8 JULY Thame Park, Oxfordshire. First day of shooting George III. Twenty-two years since I first went on location (to Halifax in 1972 for A Day Out). Then I was full of jokes and enthusiasm, watching every shot and fussing over how my precious words were spoken. Today it’s raining and I’m full of aches and pains and can scarcely bother to trail along the track to the pigsty, which is the first set-up of the film – and Nicholas Hytner’s first set-up ever. As always, even on a modest film like ours, the sheer size of the operation depresses: a dozen vans, two or three buses, half-a-dozen caravans, rows of cars and dozens and dozens of people, all of whom have good reason for being there except me, who started it all.
   I watch the first shot, Nigel Hawthorne as George III on the brink of madness, talking to a pig, marvelling between takes at some wonderful run-down eighteenth-century barns with intricate grey-beamed roofs and sagging tiles. Nick H. seems happy enough and has at least got round the obstacle which always stopped me directing films – namely, having to say: ‘Action!’ My instinct would be to say: ‘Er, I think if everybody’s agreeable we might as well sort of start now – that is, if you’re ready.’ Today Mary Soan, the first assistant, says the dread word, Nick simply Making Decisions about the Shot.