Hello, I'm David Mitchell,
and this is my video diary thing
for the filming of Magicians.
And we're actually about halfway through the shoot already,
and Rob's just given me the camera, so that's why I'm starting now.
We're in Nottingham Theatre Royal,
where we filmed all the sort of finale stuff.
And this is a dressing room there that I am in.
If I just sort of show you, that's how cool it is.
And, in fact, I can even show you Nottingham proper.
I dare say the camera will get screwed up, but that's Nottingham.
Okay.
And, you know, we've been staying in Nottingham for a few days now.
I've done most of the tricks I've got to do already.
And I've worn the most dramatic and uncomfortable costume of the shoot,
which I'll show you as well.
It's there. See, it says, "Grim Reaper."
I realised, by swinging the camera around, I'll probably induce vomiting
in anyone who's unwise enough to watch this.
Anyway, so, here I am. This is my lifestyle.
Don't you envy it?
Oh, and I'm reading this.
It's called The Man Who Smiled, by Henning Mankell.
I'd recommend it. It's good.
And this is Ollie, the producer, and Jesse, one of the writers.
-Say hello. -Hello.
I like that you introduced yourselves. Yeah.
And perhaps you could just say
what today's challenges and threats to the project...
It's... What's today? It's like a middle... Thursday.
We're waiting.
The government fell. Darren Boyd happened to have sex.
-Those are the main two. -Yeah.
See, this is a reality that I'm too busy to have to do this.
But, you know, that's the thing about the media now.
You have to screw around with DVD extras and the Internet and all this bollocks.
If you're watching this, you're wasting your time.
Watch the film and then watch another film.
Anyway, I'm going through the motions. So, you know...
Now, if it's all right with you, I'm going to actually go make the film.
Anyway, bye from the producer and from the writer.
Goodbye.
Well, here I am, sitting on the floor of my hotel room,
which I find is the best way
of getting the right height level for the lens.
I'm still in Nottingham.
This is my room in the hotel.
And I don't know why I think that would be of interest,
but I've got a camera and I'm therefore empowered.
I've had a couple of pints.
It's 10:25
on the 7th of September,
and I've got to learn my lines for tomorrow.
And maybe answer a few e-mails on my laptop.
And, yeah, tomorrow...
Early start tomorrow to do some more filming.
And it really is as simple and as boring as that.
My shampoo thing's run out
for fuck's sake.
Who's going to fill that up? I don't know.
Anyway, good night. This has been my first day of video diarying.
Diaryising. Diarising?
And we've got a lot of stuff,
but none of it of much moment,
for which I apologise. Night-night.
Hello, it's... Oh, this is a prop watch, so it doesn't say what day it is.
But it is a Sunday, and we're in Nottingham again.
It's about 11:30 and I haven't done anything yet today,
so they sent me back to my room to wait for an hour until it's lunch.
This is my... I'm in costume.
I've actually walked through the hotel and no one said, "Ha! Fake!"
So that's a tribute to the costume department.
And I thought because I had a bit of downtime,
I should do an item.
I've found a better way of setting the camera,
I know you'll notice,
so I can actually sit on the bed. I put it on top of the telly.
Later today, we're shooting a scene on a ferry.
Except, it's not on a ferry, it's just in a room.
So I imagine they'll have the camera doing a sort of rocking motion throughout.
Or maybe it's more subtle than that. I don't know.
But maybe I'll show a bit of the non-ferry in order to relay the magic behind filming.
Anyway, that's all from me for now.
Hello. It's me. I'm Robert Webb.
I play Karl in the film Magicians.
So this is my video diary.
So, hi.
So...
I've made a little list of things I should talk about down here,
so every now and again I'll go...
And then that'll be me finding out what to do next.
You probably won't want to use that bit.
I mean, it's gold. I mean, clearly you know from the start it's been all gold.
But you might not want that bit. I don't know.
So, yeah, it's a film about magicians. David and I had to learn a few magic tricks.
And David's been given a whole lot of really easy stuff,
which he's managed to do.
I was given loads of really hard stuff,
which, just unfairly, because I've been treated unfairly,
which I wasn't able to master.
And, in fact, in some circumstances, in some instances, I mean, I just gave up.
So they gave me... I'm supposed to do a coin roll,
which is like you take a 50 p, you place it on...
You have to bend the knuckle. That's a tip. That's the first tip.
And then I spent four weeks practising this.
And the idea is to get the coin to roll gracefully across your knuckles,
pass it under, and then transfer it.
It goes round in a little circle. After four weeks, this is how well I can do it.
You see? And it dropped on the floor.
And it always drops on the floor. That's what happens.
So they said, "Don't do that because you can't do it."
And, instead, I do a little card fan. I produce a card from behind someone's...
Oh, maybe I can do it. Shall I try and do that?
Produce a card from behind someone's ear.
I'll try and produce a card from behind your ear.
Although, you know... Here's a normal playing card.
For all you know, I've got another one Blu Tacked over there.
And let's just, you know... Just bear with me.
Oh! You seem to have something over here.
Oh, look, I've produced a card. That was shit, wasn't it? Wasn't that shit?
Didn't that look shit? Don't use that bit.
And what did I say? I do a nice fan of cards.
I'm not going to do that because, you know,
I just want you to see the version that's in the film, if that,
because I can't do it very well very often. What am I? A fucking magician?
But I did... I did... There was a bit where... One thing I was quite pleased with,
there was a bit where Karl has to become very adept at throwing
a miniature basketball over his right shoulder,
so that he can get the spirits sphere to land in the right place in the audience.
And then there's a scene where I'm practising that
and I have to get it in a basketball hoop.
And in order to accomplish this feat...
I mean, it's not a magic trick. It's a feat. It's a feat.
But in order to try and get this in a manner
that didn't use up £5,000 worth of film stock,
go into the 28th take, me missing,
on a day off, I came in and practised doing that for a couple of hours.
And that's what I did.
I mean, it's not exactly like Keanu Reeves spending three months to learn karate
or kung fu or sword-fighting.
But it is a bit like that. It's a bit like that.
I mean, it's not like that.
It's not like learning kung fu. It's a bit like it. It's a bit like that.
So I did that and I got it on, like, the fourth take.
So I was very, you know, I was very pleased with myself.
I remain quite pleased about that.
I think about that when a lot of things are wrong in my life.
I think about that moment.
Other magic stuff?
That's most of the magic stuff I've had to do.
At one point, I was going to, like, produce a champagne cork
from inside my hand.
I better not tell you how they do that. It's pretty fucking obvious.
It's certainly obvious when you see me do it. But they decided not to use that, either,
because it got in the way of the action,
not because I wasn't doing it very well.
I'm just consulting my list. It says, "Naked stuff." Yes.
Well, this being a British comedy film,
obviously, at some point, I'm required to take off all of my clothes.
That seems to be the law at the moment.
But luckily, Karl,
unlike the character I play in Confetti...
In Confetti, an inferior British comedy of 2006...
I mean, I don't know that, but, you know, Magicians isn't...
I haven't seen the finished version of Magicians.
We haven't even finished making the unfinished version.
But, you know, the odds are it's going to be funnier
because the difference being
a funny script deliberately written to be funny, i.e., there is one.
So, in Confetti, I was playing a naturist,
whereas, luckily, with Karl,
when he gets locked out of his hotel room, naked,
he reacts like normal people by covering his ghoulies.
So that, at least, was a relief for me,
if not for the cinema-going audience.
In fact, they will be very relieved as well.
So that was sort of interesting.
It made a change to be able to cover one's ghoulies.
It was a welcome break.
Other slightly embarrassing things I've had to do...
It wasn't embarrassing particularly. I did a sort of love scene
with Andrea Risborough, who plays Dani, in a very funny and talented way.
We spent a day snogging in a bed.
Really, no headlines there, apart from she farted. She farted.
And she calls herself a professional.
I didn't fart.
I would not.
Stage stuff with all...
Other moments of total humiliation.
Observant friends, fans and enemies alike
will have noticed I'm slightly balding. I'm balding.
In fact, I'm going completely bald. I'm going to be a bald fucker.
And this becomes crucial
in that Karl, my character, towards the end of the film,
puts his head in a guillotine and gets his head chopped off.
Now I can exclusively reveal... This is a spoiler.
Don't listen to this if you haven't seen the film.
I can reveal it looks like Karl gets his head chopped off.
But actually, he doesn't get his head chopped off.
And I didn't get my head chopped off.
But in order to achieve that, they need a dummy head.
So, basically, there was a process where
they got the dummy head to be as bald as me.
And they had to make sure
that the pattern of the baldness of the dummy
matched my baldness.
And so there were some brilliant moments
where I basically had to get on my hands and knees
next to the bald dummy head in the guillotine
so they could compare which one was the most bald
and whether it was the right amount of bald.
And brilliantly, during the final camera test,
it turned out I had slightly more hair than the dummy.
So the dummy was wrong because it was even balder than me.
So another great buttress added
to the great cathedral of my self-esteem there.
That was a good day.
Hello. Another day, another hotel room.
And now it's not Nottingham any more, we're in Skegness. Yes!
We're in Skegness.
We've been filming on the beach in Skegness.
One of the scenes we did
was the scene where Karl gets buried up to his head in sand,
up to his neck in sand,
which, I think was probably quite a good scene.
I don't know. Haven't seen it.
What they did, basically, it wasn't enormously comfy,
they dug a hole in the sand, they put a big wooden crate in the hole,
they put a stool at the bottom of the crate.
I sit on the stool, they put a couple of live rats in the box,
they put the lid on, they cover the lid up with sand,
and then I sort of do the scene with David.
I was trying to stamp on the rats before they bite me.
And it seemed to go quite well.
It wasn't very comfy, you know. The sun was kind of beating down,
wind blowing sand in your face, the rats trying to bite you on the ankles.
But, you know, of those three things, there's nothing really you can do about it.
I mean, you know, sometimes as an actor, you just going to be a bit uncomfy.
I suppose they could've put a brolly to kind of keep the sun off my head a bit,
but there was nothing you could do about the wind.
Obviously, you got to have the rats in the box.
So, generally, it was good.
It feels like a funny scene,
where I'm buried up to my neck in sand.
It has a sort of whiff of chat-show clip about it.
I can imagine them using that as a clip because it just looks good.
Apparently, at one point, I was in the box fending off the rats
and a trailer... No, not a trailer, a trawler.
A boat went by, sort of, on the horizon behind my head.
And everyone said that looked funny. I've got to take their word for it.
I don't know.
Every now and again, the producer or director will come up and they go,
"I've seen the rushes from a couple of days ago.
"It all looks great." You got to trust these people.
I don't know.
I don't know if it looks good. We could be making an absolute turd.
But I do trust these people, basically. I basically trust these people.
It was their idea about the rats.
But I think that added to... It must've added to the scene.
Otherwise, why would they do that? Why would they do that?
They don't want me to be needlessly uncomfortable, do they?
So, yeah. Other things we did in Skegness...
We did some filming in Butlins. Butlins Holiday Camp.
I mean, I'm from Lincolnshire. I'm from around here.
And, you know, if you ever hear me going on about my working-class credentials,
and I hope you don't very often,
bear in mind, we didn't have much money. We did have holidays in Skegness.
But, fuck me, we drew the line at Butlins.
Even when I was nine,
Skegness was basically the best place in the world.
And Cannon and Ball...
I didn't expect to see anything funnier than Cannon and Ball.
And I may have changed my mind about both of those things.
But Skegness is still... I'm very fond of Skegness.
But Butlins... Butlins, though. Butlins.
We did the stunt drop routine
and it's two days later.
And after having done a bit of a leap up onto a box
six or seven times two days ago,
I can still barely walk from stiffness.
And that's some kind of indication to me
I should do something about my well-being.
Maybe I should take up something like swimming
or rat stamping on a more competitive level.
I can't think of anything else that's happened lately.
Skegness is not really how I remember it.
I mean, I am kind of a metre taller than I was the last time I was here,
so everything seems a metre less tall.
And on that note...
So it's day two, and we're filming a scene
where Harry, David Mitchell, goes to a magic shop asking for a job.
And the magic-shop owner won't give him a job
because he killed his wife's head in a guillotine accident.
"Killed his wife's head"? Killed his wife
by chopping her head off years ago in a magic accident.
So this is a magic shop called Davenports,
and it used to be in Great Russell Street in London near the British Museum.
And 30 years ago, I bought my first magic tricks from this shop.
Have I mentioned that I was the Young Magician of the Year at 18?
And let me show you this. Come over here.
You're going to hate this, but come over here.
There's a poster here called "Cine-Magic."
And that man there, that man, Noel Britten...
Can you get a little close-up of Noel Britten?
So, Noel Britten, who is a hilarious,
very, very funny comedy magician, one of my heroes,
he was the runner-up in the Young Magician of the Year.
And next to him, if you go next to him on that poster, next to him...
The year I won it, Noel was second.
That man, that's Scott Penrose. Scott is our magic consultant on our movie.
Along here, Richard McDougall.
Richard's a brilliant, brilliant magician and inventor,
and Richard worked on the second series of Derren Brown,
and brilliant he was in it as well.
So do you want to explain where we are and what we're doing here today?
Yeah, we're on Skegness beach.
We're not. It's not true what you just said. We're not on Skegness beach.
Okay, I'm just waking up.
We're on Mablethorpe beach.
Mablethorpe is about 17 miles away from Skegness. It's a very pretty beach.
Tell them what scene we're doing here. You should get it wrong again?
This is the scene where the panthers come and attack.
It's not true. All this is wrong.
We're shooting this... Sorry about this, it's early, and drugs.
We're shooting the scene where Otto digs Karl
out of his hole on the beach
where he's been doing a David Blaine-esque endurance stunt.
You want to see the hole? Come, we'll show you the hole.
-We've got two holes, in fact. -We have got two holes.
It's very impressive. Come and look at this.
Got a real hole and a fake hole.
You're seeing behind the scenes.
This is our version of George Lucas effects, basically, here.
This is our high-tech effects. So, this is the real hole.
Look. And look, there's a writer in the hole. Hey!
So that's the hole that he comes out of.
-I'll help you. -Thank you very much.
Thanks.
He's a bigger man than me. I should've gone in.
Look, here's Gareth. He's like out first...
So that's the real hole.
And then over there is the... Do you want me, don't you, Gareth?
-Just for my props here, sir. -Yeah. Cameras?
Sam, do you want to show...
I've got to do work for the movie here, official director work.
So why doesn't Sam show you that hole,
show you how that works while I look after the other thing?
That's the real hole. This hole is the fake hole.
Obviously, you can't just put an actor in a hole.
We'd all like to, but it's not legal,
so you have to build a box.
And, as you can see, if you look inside,
there's a little plastic stool there where he can sit.
-He could live in there. -He could live in there
off his brains, which is the idea.
So, yeah, we're using this for two scenes,
for Karl in the hole and, also, Otto in the hole later.
So it's a multipurpose actor hole.
Where the actors can get sent if they've been naughty.
In this situation, they're just acting, so it's fine.