ONII was my second feature for Stray Dogs films, and was shot in Istanbul and Liverpool in the autumn of 2012. It was a fantastic experience, one of my favourites at that point of the various travelling jobs I’ve done. I had never been to Istanbul before, and was left absolutely in awe at that wonderful city and its people. I was one of the HODs who did both legs of the shoot, and both units were solid! My boom op in Istanbul was Hasan Sayın, and sound assistant Gürkan Çolakoğlu. In Liverpool, it was Simon Batchelar again and Kathryn McIlveen. By the end of the Istanbul leg I had learnt maybe 50 or so words & phrases in Turkish (including swearing, of course). A few very familiar faces on that one again (AD Myria Panayotou, scriptie Roxy Cuenca, PM Livia Rao). We ended one of the days at the Atatürk Stadium by having a Team Turkey VS Team UK penalty shootout on the same pitch that Liverpool famously won the 2005 Champions League (which is the backdrop of the film’s storyline) in a shootout of their own. It turned out the Turkish location manager was a semi-pro goalkeeper so, yeah, they won… (I hit the post)
