Deleted, Undeleted & Extra Scenes – Being Human Filming (October 11th 2012)

There was a location sign right outside my hotel and for some reason I nominated to get up fairly early and follow them so we didn’t waste any of the day. Slight problem, it was pissing it down with rain but my commitment to the Being Human cause was too strong. I found the crew setting up at Tiger Tiger club where they have filmed before and with hindsight it was quite likely it was going to be there. Gradually we started to round up the troops. The weather was drizzly so en route to filming I purchased my first EVER umbrella. Yes, I survived my first 32 years without an umbrella but with the prospect of filming being inside this was the day for such a historic moment.

They were filming inside Kuku which was opposite Tiger Tiger on a pretty busy road so a couple of approached the building by first going to the bus stop and joking with runner Pete that we were waiting and what a coincidence it was that they were there. In time we all perched ourselves against the building. God knows what we all looked like. Not much to report really: Su joined us after taking a tour of all Cardiff’s parking spaces and Jay the security guard questioned me on my masturbatory habits. The usual. Soon, a large amount of annoyingly beautiful and skinny extras turned up and went inside and we decided that we would go to the pub directly opposite and watch the ‘action’ from there (quite why it took us this long for this revelation to hit?). Of course, we had no idea who was filming inside but when Dorina thought she saw Damien come out she got up from her chair in slow motion and shouted “IIIT’s DAMIIIIIIIEEEN!!!” and just before running out the realisation hit. It wasn’t. It was just a bloke. Who looked nothing at all like Damien. And had a beard. Su and I couldn’t stop laughing for must have been half an hour. It’s the little things. We went back out when it looked like the crew were packing things up. Kate Bracken turned up and was once again out of Alex’ standard gear again. She was as lovely as ever to us. Turns out she’d just been shopping and she teased us with the bags she was holding, stroking them and said “I can’t tell you what’s in here”. She went off to have lunch and out of the door a few yards away walked Colin Hoult and Hamza Jeetooa. We didn’t say hello and I’m sure they’re lovely blokes but Crumb and Alan turned out to be the two worst characters in Being Human history in my book. The scene they were filming was eventually a deleted extra and it’s totally understandable why. We gleaned from one of the crew that after lunch they were ‘moving down the road’ so we went back to our pub and had lunch.

We soon located them to the Park House restaurant and came to the realisation that it was all inside again. The weather was still drizzly so Becca and Jo decided to go to the nearby cocktail bar but myself, Su, Dorina and Laura decided to find out what was going on. While waiting Jay was insistent that Damien & Michael had been filming exterior shots in Barry in the morning but as usual we never knew if he was telling the truth. I tried a one man campaign for him to join twitter. He refused. In the distance we could see Michael Socha approaching and he stopped to chat with us. We noticed the shirt he was wearing was the same as the one in ‘Making History’ and in a moment that appealed to our geekiness he replied quoting Tom “Splashed out didn’t I? Went to the cancer research shop”. We had a present for him, or rather Becca did but she was away supping cocktails so we rang her to get her arse over to us. And she did, in the most slow motion meeting between man and Were-teddy ever known, Becca trundled over being sarcastically beckoned by Socha himself. It was the heels she was wearing ok? Yes, the Were-teddy for his newborn baby for which Michael seemed genuinely happy and thanked us all. He went inside and soon after a crowd of posh extras turned up along with Kathryn Prescott. Tom was clearly on some kind of date. Aaaw. This scene made episode five.

Soon, assistant director Lloyd Elis came out with the present and disappeared around the corner, a few seconds later he reappeared without it joking that he’d put it in a bin. In fact it’d been put in a car and driven back to their Cardiff base. So if you ever complain about BBC budgets it might be worth noting they give fluffy toys first class service by escorting them individually. It was probably dropped of at it’s own personal trailer. Between takes Socha came outside for his fag, well slightly outside. It was still raining so he stayed under a shelter while we played some weird game of hand gestures with him. Some of them were probably rude.

Damien and Kate turned up and other than a quick “hi” dashed in as the rain was torrential now so we made for the nearby bar and proceeded to try as many varieties of cocktails in a short amount of time as possible.

We planned to go back to filming just before seven as that would likely be the time they finished up, hoping to get some info on tomorrow’s filming. Only when we got back something completely alien had happened. There were OTHER people outside who were hanging around filming. This was a first. Throughout filming it had always just been us bloggers! In the afternoon a few people had asked what was filming and we told them because no one had really heard of it but obviously being in the city centre it got more noticed. Kate, again not in ghost gear was wearing a jacket. Dorina handed Damien our card, he told us they’d be at ‘The Archives’ tomorrow and we must come along to see it. He also thanked us for staying out in the rain but we admitted we went to a bar and had already started the night’s drinking. He said he could smell the alcohol… and before he was about to insult some women, he pointed at me and said something along the lines of “it’s you isn’t it, such an alcoholic”. And in turn getting me back for calling him a lightweight earlier in the week. That was me told.

Oh, by the way, they were filming the extra scene for the dvd extra. The one that explained what happened in episode six. The one we really didn’t need. But we won’t talk about that. The rest of the night contained food and much more drink at our ‘local’ The Old Arcade where Louise was nearly kidnapped by loads of Scottish men. I think she was fine with that arrangement. Tomorrow would be the last day of blogger stalking.. *sad face*

The day we broke into a caravan park and got some tea as a reward (Being Human filming, October 10th 2012)

We knew very little about the filming taking place. All we knew was it was probably on a caravan site. Maybe. Remarkably our knowledge of the caravan sites of South Wales was non existent so we used our Cumbatchian detective skills and gambled on somewhere between Cardiff and Barry and decided to take a bus that took the coastal route. Myself, Dorina, Becca and a Were-teddy (don’t ask) had to keep a sharp eye out for location signs. To quote a certain other show “DON’T EVEN BLINK” and thankfully we didn’t. We saw one seemingly in the middle of nowhere, pressed the button and went on the hunt. We had been teasing 3^rd AD Ryan on twitter that we were hunting them down and he was insistent we would never find them. We followed that first sign down a country lane and it was quite a walk until we saw another. We found a caravan park and crept our way nervously in and quickly we were with the crew. Ryan was amazed to say the least and waggled his fingers at us. He did that a lot this day.

In the distance was Phil Davis who was once again dressed in THAT suit, causing us to speculate again. We liked speculating. We figured it was something to do with Alex’s holiday with the family so it must be a flashback. But why would Captain Hatch be there? Did he know Alex before? Is it in real time and is he meeting a newly human Alex? To our surprise Phil came up to us for a chat and called us “committed” – or was it “you should be committed?” Either way, both are probably true. His car turned up and off he went. Not long after, we saw Kate Bracken walking in our direction beaming a smile at us. She was not dressed in typical Alex gear. It’s fair to say she was surprised to see us and probably didn’t want to be seen by too many people in a dressing gown but she had a chat with us anyway. They then shot quite a few takes of a scene that was being filmed in a caravan.. well.. when in a caravan park do as caraveners do, right?

We were essentially perched against a wall awkwardly in silence during the takes. Out of the caravan came a tall man who we spent about five minutes trying to work out who the heck it was. It was Gordon Kennedy. Clearly Alex’s dad!!!! Kate and Gordon were hanging about for a bit and then went back in. Poppy, one of the runners said we could help ourselves to some tea and biscuits (it was a sunny day but pretty cold) in order to do this we had to move a lot closer, right to the head of the caravan so we just hung round hoping no one could tell us we were in the way and surprisingly no one did. Ryan, perched on a hammock questioned us on us on how we found the place and was coming up with elaborate theories but we would never give away our secrets. Gordon Kennedy looked at us with suspicion as  he was being made up (we’d grown pretty used to that look) but he gave us a friendly wave.

We could hear things being said in the caravan but couldn’t really make it out. Alex was clearly crying and the only line that I got was “I know it’s strange”, Turns out it was “I feel so strange” There were a lot of takes of Gordon walking out of the caravan. To me, this seemed like they were having an argument but when shown in episode 6 this was clearly not the case.

We decided that once lunch was called we’d call it a day, mainly because we were right in with the crew and didn’t want to get in the way or be an annoyance. I had a task to do before we left. Before the week started we thought we’d do up some cards as a thank you. I made ones for Kate & Damien, Su for Ryan and Becca made one for Michael. So as Kate left I had to, hopefully hiding my embarrassment and awkwardness give her the card. Thankfully she seemed genuinely pleased and we all got a Bracken hug. You can never complain about a Bracken hug, dressing gown or not. She asked if we were sticking around and we explained that we thought we were a bit in the way. And off we went after just four hours of filming. Lightweights. It was a surprise to see as I was scrolling through the twitter later that afternoon that Kate had tweeted a pic of the card with a thank you message. So, for a nice change we had the rest of the afternoon and evening free and spent it in the traditional field trip manner: Eating, drinking and talking shite. Not necessarily in that order.