The vinyl countdown

It was late August when I started to think that something strange was going on around the town. Like the first moments of the morning – when the residue of your dreams are still stuck to the walls of reality – things seemed off, in a subtle, surreal, hard-to-put-your-finger-on kind of way…

A lad in a local coffee shop with froth clinging to his 1920s moustache.

A middle-aged woman, the face beneath her movie-star make-up unsettlingly familiar, smoking a fag, staring blankly into the Market Street rain.

It seemed that everywhere I went, far-flung accents, foreign and exotic, caught my attention, their tropical timbre standing out against our local lilt, like a piece of pineapple in your Sunday dinner.

“What the hell is going on?”, I wondered.

Then, one day, after seeing Buzz (Owen Colgan) from the RTE hit series, Hardy Bucks, walking across Bridge Street with a local, battered flat cap-wearing musician, it clicked…

“Jesus, that’s right… “McCausland’s film!”

An Omagh film by Omagh people

Fast-forward a few weeks and I have been invited to spend a morning on the set of The Spin: ‘An Omagh film by Omagh people’.

However, contrary to my uninformed and, frankly, offensive misconceptions, the movie is not being made on a skimpy budget, the script is great, and, yes, Kimberly from the Pussycat Dolls is in it.

Quick context and essential exposition

The film tells the tale of two fellas who go on a quest to find a priceless record in order to save their music shop from going under.

The premise was conceived by local musician and long-running UlsterHerald columnist, Mark McCausland, who will also be composing and recording the soundtrack. The script was written by Colin Broderick, an Omagh man now living in New Jersey. And the whole thing is being produced by Eddie McCaffrey – a man who, after leaving Gallows Hill 40 years ago to successfully scale the ladder of London’s film industry, is now probably better known around the town as the brother of late local legend, Leo McCaffrey.

Non-Omagh folk in the film include Owen Colgan (Hady Bucks), Brenock O’Connor (Game of Thrones), Kimberly Wyatt (Pussycat Dolls), Steve Wickham (The Waterboys), Tara O’Neil (Derry Girls), Maura Higgins (Love Island), Barry Devlin (Horslips), and a many more.

Anyway, wanting to know more about the film and to see first-hand how a screenplay is shot, I asked Eddie if I could hang around the set for a couple of hours some day.

Eddie, who must have got his airs and graces vaccination before going to London, gave me a big Gallows Hill grin and said, “No bother at all”.

A day on the set of The Spin

Enter McElhatton, who furtively pushes open the door to the production team’s headquarters, trying to make his arrival undetected.

“After that we can export the video,” explained a young, politely-spoken English guy, to Eddie. “The only thing is, the quality won’t be as good.”

“Yeah, but if we do it the other way…”

Their words fell away. Heads turned in my direction. My attempt at an unobtrusive enterance had failed.

With my awkward presence quickly curdling their previously constructive conversation, Eddie coolly put the exportation issue on ice, said they would talk about it later, then grabbed his jacket and whisked me out the door.

The Supervalu shortcut

“Right,” explained Eddie, his shoulder-length grey hair animated by the Omagh breeze. “In this scene today, Tara O’Neil – ye know the ma from Derry Girls, she’s absolutely brilliant – is playing the landlord that is trying to evict the two boys.

“Her character is called Sadie, and today she is coming on a bit too strong to a guy from Big D’s Demolition Company, who has called around to assess whether the boy’s shop could be tossed and turned into a big hotel.”

We walked from Main Street towards Boneyard Records, via what Eddie called ‘the Supervalu shortcut.’

“Tara is on another level,” laughed Eddie, excitedly. “She’s great.”

Bad with names

At the corner of Supervalu carpark, a group of people stood underneath a small black pop-up gazebo.

Most of them huddled around a big TV screen that relayed real-time footage being captured by the camera crew who were shooting inside the adjacent Boneyard Records.

A flurry of impossible to remember introductions ensued.

I forgot everyone’s names.

“Grab a cup of tea or coffee and come on inside,” said Eddie.

I opted for the former and followed Eddie into the shop, trailing after him like a lost dog that had taken a liking to a stranger.

A tight squeeze

Inside the shop, space was scarce.

Boneyard Records is usually just about big enough to hold half a tonne of vinyl, a clerk, the clerk’s till, and about five customers.

On this morning, however, the place was packed. It was like being at an unconventional United Nation’s summit: ‘On The Future of International Hipsterism’.

I was just getting my bearings when I was blasted by another volley of Eddie-led introductions.

“You look like a journalist,” observed one of my new acquaintances, her foreign inflection sounding vaguely Mediterranean. “With your little pen and book.”

In the absence of somewhere to set my tea, I awkwardly tucked my notepad under my arm, shook her hand and said, “Aye, I suppose I do”.

Consider the copyright

Shooting a commercial film presents a small sea of potential pitfalls that a layperson would never consider.

“You see all these records,” said Eddie, as we stood in a shop populated by virtually nothing but people and records. “In the film, we can’t show any of the names of the artists or albums.”

To avoid being sued, all the covers have to be concealed so as be unidentifiable.

“Ye have to turn them all around or else set up plants – ones you have permission to use.”

I had to get scribbling.

I set my tea under one of the rails, never to be sipped again.

Michael and Andrew

The director of The Spin is a cockney guy called Michael Head.

Most things that come out of his mouth lie somewhere between amusing and hilarious.

He is a brilliant mix of warm and vulgar, which somehow makes him seem all the warmer.

The first AD (assistant director) is another English fella called Andrew. Compared to Michael, Andrew’s accent seems more refined and clipped. (In saying that, given that Michael sounds like he could be the grandson of Ronnie Kray, describing Andrew’s accent as ‘more refined’ is to still leave you with quite a lot of imaginative wiggle-room).

Both men are gregarious, encouraging, and seemed well-liked by everyone on set.

Get in the back

When show time eventually arrived and it was time to get the cameras rolling, I was politely shepherded into a small backroom, where I was wedged shoulder to shoulder with six well-showered crew members.

A series of semi-comprehensible shouts pin-balled between the various units – lighting, sound, camera, etc – before the clapperboard went clack and the director announced, “Action!”

Everyone was absorbed in their own worlds.

The two actors became possessed by their characters. Cameramen stalked them like patient predators. And me and the rest of the cupboard occupants stared at the action as it played out on a tiny, phone-sized monitor in front of us – with the exception of one sound guy who never took his eyes off the brightly coloured columns that rapidly rose and fell on a screen below him.

The scene, jargon and cockney

The scene was compelling, believable and funny.

Tara’s performance as Sadie The Seductress was totally convincing, to the point where it was slightly unnerving to be in the same room as her.

This, I presume, made the job of the guy playing Frank much easier. If I was disconcerted by Sadie’s lecherous pursuit of him, he definitely was.

“That was great,” came the cockney call as the scene wrapped up. “But let’s run it once more, and this time we’ll do the bloody granny out of it!”

And like many things that were said in Boneyard Records that morning, I sort of knew what Michael meant, but not really.

The Spin is due to come out before next summer, and hopefully it will be picked up by local cinemas across the county – and country for that matter.