On Mars in the Wadi Rum

“So, what are you doing about gravity?” asks Z.

We’re sitting in a resort in Jordan’s Wadi Rum with an old, old friend of mine from the UK, A, who handily happens to be producing a movie there.

And, as you’d expect given the ochre sand and scarlet rocks of the Wadi Rum, it’s set on Mars. Most Mars movies, in fact, film in the Wadi Rum, along with classics like Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient.

“Well,” A says. “Mars is a low gravity environment, but it’s not like the moon. So people don’t float. They’d just move differently from how they would on earth.”

“Oh,” I say. “So you don’t have to have the actors on bungee ropes and take them out in post?”

“No,” she says. “We’re going to do some stuff, but more hinting at it than anything…”

“Like have them lift really heavy things?” Z suggests.

“Possibly…” A says. “We’re going to fudge some things…”

“And what about the red sky?” asks Z. “Are you going to shoot using an orange filter?”

“Well,” A says. “The problem with shooting using an orange filter is that EVERYTHING goes orange, even the space suits. So we’re going to add it digitally, with CGI, in post…”

“Christ,” I say. “How much of your budget is going on CGI?”

“£1.5million,” she says. Which is when I have one of those disconcerting where-the-fuck-is-my-life-going moments that happen when you realise your peer group is really quite grown up — not in a boring way, but in an exciting, doing interesting things kind of way — and you, well, you aren’t grown up at all.

We revert to talking about zombies, another topic of the movie, on which Z has all the enthusiasm of your typical 11-year-old boy.

“One thing I was wondering,” says Z. “Is how you’re going to get to a full scale outbreak with only this manned mission to deal with? And also, how do they bite people through the space suits?”

“Yeah,” A says, in a bewildered sort of tone. “It’s weird! People are really, really into zombies. They really care about the detail… Ours aren’t really zombies, though. Not true zombies.”

Z’s eyes go kind of beady at this. “So are they zombies according to the Max Brooks definition?” he asks.

“Well,” A says, with the air of someone who has been through this, as bungee cords, several thousand times during the ball-aching process that is getting a film financed and made, “They’re not really zombies. We’re calling it a zombie film, because that’s what people will call it, but they’re actually infected…”

“Oh!” says Z. “Like 28 Days Later?”

“Have you seen it?” asks A.

I flinch, parentally. “No,” I say. “He’s looked it up on Wikipedia, and he’s been psyching himself up to watch it for donkey’s years, but he hasn’t actually seen it yet…”

I gave up censoring Z’s viewing after I rang my parents, who were looking after him when he was four. “Hello!” I said. “Is Z there?”

“Oh, yes,” said my Ma. “He’s upstairs watching Alien with your father.”

…”Yeah,” says A. “It’s a scary film.”

She explains a little. “Oh,” says Z. “Then it IS like in the Zombie Survival Guide. In that, they have an infective agent called solanum, which is a virus that takes over the body and stops all the vital functions but leaves them animate…”

A’s expression reveals that when she volunteered to host me and my spawn on set, she wasn’t necessarily looking for this level of interrogation. “Yep,” she says. “Yep, it’s like that…”

Conversation moves to Mars, and whether it has poles (we think it does), and whether it has magnetic north (Z thinks not): it is Z’s current ambition, when he grows up, to put a colony on Mars, and make a lot of money mining resources there.

Yes, I know.

Go figure.

We meet A’s coproducers, charming chaps with kids around Z’s age, and are assigned someone who will appear on the credits as “Assistant to Mr….” to look after us.

“You know,” says one. “What you really want to do, is when they shout, “Action!” shout right back at them.”

A begins to look a little concerned.

“Yeah!” I say, chirpily. “What actors REALLY like, when they haven’t done good acting, is for everyone on the set to chip in with good advice. So, if you see an actor doing something wrong, you must be sure to correct them, at once.”

A begins to look extremely concerned.

Z looks dubious. “Have you switched your phone off, Mum?” he says.

“So you know A well?” one asks.

“Yes,” I say. “We’ve known each other — oh Jesus! — we’ve known each other 20 years!”

“So you know where the bodies are buried, then?”

“Pretty much,” A says. “She probably does…”

I go off into a quiet panic about being old enough to have known ANYONE 20 years.

Folk are only two days into filming, after a late start due to last-minute cast issues, so we could have chosen a better time to appear.

Plus, today is the first hot day, which is, as A puts it, “The day we find out that everyone’s too hot in their space suits. And everyone starts complaining.”

Daytime temperatures in the Wadi Rum at this time of year can run well into the 40s, so the cast have, fact fans, built in coolant devices, or cool suits, under their space suits. Their helmets, grown from resin, mimic the classic space helmet style…

“But they have to be able to open the visors and take them off between takes,” says A. “Because people get claustrophobic in them. Seriously, seriously, claustrophobic.”

I can imagine. I wouldn’t fancy Wadi Rum in a space suit myself…

Nor would I fancy being the person who carefully monitors and adjusts the amount of dust on each space suit for continuity purposes.

One of an impressive fleet of 4x4s takes us up to the current set, a suitably barren-looking strand of dark rock, red sand and jagged cliffs with gothic mountains rising across a flat sand sea, surrounded by ex-army vehicles filled with intimidating amounts of kit, and tents.

“It’s not a particularly interesting day today,” says A, consulting a piece of paper. (The interior scenes will be filmed later, at Elstree in London.) “Oh! Wait a moment. You get to see [Really Surprisingly Famous Actor To Be In My Friend’s Film] hanging off a rope having a panic attack later…”

It’s actually rather cool to watch what we do watch. Well, I think it’s cool.

Z’s too…

… Well, the thing about someone who can hang out with hunter-gathering nomads, Buddhist monks or zillionaire artists, attend a seance with a provincial governor, chat happily to Islamists, smugglers, academics and Tibetan woodcutters, is that he’s not NEARLY as impressed as I would have been at 11…

I mean, he likes it. He’s interested. He watches take after take of chap in spacesuit tumbling off a cliff that is in fact a hole with quiet fascination.

But, having been to his first movie premiere (also courtesy of A) aged 4, on a bona fide red carpet and all, he’s not nearly as goddamn excited as he should be…

I also wish he had a decent answer to the question, “What’s your favourite film?”

Or, for that matter, “What’s your favourite country?”

The CGI is interesting. Assistant to Mr… talks Z and me through it.

We have green screens. Green Xs. Red Xs. Pretty much the whole landscape and scenery is marked out with reference points of various kinds for the digital artists to do their work, the distances carefully measured and marked out.

One scene has the front end of a Mars Rover mounted on a lorry — both the back end and the actors inside will be added in by CGI.

A weird spinny thing comes out between shots, like a half-mirrored ball. “Do you know what that is?” asks the assistant to Mr…, who has already donated his hat to Z. “Can you guess what it’s for?”

Z can’t. “It’s for the CGI. So that we can capture a full 180 degree view of what the landscape looks like, for when the digital artists are doing their work.”

We watch. I did some very small-time acting and rather more film extra-ing in my early 20s — I had the features for it, but not the talent, sadly — so it’s fascinating for me to see how a larger budget film plays out.

What strikes me is how very, very many people you have on set, and how focused the actors have to be across multiple takes, plus more with the green screen, with cameras and sound booms right in their face, and, generally, at least ten, and often twenty, people observing from a very, very close distance.

They’re filming splits, day scenes from 2pm until the light goes, round about 7, then night from 8 till 12. We have dinner on set (Z has been wellying his way through the biscuits with considerable enthusiasm), and then get to watch the RSFATBIMFF doing his thing on a rope.

They have a stunt guy to set it up, of course. But the RSFATBIMFF has been working out — his muscles are disco-queen unnerving — and wants to do the thing himself, despite an incident the day previous which resulted in a ripped spacesuit, though nothing worse.

Z’s initially a bit more interested by the smoke machines, and the rattletrap HiLux in which they arrive — though the wind is not behaving today, so the smoke will have to be added in at a later date.

But as the RSFATBIMFF actor descends the cliff — which ends, thanks to the wonders of CGI, rather closer to the ground than it will do in the film — he’s gripped.

“Wow, Mum,” he whispers as they rehearse. “He IS a really good actor, isn’t he?”

We watch them go, again and again, and then again with the green screen. And Z, who has been up since 6am and is not good at early bed times, starts to wilt.

“Look,” I say, trying not to interject on A’s discussions with the Really Surprisingly Famous Actor who is also a Really Surprisingly Normal Bloke Just Doing His Job, “We’re going to need to shoot. Z’s on his last legs. He’s about to crash…”

We’re probably not going to see each other for a while, A and I, unless she happens to have a film lined up in Israel, Turkey or Greece, which is a shame. And we haven’t done much catching up, because she’s in the throes of a stressful job.

But it’s been fun. It’s been a little blast of London into provincial Jordan, an excellent education for master Z, and as we head off in our four by four across the darkened desert, he’s dopy, but excited.

“Well,” he says, as we roll into our beds. “I think we’ve done Jordan now. Petra and the Wadi Rum, and A’s film! That’s pretty much Jordan done, isn’t it?”