help”, or “handouts” as I see them. Good old phone bashing, hard graft. And I was going to finance the film on a drip feed basis meaning continuously raising throughout production rather than waiting for everything to magically be in place at the start. This approach is a first for me and been very effective because it has got me through pre production and well into covering the first block of production. This approach gives you momentum because you’ve got material to keep you excited and something to show when raising further investment.

Because this is a Paris based film, working with crews from the area was a priority as it would save costs on accommodation and travel. This was an early task and something I attempted. But with connections in Paris dropping like the plague and hard to keep hold of, and the fact it was more cost effective to shoot the interiors in the UK, the entire original crew team didn’t make it to production. This was the same with the cast too. I expected something like this to happen, but the entire team. Film production never ceases to amaze and I never rule anything out. I see such things as fun parts to the process.

-NB