A weekend in Cornwall

Watch clips of Mission to Lars here: http://www.spicerandmoore.com/category/documentaries/

After months of the film being in Will and James' hands, I started coming in to see the rushes reduced down to a rough edit that Will is taking up to Sheffield Documentary Festival tomorrow.

Aside from the odd constructive and/or destructive bit of criticism, I have to give the entire credit for turning the crazy plan into 80 minutes of movie to my brother and James at Spicer and Moore.

This last week the entire family, minus Ben, and including several grandchildren all piled down to Cornwall for a chaotic, large and noisy holiday. On the Monday the photographer Chris Floyd came down to take some promo shots of Tom for us to put on the flyers we'll hand out like kids on the beach in Faliraki while up in Sheffield. Tom and Chris got on well, Tom helped Chris set up his lights and then got in front of the camera and acted like a pro pulling all sorts of faces. It's incredible how much more capable he is when entrusted with important jobs, instead of just being passed over because he is 'disabled'.

The major message in Mission to Lars is not Tom's incompetence, but, in a way, ours, well mine at least, in understanding his disability and empowering him not smothering or bossing or big sistering him.

 After Chris had taken the pictures of Tom, we sad down round the laptop and watched the first half of the film. There was a big heap of family there. I dithered in the kitchen wiping surfaces again and again, being busy, too scared to go in, too aware of how critical the family might be. When I heard them laughing once, twice and a few more times, I decided to go and join the sitting room theatre.

The film looks good, the story's all there. Now the film goes public, we take it outside the neurotic knuckle of the production with all that our team have invested in it and ask commissioners and distributors and organisations like BritDoc and the Wellcome Trust to invest their trust in it.

This is exciting and appalling in equal doses.

More soon...