Trivia
The first production meeting took place in the bar of the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street (there was an agenda and everything!) as it was halfway on the Jubilee Line between Cath’s office in Brent and Rochelle’s office at the time in Canary Wharf.
The interviews that weren’t filmed at court were filmed in the conference room at Wembley Health Centre. Filming had to be stopped several times because the building is under the Heathrow flightpath and the mics picked up every plane that flew overhead.
Mandy and Mike got in their car at 3.30 every morning to drive from Newport, Wales, to London to film.
On the first morning of filming, cast and crew got through 40 mini muffins (owing mainly to the fact that four takes were ruined due to rumbling tummies!). In the evening, sugar levels were kept up by a lot of chocolate and Ribena.
 |
 |
Cath’s interview was done on the set of the flat… which is actually Cath’s own flat. Cath left us to film whilst she went off to her writing class after work; Rochelle raced back into central London afterwards to meet her after class to give her back her keys.
Maureen, Todd and Nick all work with Cath in the Brent Community Safety Team, whilst Aliza, Dean, Zoe and Mariah all train(ed) at BSA Actor Training where Rochelle regularly audits developing talent.
The cross-examination scene in the court room was written three days before filming after Rochelle visited the court and happened to catch a trial. She was so shocked at the level of detail that the traumatised survivor was expected to recall and she wanted to include a scene that reflected this.
It only took Sarah 15 minutes to create and apply the bruises and strangulation marks to Aliza’s skin when we were filming in Cath’s flat.
Witness Services gave Mariah the same pre-court tour of the courtroom that a survivor would be given.
Before making Heads, Aliza did not own a white t-shirt. Rochelle gifted the white t-shirt bought for the monologue scenes to Aliza after the shoot.
As actors (and money) were in short supply, Mariah played both the Bench Clerk and the Witness Services representative (with a change of hair, make up and costume) and Mandy had to step in as the list caller.
Dean rehearsed his lines in the bath.
Zoe was originally slated to play the advocate. After Sunita joined the project, and one week before the first day of filming, Zoe was re-cast as the prosecutor. Two days before filming, Zoe was re-cast a second time, this time as the defence brief.
Despite a lot of experience on different sets, Chris claimed that his sister, Rochelle, was the ‘strictest director I’ve ever worked with’.
On the first day of filming, the cast ate their lunch in a greasy spoon across the road from the court. Consequently, they all felt like a nap in the afternoon.
During post production, Rochelle’s Macbook of six weeks crashed with the film on it, pushing the offline edit back a week whilst it was repaired.
The photo of Dean and Aliza as Mike and Priya that is seen in a smashed photo frame was taken in the kitchen of Brent Community Safety Team during a rehearsal break.
Two weeks after filming, Regan’s new webseries, B.J. Fletcher, Private Eye, was picked up by the website afterellen.com so designing the soundtrack was pushed back by eight weeks to give Regan time to finish her ten episode series.
Twelve pages of script were shot on the first day.
Heads outtakes were first shown at ADVANCE's 10th anniversary celebrations.
The opening music for the outtakes shown at the launch of Heads was composed by Regan and is the same music used for the outtakes of B.J. Fletcher, Private Eye. The closing music of the same outtakes film was composed by Shan, who also composed the music for the Brent promotional film on the DVD.
Whilst all of the Heads team contributed their time and talents to the film either for free or at greatly reduced rates, the team also received tokens of appreciation in many forms, including boxes of Wham bars, pledges to work on reciprocal projects for free, 'sanity lunches', websites, gravy fries and, of course, alcohol.