A very talented young film director Simon Hutchins got in touch with me to add some art direction to the set of a new short he was putting together. The location was a very busy underpass near the old Evening Post building in Bristol. The short was entitled ‘Strange Faces’ – a nightmarish visual urban tale with a twist. We met several times at the location to work out a plan and I visualised how I thouht it should look.
Having a free reign of walls within a subway is an unnerving feeling – I made sure that Simon had a Bristol Council signed waiver giving me full permission to paint there but I still felt that the Police could turn up at anytime. Due to scheduling of the actors, cameramen and crew arriving at different times I had just one day to transform the tunnel into a film set, alone. It was also still open to the public until nightfall which drew no end of muttered comments as people walked by; ‘reckon that’s him?’ and ‘do you think he has permission?’ – rather strangely not one of these was directed toward me. The odd person would pull out their phone and take a surreptitious shot. It amused me that one guy alone, bombing the hell out of a busy public thoroughfare apparently without permission and no one stopped me or even asked why I was there.
