Ruby /// Love, like or hate

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Name: Jeanie Finlay

Location: Nottingham, United Kingdom

I'm an artist and film-maker based in Nottingham, UK. I like making documentaries about small stories and taking photos of strangers. I love karaoke, cooking and my family. I have more shoes than I need.

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It's been a strange few weeks - I've moved offices, hurrah we have light!, been trying to plan a shoot at Whitby Goth weekend and a trip encompassing 4 American and Canadian cities in 10 days for my new project with Tigerlily; Goth Cruise. To top it all I have officially become a horror widow.

Sheil is now on his third week of shooting his feature horror Mum and Dad, which has been tiring and draining all round for lots of different reasons. For Steven, the insanity of keeping the script in his head and dealing with, special effects, actors, a crew of 33 and a punishing schedule. For me, trying to plan my own feature doc while doing most of the childcare and Betsy's chosen phrase for April is BUT WHY?

Sheil has been leaving and returning to the house at stupid o' clock so on some days she's barely seen a glimpse of him, so I've been taking her down to the set some days at lunchtime. This has been fraught with the possibility that Betsy might glimpse a severed hand, naked male torso, blood in bags or any amount of other unsavoury props that would take an awful lot of explaining and are not at all suitable for a 3 year old's eyes.

Meeting the actors has been odd, it is fair to say that the script contains some very disturbing scenes and they keep asking me the same question - 'what's it like living with him?', as if they can't seperate the gruesome horror from the calm father that does half the childcare and likes comic books and car boot sales. Alex Thomson, sound recordist extrordonaire and my sister's boyfriend felt quite weird after reading the script, said it showed S in a completely new light. God knows what the press are going to make of it - Empire Magazine and The Times were down yesterday with one interview going down the 'torture pornography' route.

Sheil's official line is 'it's better out than in' and I tell people that sometimes it's like living with the love child of Charlie Brooker and Dario Argento, because sometimes it is.

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