I met up with the two Bens, so to record the DVD commentary for Blood + Roses. I decided to not to do a director’s commentary by myself, as it don’t enjoy it. I’ve done it before for some of my short films and they were fine, but the experience of doing it wasn’t enjoyable. I felt that I could do with bouncing off somebody or bodies. Hence why I asked Ben Woodiwiss and Benjamin Green to join me in recording the commentary for the Blood + Roses.

My reason for asking the two Bens to do it, say anybody else in the cast and the crew, is because they have been with the film from the very beginning. All three of us were working on Monologue Triptych shoot when I asked Ben Woodiwiss if he wanted to write a feature script with me. And Benjamin was always going to have a part in the film.

We met up at Benjamin’s place around midday. I brought a laptop, a microphone, headphones and a copy of the film to watch while we did the commentary. I set up the laptop and the microphone. I have a long USB cable for the microphone, so I could have the laptop out of earshot; the laptop makes a hum the microphone can pick up.

The microphone was placed on the floor and we sat round it, so we could all be picked by it. I did a brief test, so I could hear if we were all being picked up and if there were any background sounds. It was at this time that the neighbours decided to start hammering outside. I quickly put on my headphones and had a listen to the test. The banging wasn’t too intrusive. You could hear what we were saying quite clearly, so we decided to do with commentary with banging included.

Before we started recording, we had to make sure we didn’t need the toilet, we had a glass of water in arm’s reach and we were comfortable, because once we started there wasn’t any stopping. Why? Because in my haste to get round to Benjamin’s place, I forgot the plug to the laptop. When I turned on the laptop I discovered that I only had 70% left on the battery. When we finished recording there was only 2% left.

So we did the commentary and it worked out really well. I just listened back it, just now and you can’t really make out any of the banging from outside. I don’t want to spoil it for you, so I’m not going to go into what we said, but I really enjoyed listening back to it.

Once we were done, we went out for a meal at a local Italian restaurant. The two Bens both has a pizza and I had some pasty thing (it looked a bit like some alien creature). It was tasty, despite it’s appearance. Then after the meal, Benjamin had to go out and run an errand. Ben had to go back home and I had to make my way to work. It was a good day and thoroughly enjoyed watching and chatting about the film with the guys.

The commentary will appear on the official DVD, as well as ‘The Making Of’ that was shot by Lee Akehurst and was edited by Rob Wickings. How long that will be? I don’t know at this point, but it will be worth the wait.