2.45pm: Arrive Elstree studios. Find room Mike has booked for my use. Great. Go back to station to pick up Michael. Get subjected to stop and search policy at gate. Which is laughable because I’m driving a large estate car which is clearly completely empty except for me and my bag. I laugh. The security man laughs. I leave.

3pm: Arrive Elstree station. Check train times. Michael should be on next train. Suddenly remember that Michael is coming at 4pm and Charlie at 3pm, so Charlie will now be at the studios asking for me and they won’t know who I am. Drive back to studios. Charlie has been and they sent him to the film studios because they didn’t know who I was. I call him and get him back.

3.10pm: First audition. Charlie is affable, a nice guy. We get straight into doing a scene with me reading the part of the police sargeant. Charlie is okay. He asks how I want him to play the character. “I’d like to see your interpretation,” I say. Charlie does the scene again, while I watch from the side. He seems pretty good.

We chat for a bit about the film, what other things he’s done and his availability. He asks about the shooting style and whether I’ll edit it in a straightforward way or with different interpretations in different takes. I remember an idea for duelling pens over the police station counter and talk about that. Charlie can’t do Saturday afternoon, which might be a pain.

3.45pm: First audition ends. I drive to the station to pick up Michael, who is waiting on the grass smoking a cigarette when I arrive. Mike gets in the car and we chat about the incongruity of directors turning up at Elstree railway station, finding the first person they see and taking them to the studios. I suggest this is probably how the BBC casts soaps.

4pm: Second audition. I tell Mike the same as Charlie: I want him to do the scene twice, once facing me and once with me watching from the side. In two lines it’s really clear he’s a considerably better actor than Charlie. He has confidence, feels the role and he projects. It’s like I’m suddently talking to a different person. He didn’t ask how to interpret the role or the scene, just got on with it.

When Mike repeats the scene, I pay attention to his hand gestures. They’re identical to the ones he did the first time around and on the same lines. This might be a little thing he’s practised but it works. It’s what I need for shooting a single camera drama. I’m blown away. The contrast between Charlie and Michael is enormous. The former is good but the latter has presence and a good measure of confidence.

Mike and I sit and chat about the film and the role for a bit. We talk about how it’s the story of an out of towner coming into a sleepy village and becoming trapped there. How it becomes a tale of the irresistable force meeting the immovable object. Mike says something about Charlie (the character, not the actor) being a fast-moving person who is forced to slow down by the village and by the policeman. This fits perfectly with my ideas for using slow-motion effects.

We talk about giving Charlie a character arc, the idea of using overlapping but different action for a duel of pens in the police station (an idea inspired by one of the cutting patterns in American Beauty). Lots of really good creative ideas come out of this meeting. We go on to talk about films in general. Mike is totally committed. He’s skipped off work for the afternoon to get here. We talk about some of the films I’ve been discussing recently, Insomnia and the Jack Ryan films.

Mike’s just been doing a horror comedy film, a walk-on part I’m guessing. Maybe it won’t ever see the light of day. Nevertheless, our ideas mesh and I offer him the part. It’s a result. It’s 5.30pm. I leave a couple of videos for Mike (the TV training chap), drop Mike the actor at the station, drive home, ring Fiona Farley and then pass out.