Ben Barnes Fan

‘Killing Bono’ Set Report & Photos

February 12th, 2010 • By Stephanie • Gallery, Production

Many thanks to Alison for allowing me to share these new photos of Ben taken on the set of Killing Bono yesterday. You can also read about her on-set experience, as an extra during the making of the film, behind the cut!

On Set In Northern Ireland | February 11th, 2010

Set report from February 5th:

The studios are in the Titanic quarter (basically in and around the buildings where the Titanic was made) and I had to arrive by 3pm. First stop was the costume department which was in a freezing cold, temporary structure. The costume people had to check out your outfit and make any changes they felt necessary. I was wearing a black, puffy, net dress, leggings, lots of plastic bangles and a denim jacket. My denim jacket was replaced with a black velvet one complete with gold thread and MASSIVE shoulder pads. Nice!

After receiving costume’s approval we were taken over to the main building and ushered into a large hall. One of the assistant directors briefed us on the scene and explained that we would have to be quiet when asked etc. The scene we were filming was a club scene, Shook Up were playing at the club and only a couple of people have heard of them and are having a dance but as the song goes on more and more people get interested and join in. At the end of the song we all had to go mad.

When we were taken in to the club Ben and the others were rehearsing on stage! The urge to simply run at him was great but I didn’t want to get thrown out so I contented myself with staring. He looked good (of course), tight leather trousers (he struggled slightly with bending down) and a sleeveless t-shirt. His hair was shoulder length and kind of scruffy, all very rock n’ roll!

The club was basically a rectangle with the stage at one end, a dance floor in front of it then a load of tables and then a bar. There were little raised platforms with tables along both sides, Krysten, Pete Posthelwaite and a couple of the other main actors were at these tables on one side and I was at one of the tables on the other side.

We were filming for at least 4 hours! The boys in the band were brilliant, they had to repeat the same scene so many times and each time they were fantastic. The best part for me was that Ben was actually singing!!!!!! They had a backing track too but he was definitely singing live!!! And it was brilliant – you’re gonna love the song!!! As far as I can work out they were playing the instruments too, one of the actors told someone “the boys make an amazing band, don’t they?” At one point they were playing the track but not filming the band and Ben played the drum part perfectly. But I’m getting carried away. Before we actually started filming, while they worked out the order in which people would start to dance, Ben was doing some stretches and push-ups at the side of the stage, luckily my platform provided the perfect point from which to watch this.

When the track starts Ben is standing at the back of the stage stretching one arm and then he comes forward to grab the microphone. He sings to Bobby (they all seem to call Robert Sheehan this) quite a bit, at one point he puts his arm around him. When Bobby has a guitar solo Ben steps back and all the girls in the crowd had to go wild. When Ben sings the second chorus which goes “Come away, come away, get away” he gets us all to join in (the guy in charge of the music is awesome but I have no idea what his name is) and then he finishes with “we are right here where we wanna be” repeated. Then the crowd goes wild and we all scream and jump up and down. Then everyone shouts “Shook up, shook up” over and over while Bobby and Ben hug and everyone in the band high fives each other. The fact that the guys were so good made our job so easy.

There was a lot of waiting about involved as they wanted loads of different angles and sometimes they did close ups of Krysten and Pete. At one point the director shouted “Ben, Bobby this is the hero shot!” and Ben, who was facing away from the crowd, flexed his muscles, nearly making me faint!

Ben seemed really relaxed, he obviously gets on well with Robert (he hit him on the head with a plastic bottle for laughing during someone else’s scene). There was one point where he thought that he wasn’t needed and he was playing the air guitar while Robert and Slinky (the other guitar player) were messing with theirs. He joked with us all after one take “and for our next song we’re going to do the same thing all over again.” At the very end we had to record some sound stuff and when we were singing he was pretending to conduct us.

Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to meet him, he was whisked away fairly quickly but actually getting to watch him (and the rest of the cast and crew work) was a total privilege and who knows, maybe I’ll actually be in the final cut!

I know that was like the longest post ever but I wanted to give you an idea of what it was like, I know lots of you would have liked to be there. I think the film is going to be awesome and one of the assistant directors said they might release the song as a single!

—–

When he played the drums I didn’t actually realise it was him at first, I was too busy trying to see what was going on at the other end of the room where they were shooting the scene. i’d kind of forgotten that he could play the drums and he played along perfectly so I assumed it was the usual drummer until I turned round. As for his singing voice, I prefer the more rock sound of this film. Easy Virtue is great but he sounds really good on this and he definitely seemed into the whole performance.

A couple of other things I remembered, he did at one point say something in his irish accent though I couldn’t actually make out what he said. There was also a point where he started shouting “Bernard!” just before a take as Robert had lost his plectrum. Then the crew were shouting “Bernard, the whole production is falling apart here!” and everyone laughed. Robert eventually found one of his plectrums on a speaker.

Set report from February 11th:

Today’s scene was being filmed in Mandela Hall which is in the student’s union of Queen’s University Belfast. I had to arrive by 1pm and was seen by costume (my outfit was nice and bright and didn’t need altered) and hair and make-up. Then we sat about for nearly 3 hours!! They did give us lunch and to be fair they were hoping to get started earlier than they did but it was a long wait. The problem was that there were 35 of us “hero extras” who arrived at 1pm but they then did an open invite to anyone who showed up in 80’s gear. They were meant to be there by 3pm but loads of people were late.

Anyway, at about 4pm the heroes (I love saying) that were called forward into a kind of middle area in between the set and the holding area. While we were waiting I was peering through the door into the set and could see the boys rehearsing but to my dismay NO Ben!! Robert Sheehan was the front man! He stuck his middle finger up at someone (very rude) who did it back and I realised it was Ben!! Who then had a play fight with one of the crew, they were pretending to punch and kick each other.

We were soon let in and told what we were going to be doing. The idea was that by now Shook Up have quite a few fans and they’re performing for an audience of about 350 people. The exact scene is that they’ve finished performing and we all chant “We want more” repeatedly followed by “Shook Up!” repeatedly then lots of screaming as the band come back on for an encore. Robert was very good as a front man but obviously not as good as Ben! The band loved the atmosphere, leaning out into the crowd and everyone going wild. The director, Nick, seemed really pleased too. At one stage while they were setting up he brought Ben up on stage and introduced him and Ben said, “I’m just skulking around backstage” in his Irish accent, which sounded very sexy!

Maybe someone who has read the book can fill me in here, for a brief moment in the song Ben watches from the sidelines and looks kinda sad then walks away. Did the brothers have a fight? Ben’s make-up suggests he got punched! He wasn’t on set the whole time because they were quite often shooting us or the band but for one take they wanted a camera angle across the crowd of Ben’s face so the front three rows had to stay. Robert and Slinky didn’t have their instruments because you could only see their legs and the director didn’t want sound so he could shout instructions to his actors. It was really bizarre, the boys would jump forward and pretend to play the guitar and we’d all pretend to sing!

I think I totally missed an opportunity to meet Ben! A few of us were in the middle area and he just kind of walked out and was chatting to some of the crew for a minute and next thing he’d gone upstairs. I should have just jumped on him!!!

So there was lots of waiting around again and then we went in for the final bit. We just had to do some voice recording and Joe (think that’s the music guy) directed us to do some different things. The band (including Ben) was on stage too and we all sang ole ole ole ole (not sure if the director was just having a laugh) and Ben and the boys joined in. We then had to do “shook up” over and over but we started really quietly and it must have sounded weird to Ben cos he did a little scared face.

Then the director thanked us and brought Ben forward to do a prize draw. He said, “and the U2 tickets with travel and hotel goes to,” then pulled out a ticket and looked out at us with those gorgeous dark eyes, “ticket number 5.” It was a guy that won and Ben did a cool hand shake thing and then Robert thanked us and we were told to go by the director. Of course no one wanted to so we all hung around and Ben was posing for photos by leaning off the stage. Unfortunately the two girls at the front took forever and Ben was dragged off before I could get a photo with him! He seemed lovely, he gave those two girls hugs and would probably have stayed and let more people get photos had he not been dragged away.

I am going to attempt to put a couple of pictures up here but I’m not sure how successful I’ll be! They’re of Ben at the end when we’re supposed to have left.

Got to say the crew are brilliant, they work really hard and do an amazing job! Everyone involved seems really cool so hopefully this will be an awesome movie!

Source: BenBarnesOnline.net Forum

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‘Killing Bono’ Set Report & Photos

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